whoops! Iwas supposed to post this yesterday

I made these earrings with brown/copper coloured nylon wire, those folding crimp beads with  the hole in them, some gold jump rings and gold ear-wires.

most of these beads were from some excess beaded trim that I had laying around that was too small to do anything with, I found it at fabric land on clearance for 2 bucks a meter.

The necklace that I 'borrowed' the copper/brown nylon wire from.I snipped two strands off and made a pair of matching earrings.

 .... these things are a light gold finish, I paint them with Black nail polish for most of my earrings that were not gold.... I'll have to swing by Micheal's and try to find some silver ones.

Its hard to explain, but basically the two sides of this metal crimp bead fold over each other with the nylon wire encased inside -  I love these things and am glad I snagged them at Micheal's craft store for 50 cents in summertime -otherwise  I never would have purchased these as  I had no idea what they were used for.

♥

a few more earings with nylon wire

I have to say, that holding the already strung beads and trying to crimp the finishing end together is a huge pain in the bum! The earrings above were okay, but adding 4 or more strands, with beads gets tricky. I have only made 10 or so pairs of earrings with this method and it DOES get easier every time. I love love LOVE these nylon string earrings and am so ready to whip up many more!!!

 what I have made lately......

Below; I made these using nylon wire and bugle beads. I love the crimp beads with the hole in them - I did not think they would hold well and be structurally stable but so far they are fabulous!!!!  I just cut graduated lengths of the nylon wire, connected 1 end with the crimp bead with the hole and then stung the beads. I made sure both earrings were even before I closed the other end with the crimp bead.

I 'stole' a strand of the brown wire from an older necklace of mine, If I dint peruse that dollar store often I would not have recognized what this black nylon string was = I LOVE THIS STUFF! It is a tad trickier than wire - but most of my flexi-wire gets kinks in it, where this doesn't seem to show kinks and 'de-formations' like the flexi-wire does.

The earrings on the far left are made with flexi-wire.

 These shiny shimmery bugle beads were a $1.00 each at a dollar store - how awesome is that?

They actually had quite alot of beads and sequins at that shop, Its the same place I found those black holographic and black flat matte sequins.

Quickie; crimp beads and that black plastic stuff.....

... jets a few things  I have made recently, with this awesome black plastic 'nylon string' stuff i found at my favorite dollar store in my town, 'Looney Twoons' dollar store - I love that store, most of the embellished silver and gold beads that I used in these earrings also came from that store!!!!

 { whoops I should have cropped this better }

so here are a few earrings  I made, super easy to put together but I still find it difficult to add the crimp bead and squish it without the beads falling off pof the black nylon stuff lol! This nylon string is essentially the same as flexible beading wire, just black..... and nylon plastic - which is awesome.

in-expensive easily accessable Supplies and tools

above 5 jewelery pliers set from Micheal's.... it is $16.99 Canadian, or $9.95 USD. The individual pliers below were found at a local dollar store for $2.00 each and the rubber grip on the handles is much MUCH better than those from Micheal's.


ALSO; ALL THE JEWELERY I MAKE IS FOR ME, I DON'T SELL IT OR PASS IT ALONG TO ANYONE.... THIS IS WHAT I DO IN MY SPARE TIME -  I am not saving any money by purchasing raw materials and finding all these beads and things, because it really does add up - this is one of my hobbies and i really, really enjoy doing this.  This is a fun somewhat easy hobby, I love the things I make and I enjoy creating new unique pieces of jewelery.

=I'm trying to whip up a few pieces each week = 

keeping me on track is me trying to do a weekly post.

My best advice is to hit up dollar stores and thrift-stores, as well as yard sales for beads and such. I have been tremendously lucky at the dollar stores in my town - finding beautiful beads and wire and such.
 Mall costume jewelery stores have also been a great source of supplies, I have yet to find a source to purchase chain which is more economical than purchasing rolls or length of chain ( In Canada ).

below  - jewelery pliers  I found at the 'buck or two' dollar store in my town 

round nose pliers' ===SCORE ===

a few components I found on Sale at Micheal's Crafts

from a dollar store in my town( this is a good deal )

Below; from Joanne's crafts store in the USA- all these things cost $6-ish USD  total, here in Canada all these items would cost over $20.00 and I cannot find black ear-wires here. However if you use coupons and take advantage of sales you can do pretty well at Micheal's crafts store =  but they are seriously lacking in black accessories and finding for jewelery.

EDIT; here is a terrible photo of some wire I have used in making some f my jewelery pieces - it did not get dingy or gross, and it was cheap!!!!

