Weddingbee Blog

When I posted about the gifts I am planning to give to my girls, a few people requested a tutorial, and I was happy to oblige!

These are super easy, and don’t take very long at all. Let’s get started!

Here are the supplies you’ll need:

Pearls (or other beads), crimp beads, jump rings, headpins, wire or string of your choice, earring findings, crimper, long nosed pliers, and wire cutters.

I’ll be honest, I didn’t know what half those things were called - I just looked them up online. In reality, I rolled into Michaels and grabbed a bunch of stuff. What you see above is what worked for me.

Close up on the earring findings, headpins, crimp beads, jump rings, as well as the crimper thingy:

Hokay, so, first string a crimp bead onto your string, followed by a clasp.

Then loop the string around your clasp and back through your crimp bead:

Pull tight, and crimp away! I think there is probably a science to how you’re supposed to do this, but I really just mashed on the bead with the crimper until it was really secure and not going anywhere.

String your beads:

Now finish off your necklace/bracelet. First string another crimp bead followed by a jump ring.

Loop back around your jump ring and feed your string back through your crimp bead (just like when you started your strand):

Then crimp away again, cut off the excess wire, and you’re done!

So, the crimp beads post-crimping are a little ugly. Apparently, they make covers for this very reason! Honestly, they really aren’t very noticeable, so I didn’t worry about them:

Now for the earrings. You’ll need two headpins. When I first saw earrings like this on some blog somewhere, I thought they were using real stick pins, like you use for sewing. Nope. These are super bendy and awesome, not tough like sewing pins (I tried them first, FAIL).

String your bead(s) onto the headpins, like so:

The hardest step: grab the pin with your long-nosed pliers about 3mm away from where the bead ends and fold the end of the pin down toward the bead. It should look like this when you’re done:

Next, grab the little loop you’ve just made with your pliers:

And take the edge of the pin and wrap it around your loop a few times, so that you end up with something like this:

Snip off that excess pin as close to the loop as possible.

Then, take your earring fastening and open up the bottom loop a tiny bit with your pliers:

Then slip your bead onto the earring fastening, and then close it up with your pliers:

Voila! Final product:

And here’s your completed set (this is a bracelet - obviously - because I’m lazy :))

I hope that tutorial was helpful for those of your that plan on DIYing some jewelry! Keep in mind that you don’t have to be a pro to get some pretty nice-looking results!