Beaded Earrings Tutorial - How to Use Circular Brick Stitch Creatively

As a jewelry crafter, I guess most of you are familiar with the circular brick stitch (If not, read my post here). Basically, it is a simple stitch to attach beads around a circle. However, despite it’s name “circular”, do you know you can create all sorts of shapes using this beading technique? Today, I’ll show you how to make beaded teardrops and beaded fans using circular brick stitch and turn them into a pair of beautiful earrings.
Material Needed (click to buy)
- 2mm Gold Seed Beads
- 2mm Blue Seed Beads
- 2mm Magenta Seed Beads
- 4mm Yellow Chalcedony Beads
- 4mm Green Glass Beads
- 8mm Blank Disc with two holes
- 20 Gauge Jewelry Wire
- 28/30 Gauge Jewelry Wire
How to make a teardrop shape using circular brick stitch
In a regular brick stitch, we add one bead at a time around the circle ( in our case, around the center bead). But if you want to create a tipping point so the round shape can become a teardrop, you need to add two beads as shown in picture 6. Attach the later one using regular brick stitch. The former one will stick out to shape the teardrop.
How to make a fan shape using circular brick stitch
No. 1. Small Beaded Fan
The small beaded fan is very similar to the teardrop shape shown above. As you can see in picture 18, we first make a teardrop; then add another layer of gold seed beads around the lower half of the teardrop. To make it resemble a fan, keep the two gold beads at each side loose (you will understand what I mean by looking at picture 20 below). We can adjust those two beads so they sit perpendicular to others (picture 21).
No.2. Large Beaded Fan
To make the fan shape larger, we need to add one more bead in the center to increase its height. The green bead you see in picture 26 serves that purpose. The other steps are similar to the teardrop and small fan we introduced earlier.
But in case you are still confusing, here is a brief explanation on how to building up the layers.
- First Layer (picture 26): 5 blue beads +1 green bead
- Second Layer (picture 32): 5 gold beads +7 red beads
- Third Layer (picture 36) : 9 gold beads
How to assemble the earrings
Once the beading part is completed, we can move on to assemble the earrings. Each earring will need: 2 beaded teardrop, 2 beaded small fan, 1 beaded large fan and 1 wired circle. If you don't know how to make a wired circle, read it here.
Connect the beaded shapes as shown in picture 38. Then attach them to a wired circle using 28/30 gauge wire. You can also add a few seed beads at both sides to complete the design.
Since the earring is already quite long, I want to skip the large earring hook and use an earring post instead. To achieve that, we can first attach a metal connector at the back of a beaded fan using the beading thread (picture 41). Then glue the earring post to the smooth surface of the connector (picture 42).
As the last step, attach the beaded fan with earring post to the wired hoop. This colorful beaded earring is completed!
If you like today’s tutorial, please share it with your friends by pining the complete picture guide below. Thank you!
Product Used In This Project
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2mm (size 11/0) 1000pcs Luster Seed Beads (16 Colors)
- Regular price
- $6.53
- Sale price
- $6.53
- Unit price
- per
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4/6/8mm 50 Pcs Light Green AB Color Crystal Glass Round Beads
- Regular price
- $8.55
- Sale price
- $8.55
- Unit price
- per
-
4/6/8/10/12mm 15 inch Strand Faceted Yellow Chalcedony Round Beads
- Regular price
- $14.83
- Sale price
- $14.83
- Unit price
- per
-
2mm/3mm/4mm Glass Czech Seed Beads For Jewelry Beading DIY (Gold/Silver)
- Regular price
- $8.21
- Sale price
- $8.21
- Unit price
- per
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20Pcs 8/10/15mm Round Small Stamping Blank Connector With Two Holes (Gold/Silver)
- Regular price
- $7.59
- Sale price
- $7.59
- Unit price
- per
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20-30 gauge (0.25--0.8mm) Half Hard 14k Gold Filled Wire
- Regular price
-
$37.10 - Sale price
- $26.12
- Unit price
- per