Sterling Silver Coil Earrings

These coil earrings are simple to make and look great. Once you’ve mastered the coiling technique, you can alter it in a variety of ways. If you’ve never worked with any type of wire before, I suggest practicing using copper wire first. Then graduate to sterling silver when you feel comfortable. You can find copper wire in different gauges at your local hardware store for just a few dollars. These are all the supplies you’ll need:

• 12 inches of 18 gauge sterling silver round wire
• 2 sterling silver ear hooks

The tools you’ll need are:

• wire cutters
• jeweler files
• ruler
• pencil
• flat nosed pliers

Using the ruler to ensure your two pieces are even, cut the wire in half. You should now have two 6 inch pieces of wire.

Now use a jewelry file to file down each end of the wire so they are flat. This is important so that later the wearer of the earrings doesn’t accidentally get poked by a sharp piece of the wire.
Now, wrap one of the pieces of wire tightly around your pencil. Use your flat nosed pliers to push the coil tightly together, if necessary. Then also use your pliers to push the ends of the wire so they fit around the pencil. Now, slide the coil off your pencil. You're almost finished!

Next, you’ll need to separate a loop of the coil. Using the pliers, bend the top loop up so the coil looks like this:

Thread one of the ear hooks onto the separated loop. Use your pliers to close the loop so your ear hook won’t come off.
Now it’s time to pull apart your coil just a little bit so there’s about 1/8 inch separating each loop. Of course, you can make the spaces as small or as large as you want. To do this, hold the bent loop between your thumb and forefinger and gently pull on the opposite end of your boil using your pliers.
That’s it. You’ve made one earring. Now, do that all again to make another to match.

Other Coiling Ideas: Now that you see how simple it is to do this coiling technique, you can imagine the endless variety of designs you can do with it. For the earrings pictured at the top of this page, I used 12 inches of 18 gauge round sterling silver wire and a small wooden dowl to make the coils. Then, since silver is so soft, I just bent them into a snake shape using my hands. Here are a few other ideas you can use to build on this simple technique:

Use smaller or larger guage of wire

Use square wire

Use gold-filled or 14 kt. wire

Use the coil as a pendant by just adding it to a chain

Using head pins, dangle beads from the bottom of the coil

Here's a photo of a pair of earrings using this coiling technique. Then I just used a head pin to dangle a hematite star and teardrop bead of each coil.

All graphics created by Tammy Powley.

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