Make it Monday - Memory Wire Earrings

March 10, 2014

Make it Monday - Memory Wire Earrings

Spring has sprung my beautiful lovelies! Or at least it has here in central Mississippi. If it hasn't yet in your part of the world I wish I could hurry it along for you. In celebration of the weather warming, the sun shining, and my thoughts turning to spring I thought I would post a quick tutorial on an earring design I've seen floating around the internet - memory wire hoops.

I love memory wire bracelets and have made several over the years and was so pleased the other day to find they had come back in style! I don't really need to make any more (that's what I keep telling myself) so I was excited to find a use for the memory wire I had lying around in my beading stash. This little project is great for using up bits and pieces you may have lying around and you could quickly churn several pairs of these out in an evening for gifts. The memory wire will maintain it's shape and won't bend or flex so it works great for this style.

Let's get started!

Materials/Tools

Wire Cutters
Round Nosed Pliers
Needle Nosed Pliers (optional)
Memory Wire
Earring wires (2)
Headpins (10)
Jump Rings (2)
Seed Beads
Focal Beads

First cut two pieces of memory wire. Mine are about 4 to 5 inches long, but you could make them larger or smaller as you desire. Bend a small loop onto one side of each piece of wire.

I'm using, what I think are, dyed howlite chips as my focal beads and I made five dangles for each earring using three beads on one headpin finished with a simple loop and four dangles with two beads finished with a simple loop.

Going back to the memory wire pieces slide seed beads onto the hoop until you are just about halfway. It's hard to give you an exact number of beads as each seed bead is just a little different in size.

Now slide on your first dangle and then a seed bead to space, and then another dangle and so on. Start with two of the two bead dangles, the three bead dangle, and then the last two bead dangle spacing between each dangle with a seed bead. Finish up the remaining side of the hoop with seed beads leaving enough space at the top to make a matching loop on the other other side.

Complete the same steps for the other hoop.

Open two small jump rings.

Now this is the fiddly bit. You're going to squeeze your hoop together until your loops are side by side and loop your open jump ring through. With the jump ring still open slid on your earring wire and then close up the jump ring. I tried using the end of the earring wire to close up the hoop without the jump ring but I didn't like how the earring hung.