Earrings!

So today I made a pair of earrings to wear with my Medusa necklace (and without it, of course). They were sorta kinda inspired by a style of Roman earrings called “crotalia”, meaning “rattle” because the pearls rattle together when worn. Materials: Sterling wire, peacock blue freshwater pearls, assorted silver metal beads and findings. I didn’t have headpins in a fine enough gauge to go through the holes in the pearls, and I didn’t want to bother drilling the holes larger. But I did have some 24 gauge half-hard* sterling wire in my hoard. I made a tiny loop at the end of the wire and hammered it to make my own headpins.



* Leftover from my attempts to learn wirewrapping over 40 years ago. Half-hard means it’s not as easy to work as dead soft. On the other hand, I didn’t need to do wrapped loops because the wire is stiff enough to stay put when it’s bent.