Coin Pearl Earrings

These earrings were inspired by the ones that can be found on page 63 of the July 2008 Issue of Bead Style Magazine. The designer for those earrings is Stacey Yongue. I say they were inspired because I didn’t really follow the directions. I also ran in to some issues with my wire and decided to make a modification.

First off, I didn’t use metallic colored beads. My reasoning for this is that the only wire I had that was thin enough to pass through the coin pearl was copper. I did not have any copper colored beads. That alone I think changes the look of the earrings. I found some colored coin pearls at Michael’s that I want to make these with. Ill probably pick up some metallic beads to go with those.

I threaded the seed beads on to the wire and threaded it through the coin pearl. That part was easy enough. I missed the bit about wrapping it at the top though. I have seriously got to learn how to follow directions. At any rate, I held the two wires in place and wrapped them around the end of my pliers. I like that the double wire gave the piece a bit more stability, as my wire was very soft. I then wrapped the wires around the base of the loop. There were two issues with this method. First off, my wires weren’t perfectly aligned. Secondly, I found the wrap job to be a bit messy. So, I decided to kill two birds with one stone. If you look at the two earrings above you can see the two different methods used to make them. I made the one with the coral colored beads first. For the turquoise one, once I brought the two wires together at the top of the pearl I twisted them together. It brought the two wires snugly up against the pearls, provided the strength I was looking for, brought the two wires together for the loop and also gave the wrap a neater appearance.