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Hello and welcome to another jewelry making video brought to you by KeepsakeCrafts.net.
I'm Sandy and today I have for you this fun pair of earrings using loops of seed beads
all gathered up into a cone. With the right tools, this is actually a fairly quick project.
So here you can see I have one of the earrings already made and I just really love the way
this looks. It's a different way of using the materials, of using seed beads, of using
bead cones and I just thing it's a fun dangly pair of earrings.
So to make each earring, of course you're going to need seed beads and I'll talk more
about these in a minute. To complete your earrings, you will need a bead cone for each
one, an ear wire and an eye pin for each earring and then to accent your earrings if you like,
a couple of beads. I have here two 4mm round beads and then an 8mm crystal cube. In addition
you will need some beading thread and like I said I'll talk about that in a moment. For
tools you'll need wire cutters, chain nose pliers, round nose pliers, a one step looper
if you like for making your loops, some scissors and a ruler.
The most helpful tool that you'll need however is this, a bead spinner and I've spoken about
bead spinners before. I have a whole video telling you all about bead spinners, a couple
different types and showing you how to use them. I have here this special curved needle
that comes with the bead spinner and then also a spool of beading thread. Now you want
to leave your thread on the spool for this project. It's the best way. You're going to
need about 60" of thread per earring, but leave your thread on the spool. It's a much
easier way to do it and if your spool is getting low then make sure that you have 60" available
and put something like one of these bead bugs on the end just to make sure that you don't
lose any of your beads and like I said, in the video I showed you how to use the bead
spinner.
It's just a quick way to string beads. They just jump right onto the needle like that.
Isn't that cool? Now sometimes when you're using the smaller beads, these happen to all
be cooperating with me, these are 15s, which mean 15 of these make an inch, so they're
pretty small and sometimes they'll get stuck right here at the eye of the needle and what
you can do rather than unstringing them, just grab a pair of chain nose pliers, grip on
to your needle and then use your fingers to force those beads down over the eye of the
needle. You probably will crack a few beads, so I recommend you do it on a surface that
will catch the beads, like over a small box or something or even over a trash can or if
you do it on a hard work surface, make sure that when you clean them up you don't wipe
them up with your hands because it's broken glass, but use just a small soft paintbrush
to sweep them off the table into a trash can. In my mind it's worth it to get the speed
of using this tool to break a few seed beads.
So for each earring, you're going to string 20" of seed beads. So once you've strung your
20" of seed beads, you can remove the needle and I'm just going to use my scissors and
cut off that ragged end of thread so I have a nice clean end. Now we still haven't
cut any of this thread off the spool so I'm going to measure out 4" of beads and then
I'm going to put those beads inside 12" of thread and here at 12" I'm going to snip.
Ever so carefully make sure you have a grip on both ends and set that off to the side
and repeat. Now don't be tempted to skimp on the 12" of thread here. It may seem like
too much, but the first time I did this I only used 10" and I really could have used
those other 2" on the ends for tying the knots and you'll see what I mean. So go ahead an
continue until you have five 12" pieces of thread, each with 4" of beads on it.
So here are my five strands of thread each with 4" of beads on them and now is the time
to be very careful and pick up all five ends and line them up together on one side and
just make sure you have a good grip on all of them and then gather up all five from the
other side. Just be very careful here. Make sure you have them all. It stinks to miss
one and then you end up dumping your beads all over the place. So we have all five.
Okay, now what I'm going to do, I have them all together and I'm just going to pull so
that they all meet and all the strands don't have to be precisely the same length, just
close. I just want to pull them all up. You can grab each one individually if you need
to and just tug them all up so that the tops of the beads are all at about the same spot. I've
gone ahead and opened my eye pin and I'm going to loop my beads into that eye pin and this
is where that extra length comes in handy. You can just take this and tie it into a simple
over hand knot over the eye pin. Again make sure you get all ten strands through that
loop and then I'm just going to use the eye pin to guide this down so that the knot is
right at the tops of the beads and again if you need to pull up each strand, like I've
got a loop of thread there so I'll probably just give them all a tug until I find the
culprit and now you can use your chain nose pliers to close that eye and then one more
time tie the knot so that you'll secure it all.
Now once we have that knotted, we don't want it going anywhere. Add a dab of strong glue
such as super glue or E6000 and then go off and be patient and let it dry completely before
you proceed to the next step.
While you're waiting for the glue to dry, here's a quick tip for you. If you're concerned
that your beading thread doesn't match your beads, perhaps you have dark color beads and
all you can find are white, I can find other colors, but I only buy white because what
I do is color them with a Sharpie. Just put it on a scrap of paper, hold your Sharpie
and pull it through and you have permanently colored the thread.
So now that the glue is dry, you can take your scissors and trim off those excess threads
and finish up your earrings, which is a breeze from here. I'm just going to slide the eye
pin right into the bead cone, slide on your accent beads. So the 4mm, an 8mm cube and
a 4mm and then use whatever method you like to make a loop. Round nose pliers work great,
as does this One Step Looper. Open up your loop, pop it over your ear wire, close it
up securely and you're done. A fun and rather different way to use seed beads. Here's another
look at the earrings we made today. So go out and find a pack of seed beads whose colors
you love and make yourself some earrings or make them for a gift.
Thanks so much for watching KeepsakeCrafts videos. If you like this video, please make
sure you've subscribed to my YouTube channel so you'll see more like it. Also you can follow
me on Pinterest, Instagram, Facebook and on my blog.
Happy creating. Bye bye.