Those of us who love to make jewelry often find making earrings very
satisfying because you can work up a pair really quickly, but how much thought
do we put into the findings we use for earrings? Today I have for you a
different kind of earring finding, one that I've ignored for years but now may
have become my new favorite. Hi there, Sandy here, welcome to another Friday
findings video at keepsakecrafts.net. So when you think
of earring findings you probably most often think of this style, these ones
that I have up here sometimes they're called French ear wires, sometimes
they're called fishhook ear wires. You can buy them in
bundles at the craft store, you can make them yourself which is really nice, just
with a piece of wire. They often have the little bead and the spring here for
decoration. The other type that might come to mind are post style earring
findings which have a post on the back, hence the name, and sometimes they're
just little studs. Often though it'll be something whether a more decorative
piece like these or just a simple ball or half ball that has a loop on it for
you to hang things from. But there's another style of ear wire that I have
ignored completely for years and the only reason I can think why is that they
kind of resemble clip-on earrings. I found this in my stash. I have no idea
how it got there. I have one. I don't wear clip-ons, never have, but but there
it is. You can see how similar it looks to this which is called a lever back ear
wire. So perhaps that's why I've just ignored them, and I'm not sure how I
ended up with my first pair because, like I said, I've seen them and just let my
eyes slide right past them, but lately I've been realizing that I
absolutely love the lever back ear wire because it's so simple to wear. One issue
I've had throughout my life is carelessness and
losing jewelry and so I've made it a habit that I buy these things. These are
the little, just little stoppers that go on the French wires and that kind of
sits behind your earlobe to keep it from falling off. So every single pair of my
earrings has these on it and it's not a huge deal, like I said, it's kind of
become a habit, but the lovely thing about the lever back ear wires is
there's none of that. You just pop it up and you're done. It's secure, it's not going
to go anywhere, and you don't have the extra thing to fiddle with. So these ear
wires were sent to me by the nice folks at BeeBeeCraft and you can buy piles and
piles of them for very little money. I'll have links to all of these products at
my blog post if you want to see that. And they sent me a few different styles
to look at. Of course you can get them in different colors, different finishes but
there's a few different things you can get. Like these ones are kind of cute
they just have a little flower on there, just a very simple decoration, a little
flower. You could glue a little flat back crystal to that, you could color that
with alcohol ink or other colorants and jazz it up a little, or maybe you just
want plain and simple. And then these ones are lever backs that are also
bezels, which i think is pretty cute. Again, a
different finish, and you can get all of these in pretty much all of the
finishes, and the operation is simple on all of them and I find them really
comfortable to wear. They seem to be balanced well, they hang well. I haven't
come across any I didn't like. These have a little twelve millimeter bezel. You
could glue a rhinestone into here, you could put in a little polymer clay
sculpture or an itty-bitty embroidery like I showed the silk ribbon embroidery.
That would be pretty small but it could be done, anything you want to fill these
with. You can fill them with resin, put things in there
then put resin over it. All sorts of possibilities. Now these ones that I got
from BB craft, which is these three... Don't you love these containers? Honestly,
sometimes the choice of buying something for me is if it comes in a cool
container. There's those, and here are a few more that I have on my jewelry, just
simple ones. One thing that I got confused about, I think the first pair I made
kind of confused me, was that I was thinking the thicker part was the front.
It kind of makes sense if you look at it it seems like the part that stands out
most should be the front but the thicker part is that thick because it has to be
wide enough to fit around the the part that goes through the ear so the thinner
part is the front. I think, yeah, I think it was this pair that I had them on
backwards and I don't know, I was just confused,
it took me a bit to figure it out. Now most of these findings, I haven't come
across any that have a closed loop. If you look at it closely you'll see that
there's usually a little split and you just need to open it with a pair of
pliers, just like that. I would be cautious about opening and closing it
too many times because this piece could very easily get weak and brittle and
break off and actually that will happen with any of your earring findings, so
don't mess with it too much until you're actually ready to put your final piece
on it, but I haven't come across any that have a closed loop, but it is something
you might want to check before you make a pair of earrings you might have to
plan for wire wrapping that loop if it is closed. Now all of these that I've
shown you are just base metal ear wires, nothing fancy, but if you want
something nicer these ones I got from Artbeads.com and they are gold filled.
These earrings actually in their previous life were post earrings, they
had a little post right here. My mother-in-law gave these to me many
years ago. This is funny, my husband told me after she gave them to me that she had
told him she picked them out for me because she thought they were a little
weird: like me. I'll take it as a compliment!
But I was really sad that one of these posts broke off quite some time ago and
I had them in a baggie waiting for them to be repaired and then one day, it was
like a forehead slap moment, I said, "Well, duh, there's already a loop right here." So
because these are gold with nice little freshwater pearls I invested in the gold
filled ear wires with the little heart which makes me think of my mother-in-law.
And so now I can wear these again. So just an alternative for you. I love me my
fish hook style ear wires and I have loads of earrings with them, but these
are just a smidgen easier to wear. Pop it open, put them on, close it and you're
done and they're secure. So it's just an alternative to consider when you're
thinking about what kind of findings to use for your earrings. So I hope you
enjoyed this video. If you're interested in these supplies from BeeBeeCraft there
will be links to all of them at my blog posts and I'll link to... actually most of
these earring tutorials are patron videos, so if you're interested in bonus
tutorials for yourself check out my Patreon page. Thanks so much for watching.
Happy creating, bye bye.