The other day I saw some Zig Zag Earring dangles in a beading magazine. The funkier style of these zig zag earrings isn’t something I’d normally try and make for sale, but I was curious to see how hard they would be to put together. They were actually fairly easy to make after some amount of practice. I’ve used 3mm crystals for these, but you can actually use a variety of different sizes and shapes for the dangles. Also, you can have more than one dangle for each earring; in fact, it might be kind of cool to have different shapes and colors for 2 to 3 dangles on each earring.
This tutorial is going to bring together two or three techniques that I’ve written articles on before: Homemade Headpins and Simple Wire Loop Technique or the Wirewrap Drop Technique.
Supplies:
(for “each” earring, double everything for a pair)
3 - 5 mm crystals or beads
2mm silver ball beads
3 - 4 inches 22 gauge silver wire
1 silver earring hook, w/ non-closed loop
2 Chain Nose Pliers
Round Nosed (Rosary) Pliers
Sharp nosed pliers for cutting
You can use a thinner wire if you want, like 24 gauge. However, I feel the thicker wire helps hold the shape of the zig (and the zag) better. The earring hook can be the standard non- soldered variety. Depending on whether you have more than one dangle on each earring hook, you may want to actually use a small non- soldered jump ring in order to connect the dangles to the earring hook. It may allow them to swing more freely.
