I hoard earrings.  I recently weeded out a bunch of earrings that I’ve held on to since I was in high school.  They were all rusty and discolored, and while they had sentimental value, I had to let them go.  I was also going through my old beading materials, and found all this stuff I’d forgotten about.  I guess at some point I felt the need to buy enough supplies to make myself accessories for a lifetime.  Since I could use more earrings that will rarely get worn, I will show you all an easy earring to make.  Sure you could just pick out a pair at the store.  But it’s pretty fun and thrifty to customize your own earrings, and be able to make several different pairs for the price of one ready to wear pair.  If you bought a bag of beads, you can make a matching necklace or bracelet.  I’ll get to that in a later post.

I have 2 fishhook earwires, 2 head pins (2″), beads, and pliers that have a cutter and a round nose.  I didn’t want to use the entire head pin, so I used the pliers to cut them down to 1.5″.  The craft stores sell head pins of various lengths.

Slide the beads onto the head pin.

Use the pliers to make a little loop at the end of the head pin.

Attach the fishhook before closing the loop.

It took me 10x longer to pick out the beads than it did to make the earrings.