Giveaway!

One of my customers to my supplies shop ordered extra long head pins from me and then asked for advice on making earrings using bead with holes in the center. I experimented and liked the earring I made and decided to pass the tutorial on to you. And I'm giving these earrings away! Entering this giveaway is easy, you can become a follower of this blog an leave a comment with your email so I can contact you if you're the winner! Or you can like my facebook page and leave a comment there, too. If you do both, you'll get two chances to enter.
       The enameled flowers were made with copper blanks and first enameled with a clear coat. I then put a layer of white, not too heavy, and fired it again. Then came two coats of transparent purple. I seemed to be obsessed with purple lately! The speckled layer of white causes the purple to be mottled and a bit rustic looking. 
       The next step is to make the head pins. I use 20 ga. argentium sterling wire and cut it to 2 1/2 in. long. I then lit my small butane torch. Put the wire into the flame at the edge of blue flame. If you can see a yellow flame behind the wire, you've hit the sweet spot! As the wire melts and balls up, move the wire down into the flame until you've got a 2mm. ball and slowly take it out.

Make two of these. Let the wire cool, then put it into the pickle solution for a few minutes.  Scrub it with the Penny Brite and then polish it by hand or put it into a tumbler.

      Put your head pin through your bead and put a seed bead or small bead behind it. Then bend the head pin at a right angle and down over the seed and focal bead. This will keep the focal bead upright. You may have to fiddle with it to get it just right.

Then create the ear wire above that. I use wire forming tools but you can also bend the wire over mandrel such as a pen. Snip off the ends of the wire until you like the length and smooth the edges. You've got gorgeous hand crafted earrings!

 This giveaway ends on May 1st and the winner will be contacted by email. Good luck!!