How To Make Hammered Bar Beaded Earrings

Make your own Hammered Bar Beaded Earrings! We love the artsy look of hand hammered jewelry, the kind we see a lot in the Sundance Jewelry Catalog. So we took our inspiration from their gorgeous designs and created our own Hand Hammered Bar Beaded Earrings.

We made a complete video to show you how to hammer the texture into the metal bar connector using a jewelry hammer and a bench block. Then we show you how to wire wrap the crystals onto the bar. These are actually very easy to make!

Video How-to: Hammered Bar Beaded Earrings

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How To Make Hammered Beaded Bar Earrings

Materials

2 Bar connectors, gold, 3mmx35mm
2 Earring wires, gold
2 Headpins, gold
6 Faceted gemstone beads, Chalcedony, 2mm
2 Metal nugget beads, silver, 4mm
24-gauge wire, silver

Tools

Jewelry hammer
Jeweler’s bench block or anvil
Foam coaster or mouse pad
Round-nose pliers
Wire cutters

Steps

1. To get started, place your jeweler’s bench block onto a foam coaster or mouse pad. This will help protect your work surface and absorb a bit of the hammer blows. Set one of the gold bar connectors onto the center of the bench block. We like to tape one end of the connector down to keep it from bouncing around while we hammer.

Add texture to the connector by tapping it with the rounded end of the hammer. Flip the connector over and hammer some texture into the other side. (Don’t hammer so much that your connector loses its shape!)

2. Cut a piece of 24-gauge wire 8 inches long. Wrap the wire three times around the center of the connector. Press the wraps closer together with your fingers or using the round-nose pliers, if needed.

3. Slide a Chalcedony bead onto the wire and hold it in place on top of the connector.

Then wrap the wire around connector, making an extra wrap before adding the next bead. Slide on another Chalcedony bead and wrap the same way around the connector. Repeat to add another Chalcedony bead and wrap the wire around the connector.

4. Instead of only making one wrap after the last bead, make three wraps, like you did at the beginning. Trim the ends of the wire on the back of the connector with the wire cutters.

5. To add the bead dangle, slide a silver nugget bead onto a headpin. Make a wrapped loop through one end of connector. To do this, grasp the headpin wire next to the bead with the round-nose pliers. Make a 90-degree bend in the wire.

Reposition the pliers to the top of that bend and push the wire up and over the top jaw of the pliers.

Reposition the pliers so the bottom jaw is in the loop, and finish pulling the wire around.

Before you wrap the loop, feed the end of the connector into the loop. Grasp across the loop with the pliers and pull the tail of the wire around the neck two times. Trim the end of the wire.

6. Slide the earring wire into the other end of the connector, making sure the earring will face forward when it hangs.

Press the earring wire closed using the round-nose pliers.

7. Repeat to make second earring!

We love how these Hammered Bar Beaded Earrings turned out. So artsy! What do you think? Do you like hammered jewelry? Leave us a comment!
Happy Crafting!
Jennifer & Kitty