Go With the Flow Spacer-Bar Earrings
While most often you will use spacer-bars in necklaces and bracelets, here's a project where I decided to "think outside of the box" a little and see what else I could do with a them. I got these spacer-bars from the folks at
Beadalon, and most companies who sell beading supplies will also have these available. I call these Go With The Flow earrings because originally I had it in my mind that three equally sized dangles would make up each earring. However, they didn't want to do that. They wanted to tip diagonally. Therefore, I figured, why fight it? I instead let the earrings do what they wanted and adapted my design to fit.
To make these earrings you'll need:
2 ear hooks
2 - ¾ inch three-holed spacer bars
6 head pins
12 crystal beads (Mine are from
Beadshop.com)
6 hematite star beads
2 hematite square beads
2 hematite short tube (1/4 inch) beads
wire cutters
round-nosed pliers
flat-nosed pliers
1. Begin by assembling your beads onto your head pins. Refer to the picture below for the correct pattern or beads. You can use just about any choice of beads for this. The important thing to keep in mind is that you want to have a graduating length of beads on each head pin.
2. Now use wire cutters to remove all but about ½ inch of head pin from each one.
3. Next, use your round-nosed pliers and the loop technique /library/weekly/aa081098.htm to create a simple loop on each end of your head pins.
4. Attach each head pin loop to the holes in your spacer-bar so that you go from shortest to longest beaded head pin. If necessary, gently close the loops using your flat-nosed pliers.
5. Now attach the loop of your ear hook to the center hole of your spacer-bar.
6. Repeat all the steps above to make another earring, but this time switch the order of the shortest and longest beaded head pin. This way you have another earring, but the diagonal spacer-bar is slanting in the opposite direction.
