Bead Earrings!

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FIRST POST!

Hello everyone! I've been lurking for a while and being inspired by everyone! The main things I do are sewing and cross-stitch, but I've had a go at many different crafts with varying degrees of success! Recently I got a bee in my bonnet about trying to make some beaded jewellery, so equipped with several books and half the contents of my local bead shop I made these!



The pattern for these earrings was in this book: 'A Treasury of Beaded Jewellery: Bead Stringing Patterns for All Ages' by Mary Ellen Harte. ISBN 9780943604589.

I used one of my smallest sewing needles and some very thin plastic (?nylon) thread. I've had the thread for a while and it has no label so I'm not sure what it is, but it is about the thickness of human hair. I used it doubled over, and put my first bead onto the folded end and had the two free ends threaded through the needle to avoid having to tie a knot at the beginning. I'm a beginner so not sure if this is the right way to do things!



The main beads I used are opaque and look like haematite. The other two colours are transparent and I think the light turquoise ones are silver-lined. But again, I'm a beginner and not that great at recognising all the different finishes. (I have a great book in front of me with descriptions of iris, rainbow, silver-lined etc, but the pictures are not really clear enough!)
The first one took me a while as I'd set my stuff up on a table outside and it was just starting to get dark when I got around to starting - d'oh! I made a couple of mistakes and had to un thread quite a bit. The second one though only took about 5 minutes! I'd moved indoors by this time and had my cross-stitch frame's bright lamp shining on my work. It's a lot easier when you can see what you're doing...!

I only had these gold-coloured earring wires in my stash, but I've now got some silver ones on the way via e-bay and I think they will look a lot better on silver. I might also attach a small jump ring so the earring is more free to swivel around. That needs to be tried out.

Thanks for reading this far!