First, cut three lengths of chain for use with each flower earring piece. Ordinarily, like in the case of a necklace, I would say to just cut pieces of arbitrarily based on length (1/2 inch, 1 inch long) but because you’re doing earrings where you’ll have a pair, it’s a good idea to count the number of chain links. Warning, this can be difficult if your eyes aren’t so good and the links are small! Get those glasses out…
In any case, I used 5, 10 and 15 link chain lengths for these earrings. Next, you want to start by taking a headpin (remember you can Make Your Own Headpins if need be!) and putting a seed bead and then a Czech pressed flower onto it. Make sure the flower is facing the right way (downwards). Then take your Round Nosed Pliers and start making a wirewrap loop. If you need a refresher, see the Wirewrap Drop Technique article from before.
Now, once you have made a loop, DON’T wrap it yet. Take one of the chain lengths and slip it onto the half finished loop. This is extremely important, because if you forget to put the chain on then you’re outta luck because unlike a Simple Loop you can’t re-open up a Wirewrap! You’ll have to start over from scratch. Egad, I can’t count the number of times I was distracted and forgot to put the required item into a half finished wirewrap loop. Starting all over is really annoying, so you want to make sure to pay attention to what you’re doing for this step…
Once you’ve got the chain length hooked onto the loop, you can use both of your Chain Nose pliers to commence closing up the wirewrap. It can sometimes be difficult to “grasp” the wirewrap loop with your chain nose pliers in order to wrap it, because the chain link that is connected to the loop gets in the way. This is especially the case if the tips of your Chain Nose pliers aren’t very small. If you must grab the chain link as well, then so be it… but try to grab it flat and also grasp gently so it doesn’t mess up the link. Alternatively, use Chain Nose pliers that have coated tips so it doesn’t mar the metal…
Whew! Now, repeat this for each of the other two lengths of chain and the Czech flowers and seed beads. Once you’ve figured out your own technique for doing one of these flower plus chain sections, the rest of it will go really fast.
I sort of try to compartmentalize the different tasks into repeatable sections where possible; that is I try to do ALL of the flowers up until the halfway point where you need to insert the chains. This means that I use the Rosary Plier 3 times and then I don’t have to use it again at all for the wirewrapping part. This may not seem like a bit deal if you are just doing one earring. But if you had, say 5 flower chains for each earring side that would be 10 total for a pair, and if you were making 3 sets of earrings… repeated tasks quickly add up!
