Valentine Bead Danglies

Here's my Valentine danglies! I like to wear these dangle-type earrings, not everyone does - so this is for those of you who DO like them!

I happened to drive by a bead shop on my way home from somewhere yesterday and although there wasn't a whole lot to choose from, I found these cute Oriental heart beads. They're made from cinnabar ,which I've learned is a common material used in a lot of Oriental carving work. Anyway - I liked the beads so I grabbed a few.

So here's how I made my little earrings:


Like I said before, stack your beads on a headpin any way you like. Then cut the headpin with your wire cutters leaving enough at the top to curl over and make a little loop.

Then attach your earring to your loop and finish off by tightening your loop and securing the earring piece.

If you're nervous about making a necklace with all of the tools, clamps, and hardware - just make a little charm and get a simple necklace at the store to hang it on.

To make a charm, use a little "O" ring instead of an earring piece.

Here are some different Valentine-type samples I came up with.

This honestly takes 2 minutes!!!

(I apologize for the ugly photo display but I'm too lazy right now to spend any more time on this!)

Call me nerdy, but these are some sets that I made about a year ago and for playful, casual occasions, I'll wear them. (I'm missing an earring as you can see on the bottom left...and I think my daughter lost my CUTE bracelet that goes with the necklace set there.)

The bracelets and the necklace are made with that stretchy cording. Nothing fancy - just string them on and tie them tight without breaking the cording. I wouldn't use those fancy, expensive beads this way - just cheap-o beads that you don't care about in the event your bracelet or necklace gets ripped off of your body by a curious, aggressive 2-year-old, and beads shower the floor. (I KNOW this...)

And now for the packaging! A gift is SO much more appealing and fun when there's cute packaging, so here's what I did for this jewelry:
















Punch holes in the card - two tiny ones for the earrings and two notches at the top for a necklace or bracelet. Obviously I didn't measure - so if you care enough to make everything aligned, go ahead and measure your hole distances.

A little trick I like to do before I tie my ribbon on anything like this is to wrap the plastic with a clear rubber band - ponytail holder thing. Now you can tie your ribbon without having to fight the plastic!