Summer! Flower Disc Bead Earring Tutorial

Since we're all in Summer mode here at AJE, I thought I'd share a tutorial for some earrings I made with my flower disc beads.  I made these beads a while ago, but in a rustic style:

Since then, I've started making them with the glass that I am currently obsessed with (from GG Glass):

What came to mind for me was a tutorial I wrote for a magazine called Bead It Today (August 2013) which has since gone out of publication.

I also referenced this tutorial post by Jenny Davies-Reazor where she made earrings with enameled discs.

In this case I used flower petal beads I had made, and a swarovski crystal heapin to make the design pop.  Today I'll show you my flower disc beads and two designs you can make!

I'm using my red flower disc beads, and two teeny tiny rubber o-ring beads I got from Yvonne at MyELEMENTS on etsy.

I'm also using some awesome headpins I got from our own Jennifer at Glass Addictions.

Add the flower disc bead, then the bumper bead, to the glass headpin.

Using your chain nose pliers, fold the copper wire over, preeeeeeety close to the bumper bead.  The bumper bead is going to help you (hopefully) from breaking any glass in case you tighten too much.

Use your round nose pliers to make a wrapped loop.  In this case, you really only want to wrap about one time, to make the earring hang right.

Then cut the copper wire very close to the loop, making sure not to cut the rubber o-ring - it would be aweful to waste that gorgeous headpin by having to start over!

 Here's what it looks like!  Make sure your heapin and loop on the back are oriented in the right direction - if they aren't, adjust as necessary.

Here's the back - what you're going to do is use your thumbs or your thumb and a plier to push the loop up toward the glass flower bead - using the pliers very gently - and get as close to the glass bead as you can.

Here you can see how the heart design on the headpin and the loop are oriented so that dangle will hang correctly.

 Make another, and add your ear wires!

Here's another quick little tutorial using different beads.

This time, I thought these beads would look good with gold findings.

I started out wanting to use these awesome gold beads, they go so well.  However, I didn't have headpins with a big enough to head to use them, and even though I tried to use a little filigree bead cap (flattened out) it just didn't look right.

So next I got out my gold flower heishe beads, but they were just too small, and I didn't have bigger ones to use.

So, in the end, I decided to use these gold round beads, and they look fine.  However, when I get a chance, I'm going to redo them with those awesome textured gold beads above!

Working in the same fashion as above, add your gold round, the flower disc bead, and the small heishe (that I decided to use as the bumper) to the headpin.

 

And again, in the same manner as above, make your wrapped loop and push the loop up as close to the glass flower disc as possible.  On this set of earrings, it actually works well to put the ear wire in the loop before you push the loop up to the glass flower disc bead.

 

And your finished earrings:

I'm sure you can think of other ways to use these flower disc beads!  You can find them in my SueBeads etsy store, and in some of my trunk shows on FaceBook.  I am also happy to make some on request!

Susan Kennedy