How to Start a Beaded Jewelry Project

Video Transcript

"Hello, I'm Alan with Expert Village. This is an example of the kind of earring that we are going to make today, a pair of earrings, and I wanted you to see the finished product before we got started on selecting the beads. And I'll show you how to do that so it will make it easier when it comes time for you to select your beads. The first thing you are going to want to do, is you're going to need the wire that actually holds the beads together on the earring. So you pick up one of those, or two of those, for your project and or more if you’re making multiple pieces, and these are wires if you can see on the end they have the tiny little head on them, like the head of a nail, and that helps keeps the beads from sliding off the end. Sometimes people will select beads that the hole in the center is a little bit too large and the bead will slide completely off the end. It's very easy to remedy that problem by taking a smaller bead that will stay on the end and put that on first and then you can put the larger bead on top of it. Once you've selected what color wires you want, whether you want white gold or yellow gold, you can then select the earring top how you want it to go on your ear. This is a French wire that is probably one of the most common ones that people use, but there are other types of earrings as well. There are post earrings that just have a simple post on them and you just need the earring back to go with them and they have little loop on the end. That's what attaches the actual earring. I could substitute the post earring for the French wire by just opening this up, taking it off and then putting it back on and closing that little loop on that post earring. You can also get post earrings with just a simple little silver bead on it."