teal & lime coloured jasper earrings

I decided to spoil myself this March and make myself a pair of earrings for every day.  I meant to post them daily, but life gets in the way.

I’ll catch up a little bit at a time, and give a little how-to with each pair.

I started by going through my stash of stone beads.  I had just finished a custom order (here) and really wanted to keep playing with the stones.  These beads are jasper with really pretty tones of green in teal to lime.  I wanted to feature them, so I didn’t pair them with any other beads.  I choose an aged bronze wire to keep with the earthy tones.  First I made the coil you see at the bottom, strung on the bead and finished with a wrapped loop.  I used silver-tone shepherd hooks but will probably swap them out for bronze coloured ones.

animal print!

For this pair of earrings I used a couple of round lava beads that my mother-in-law got for me while she was vactioning in Thailand (or thereabouts).  I paired them with some leopard jasper chip beads.  The secret to getting the earrings the same length is luck and having a wide variety of chips to choose from.  You have to pick two chips of roughly the same size at a time, one for each earring.  It will take a lot longer if you pick the chips for one earrings and then try to match them for the other.  I used some black metal findings to keep the tone dark.  I don’t know if these findings are nickel-free, but luckily I’m not allergic. I used a head pin, strung on the chips, the lava bead, one leopard jasper chip, and then using round nose pliers bent the end up.  I then used flat nose pliers to squeeze the wire together and up to make a knob so the beads can’t slide off.  Finish with a jump ring connecting the eye pin to the earring finding. Ready to go.

Remember Walker?

He’s getting big.

roughly 6 months old