Simple DIY Drop Earrings

I am a newcomer to the earring world, since I just got my ears pierced last year when I turned 30.  Hard to believe, I know!  But now that I have passed that milestone (finally!) I am really getting into earrings!  I spend a lot of time browsing Etsy for neat-looking earrings that are small and dainty.  Since I have newly pierced ears, I am not quite ready for the big dangly ones, and the small dangly ones are hard to come by and they cost $14 a pair!  So I decided I would try making some earrings for myself!

After looking on Etsy for ideas and seeing other people’s earrings (never paid much attention before! haha!) I decided to try a simple crystal drop style earring.  I found lots of helpful tutorials since I was totally clueless as to how to begin. 

Diane from In My Own Style had a helpful tutorial for simple beaded earrings.  She also had a tip to use old jewelry that you get secondhand, take it apart and reuse the beads.  Great idea!  I actually had a beaded necklace that I had never worn, so I took that apart and garnered a few silver beads for my project as well as a bunch of miscellaneous beads that I might use later.  Then I went to Michael’s and bought a pair of jeweler’s pliers, headpins, eyepins, ear wires, and some crystals and beads.  The pliers are important because they have rounded points which allows you to make perfect loops to join your wires.  (Needless to say, mine are not perfect, but I am getting better!)  I also used another pair of needle-nose pliers and a pair of wire cutters that I already had.

So after gathering my supplies I spent a little while designing my earrings on the headpin.  This tutorial from beadage.net shows how to use a headpin:

I put some beads together on a pin to see if I liked the combination and rearranged them until I was happy.  Michael helped, too, he is surprisingly opinionated about earrings! :)  After I got my beads in a row, I followed this simple tutorial for making the top loop.   Don’t pretend you know what you are doing, just follow the rules! :)

After making my semi-perfect loop, I just strung them onto my ear wire and closed the loop.  Voila!  This kind of earring is super easy!  Here are the ones I made with just a few purple bicone crystals, some silver beads and a headpin.  This pair is 1 3/8” long from the top of the ear wire.  You can make them shorter or longer depending on how many beads are on the wire. 

This pair looks really cute with both blue and purple! 

The next kind of earrings I wanted to make involved a chain of beads with loops.  I found these adorable light pink glass drops in a pendant kit at Michael’s.  The kit was an assortment of pink and purple beads (right down my alley!) and these drops matched the bicone crystals I picked out.  To make these into earrings, I had to thread a wire through the top of the teardrop and then form a loop.  That loop was joined to another crystal that I put on an eyepin (which already has a loop on one end) then cut and formed into a loop.  The whole chain then hangs on the ear wire.  Not as easy, but definitely more fun, since all the little loops in the chain make the earring swing around more!  These are also 1 3/8” from the top of the wire, just right for me!

And for my third pair, I used the same technique except with two crystals.  Dark pink and light pink joined by loops.  These are so cute, they are just a bit over an inch from the top of the wire.  Dainty and sweet!

Making the little crystal charms is really fun and rewarding once you get the hang of it.  I still have tons of beads and wires, so I’ll definitely be making more earrings in the future.  Hope you enjoyed my little “tutorial” on earrings.  Try it yourself, the supplies are inexpensive and next time someone compliments your earrings you can say you made them yourself! :)

P.S. For more earring inspiration, check out my Pinterest Board: DIY Jewelry.