I had to crop that photo and do a bunch of other photo-shopping to it. - from now on I am going to snap photos of everything i pick-up - because already just for this post I am missing like 8 photos of pertinent items♥

These are from Walmart  Canada, they are $2.50 each package = a good deal

I found a good amount of multi-sized beads at one of the dollar stores in my town, for $1.50! There is some beautiful shades of blue in here, the store also carried an assortment of teals, reds, black, browns, and a few other colors in a zip lock bag for $1.50 as well...... so with some wire and findings, I could make a tonne  of pieces with these lovely beads.

sorry I don't have a photo of the baggie they came in, I may pick up the teal beads so I will have to snap a photo of those.

here are 2 pairs of earrings I found at the Dollar-Rama, for 2 bucks. I bought these for their components and have already made 2 pretty pairs of earrings. I have found it is usually smarter to pick up these jewelry pieces and use the components than it is to purchase items individually. It was hard to find small filigree pieces such as these cute flowers.

a few 5 for 10 necklaces  i picked up at Ardene, a Canadian accessory store. Why on earth chain is so expensive, being sold my the meter, verses picking up a necklace with a lot of chain is puzzling. I could not find the dull darker steel coloured chain; like that on the necklace with the crosses = = = forever! Where do you even buy stuff like that? I have found jump rings, and other findings and accessories for jewelery in this finish but I have never been able to find the chain with that finish and colour.

here is another photo with some things i picked up at the Claire's store during a 10 for 10 sale last summer.... I have made many earrings by utilizing components from those gold necklaces. I kept 1 wear and used the other 2 to whip up some bracelets, and earrings.

I also used 2 pairs of the earrings, taking them apart and removing some of the crystals or adding more crystals and beads. I cannot find these types of chandelier earrings components for less than what I can at a discount sale.

Finally here is A TONNE of things  i picked up at Micheal's Craft store in summer - Normally I stop into that store and never really buy anything, ITS FUN TO WALK AROUND IN THERE - TAKE INVENTORY FOR POSSIBLE FUTURE PROJECTS!!! And when they have sales... my goodness, there is alot of goodies to be found.

Every package of these jewelery findings, beads and such was .50 cents! YEEEEEEEAAAAAHHHH! They were marked down to a dollar, then there was a manager's special and they were further reduced to .50 cents!!!. I did not buy everything they had to offer, though, as I did not know what some of the accessories and findings were - they had a lot of neat things, and i did go a little crazy in purchasing things!

♥ So far I have used a lot of the items below to make some very pretty jewelery for myself ♥

while I am thankful I found all these goodies - it kinda irks me that they price things as they do - then clear them out a few months later for an extreme discount - I remember looking at those butterfly's and dragons months ago and they were very expensive.

♥

January 3 - that wire stuff with crimp beads

Its actually called flexi-wire or soft flex. the BLACK stuff is plastic thread that I purchased at my favorite store.... the .99 cent store ( which is now called Looney Twoons but i still call it the .99 cent store ). It is thin but strong strands of plastic. so far it is working out fabulously. I do have a photo of this product in it's packaging somewhere - I will add it to this blog as soon as I can find it   I just whipped these p yesterday, I have only made a few pairs of earrings with this wire, but so far so good and I can see many more pieces of jewelery made with this wire in my future.

The blue ones above I started at 9:00 and before I knew it it was 1:30! so these actually took waaaaay too long, but they were enjoyable to make.I added beads tot he flexi-wire then added crimp beads on each end. Trying to crimp 2 or 3 strands of wire and beads together is going to take some practice... if it gets all twisted it will not sit properly and look fudged up when I am wearing it. So that's gonna take some trial and error before I get it perfect

what I whipped up in the last 2 days... The pair second from the left is a Work in Progress.... I still wanna add some chain dangling form the center and linked up with the jump rings that are between the silver bezel cut plastic beads.

 On the first pair on the left below, I forgot to add the BEAD TIPS, so I had to improvise by using a jump ring to attach the twosides together as well as attach the ear-wire to the earring ( make sense? lol )

I like how these earrings below are HUGE but I am not happy that they are NOT symmetrical. so I will have to fiddle around with this design beofre I proceed with any more pieces.You can sort-of see that the black wire is twisted and it is not the same on each side of the earring, nor is each earring the same.

 The filigree flower came from the Dollar-Rama, I took apart a pair of two dollar earrings I purchased to use the flowers as a base for some smaller earrings. I added black sequins to jump rings, forming a chain of sequins and added them to the filigree flower. i think these are very pretty. They are light and compact.

My camera and the light source washed this photo our for some reason.... When I use up the rest of the components from the Dollar-Rama earrings I will have to do a post with better photos♥

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