Bead Filled Frame Earrings Tutorial

These sweet stunners are lightweight and elegant — perfect for the balmy nights of summer! As a bonus, they are super lightweight and easy to wear. Plus they work up quickly and are fairly easy to make.

You will need:

52x25mm gold filled marquis link (2)

2mm Czech fire polish beads in purple iris (82)

gold filled ear wires (2)

26 ga gold filled wire, half hard (4 feet)

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Cut a 2 foot piece of your 26 gauge wire. Leaving a 1/2 inch tail, wind the wire tightly around the wire frame 4 times, near the bottom of the frame. Be sure to keep the wire wraps very close to each other.

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String one 2mm Czech fire polish bead onto the wire.

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Slide the bead down into the corner of the bottom of the frame, holding it in place with your thumb. Wrap the wire around the other side of the frame. Take care not to kink the wire as you pull it through.

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Continue wrapping until you have wrapped the wire around the frame four times. Try to keep the wraps reasonably close together and tidy. It doesn’t have to be perfect, but you want it to look nice.

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String two beads onto the wire.

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Wrap the wire around four times to secure.

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Continue adding rows of beads and wrapping to secure:

Row 3: four beads

Row 4: five beads

Row 5: six beads

Row 6: seven beads

Row 7: eight beads

Row 8: eight beads

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Carefully cut off any excess wire.

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Tap the end of the wire down with your needle nose pliers. Then, cut off and tap down the other end of the wire.

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Open the loop at the bottom of your ear wire.

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Pass the wire frame through the open ear wire loop.

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Close the ear wire loop to finish the earring. Repeat all steps for the second earring.

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Your finished earrings will look like this:

For fun variations, try:

• different sizes of links
• using different beads, like seed beads or crystals
• making patterns in the beads
• completely filling the frames