Beading tutorial: peacock earrings

These beadwoven bracelets and more are available in my Etsy shop.

To keep your beads from rolling all over the place, put them on top of a textured fabric. I use the small pink tray covered with a piece of terrycloth. The beads are easy to pick up from the cloth with the needle. You can see I have several small piles of beads ready to go. This is also a good place to stick your needle when you're not using it.

When doing beadweaving, should you find a bead that doesn't slip easily onto the needle, just discard it.

Sketch your design on paper. When you get something you like, draw it again onto a piece of light-colored fabric. The design I ended up with was a leaf shape with what looks like an eye in the middle. The whole thing is about 2 inches long. Then put the fabric in the embroidery hoop.

Next, cut off a piece of wire about 6 inches long using craft scissors or the cutter on the needlenose pliers. Bend the wire about a half inch from one end. That's going to be the starting point. I also put a little piece of tape on the end to keep the beads from coming off. Put some beads on the wire until there are enough to complete one side. Check the length against the pattern. Make a note of how many beads were used. In my case it was 50 beads.

Make a bend in the wire with your fingernail at the halfway point. I tied some thread there also because the beads will slip around until you get both sides completed. Put the remaining beads on the other side. Twist the wire at the top. Make sure the wire frame matches the pattern by laying it on top of the fabric pattern.

All the beads are on the wire frame and the wires are twisted together at the top.

The wire frame is tacked down to the fabric on top of the pattern. There are stitches at the top, bottom and sides. This stabilizes the piece and allows you to view the pattern as you go along so you know when to change colors. You will not be stitching beads to the fabric.

I did three rows of turquoise beads before I got to the eye portion of the design. You can see on the fourth row I started adding the sapphire blue beads, then the orange and brown beads.

When the wire frame is completely filled in, loop the center rows together. Hurray! One earring is done! Now you just weave in the thread tails, release the earring from the fabric, and start all over again with the next earring. The most important thing is to make sure the second earring is the same size and shape as the first one. Don't worry about the pattern being exactly the same. Since we're just winging it as we go along, they'll be close but probably not identical. But then, no two peacock feathers are identical either.

At the top of each earring there are two loops of wire. Take one wire and bend it around the needlenose pliers to make a loop large enough to accommodate the earring wire. Cut off the excess. Take the other wire and wrap it around a couple of times, then cut off the excess. Now you have a unique pair of peacock earrings!

My friend was thrilled with her earrings. And I have to say, they looked pretty good on her. Then she said, "Hmm, what can I have you make for me next." Looks like I'll have another project soon!

My friend's peacock top with her new peacock earrings.