Teardrop Earrings Tutorial

Tutorial by

While perusing the interwebs the other day, I stumbled across these gorgeous earrings from Chan Luu as I was window-shopping at Net-A-Porter. They're really pretty, but for $90 a pop, I wasn't going to buy them (not in the near future anyway) - so off I went to my jewelry-making stash to see if I had materials to make something similar and I did! Read on to find out how. :) 

What you need for this DIY:

Beads - similar color and shape, different sizes (at least one big one, some medium ones and small ones)

Wire

Jewelry chain - the smaller the better

Earring hardware

Jump rings

Jewelry pliers

Cut a length of wire, then thread your beads on it, making sure that the biggest bead is on the center, flanked by two or three medium beads and then two small beads on the outer end. Just eyeball to make sure your sequence looks pleasing to the eye and you'll be fine :D

Add your first chain by threading each end of the chain to the wire - I used 18 chain links for my first chain layer. Then add two small beads - one on each end, and add your second chain link after. For every chain 'layer' I subtracted two chain links so it'll become shorter and shorter and would have a uniform droop. If by chance you use a smaller chain, subtract more chain links than I did. Anyway - add more beads and chains until you get to your desired look. For mine, I added four chains until I was satisfied.

Time to close up your teardrop earring - take some jewelry pliers and make a loop on one side of your wire and then wrap it around itself like shown above.

Take the other side of the wire and wrap it around the wrapped portion of the looped wire on the other end - lol I know that sounds so confusing so look at the photo above instead. :D

Your teardrop shape will look a bit off so form it to the shape that you want - mine turned out skinny so I used my hands to make my earring look wider.

Attach your earring hardware to the loop atop the teardrop shape with a jump ring.

And then you're done! I love how mine turned out - for me it's better than my inspiration because the colors and the hardware are exactly my style. It doesn't hurt that I didn't pay anything for these either cause I used materials that I had on hand. :3