Earring Making Supply

Your earring making supply needs depends on the types of earrings you are going to make.

If you will make your own earwires, you'll need earring making wire but if you don't want to get that ambitious you can buy premade ear wires and just attach your earring decoration to them. If you make earrings solely out of seed beads, your needs will be less than if you want to use crystals, pearls and semi precious gems. One of the tools you'll need in your earring making supply kit is pliers. You'll probably want a needlenose and a regular (maybe even with rubber tips so you don't scratch the wire).

The needlenose will be needed to make loops in your headpins so that you can attach beads to each other and the earring findings. The regular pliers may be needed to open the loop in the pre made ear wire and perhaps for other tasks depending on how you are attaching the beads to the earrings.

One of the tools you'll need in your earring making supply kit is pliers. You'll probably want a needlenose and a regular (maybe even with rubber tips so you don't scratch the wire). The needlenose will be needed to make loops in your headpins so that you can attach beads to each other and the earring findings. The regular pliers may be needed to open the loop in the pre made ear wire and perhaps for other tasks depending on how you are attaching the beads to the earrings.

Another item to add to your earring making supply kit is, of course, ear wires or earring making wire. You can buy the ear wires - either fish hooks, leverbacks, hoops or even studs premade to save a step or fashion your own using a thin gauge wire to save money.

If you are making seed bead earrings you will need seed beads, beading thread, a beading needle any accents beads your pattern calls for and a pattern. This is the least expensive but most time consuming type of earring to make.

Some sort of earring finding may or may not be part of your earring making supply. You can hang beads simply from the ear wire in strands or use a chain to hang from the wire and add beads to the chain in a cascade. For chandelier earrings, you can buy premade findings with loops you can use to attach cascades of beads. I think it's fun to use vintage parts and pieces from old necklaces and even earrings to make mine - the end pieces of a necklace where the strands meet sometimes make great finding to turn into an earring. Depending on the amount of strands in the necklaces you'll have your premade loops all set and you can use the end with loop to attach to the ear wire.

In order to attach the beads to the finding, you'll want to add head pins or eyepins or both to your earring making supply list. These pins will be used to string the beads on and then attach to the finding like on my example page for making beaded earrings.

Making Beaded Earrings
Step by step instructions on how to make earrings

Jewelry Making Book Review
My take on some of the books I'ved read.