One of the girls had double piercings and wore two sets of dangles! I'd never really heard of that kind of pairing before, but wouldn't you agree that it is a lovely combination?



The other girls all wore variations of my Enchanted Forest Earrings in gold and red.


I also created a pair of barefoot sandals for the bride! The picture below is with shoes from our outdoor photoshoot, but these "fairy sandals" work well barefoot, too!








In addition, I also helped out last minute by being the second shooter at the wedding! I wound up taking over three hundred pictures of the ceremony, photoshoot, and reception.

Awhile back, I made a picture tutorial on how to make ear cuffs. Amazingly, it has been my most popular blog post to date!

I've had several people write to ask questions about how to do certain steps, and I felt that a video tutorial would probably be helpful!

The video is embedded below, but if you can't get the embedded video to work, here's the link!


Here's the picture tutorial for how to make a simple ear cuff. I also have tutorials on making a swirly ear cuff which can have interchangeable dangles and a double-loop swirl ear cuff!

Bend it at the three inch mark. Make sure that the small loop this creates is actually a loop-- it's not as comfortable to wear ear cuffs in which the wire is pinched together tightly.


This is where the "double loop" comes into play.

First, bend the wire into a 1 inch zig-zag (just as you did with the swirly ear cuff). The next part is a bit tricky if you are working with tough wire like me (hard copper is not recommended to begin with). Take the tail end of the wire on the right-hand side and fold it down and around the right-hand loop. 

Did that make sense? Here's a picture of the finished double loop:


The next few steps are just like the other ear cuffs, so I won't narrate these photos...




Okay, now you get to have fun. How do you want the ends of the wire to look? What beads will you add? What loops and swirls and decorations will you make with the wire? Have at it!


I found that I had a bit of a hard time keeping mental track of the placement of the ear cuff, so I kept putting it on the marker (or my ear) as I designed, in order to make sure the swirls and beads were just perfect.

If you are adding beads, be sure to very, very slightly bend the wire just above and below the beads in order to hold them in place.

I only recently perfected this design, so I don't have any more double-loop ear cuffs to show you. Soon!

I hope you enjoyed this tutorial! Please be sure to leave a comment if you used it!

Also, please note that you may use this tutorial to make your own jewelry to sell, but only if you credit me for showing you how. It does take time for me to make these tutorials! Thanks!

This circlet is made from thick braided copper wire. I nearly killed my fingers making it-- I forgot to order dead soft wire and instead got half hard, which is not easy to bend when you are wrangling six three-foot strands around a vise!

There are around twenty five or so Czech glass leaf beads in sundry shades of green and iridescent periodot. I also used a few Swavroski pearls.


The pinecone flowers are Laura's idea, and the pinecones are from her yard! I'd never heard of this technique before, and they were so easy to make. All you need are pinecone "leaves" ripped off the cone, hot glue, lots of time, and shellac (I didn't have shellac so I used potter's glaze). I added a few touches of my own, namely the beads. I should do a tutorial...


You can't tell from these pictures, but the structure of the circlet's back is very complicated. Laura made yarn dreadlocks for her costume, so I used elastic cording to attach the biggest pinecone centerpiece to the edges of the circlet in the hopes that it would stretch to the right size. (It did!).

There are also several strands of chain dangling in the back. The center one has some beading in there.


Since M. clearly does not have on thick faux dreadlocks, the circlet hangs low on her head.




This is a torc necklace, also made of raw copper and glass beads. Someday I want to learn to solder and to get a torch for melting copper (our propane one is too weak)... I think that this turned out very well and extremely sturdy with wirewrapping, but it would be neat to experiment.

Sidetrack over. :) This is made with thick wire recycled from remnants of one of my dad's old electrical projects. I shaped it and then hammered all the wire to make the necklace very sturdy. A bit in the back was left unhammered and soft so that it can stretch a little bit so that it can be slid around the neck. It's not like the torc necklaces that Wikipedia talks about:

A torc, also spelled torq or torque, is a large, usually rigid, neck ring [pennannular, forming almost a complete ring with a hole in it] typically made from strands of metal twisted together. The great majority are open-ended at the front, although many seem designed for near-permanent wear and would have been difficult to remove. [...] The Celtic torc disappears in the Migration Period, but during the Viking Age, torc-style metal necklaces came back into fashion.

An upper-arm cuff with thick raw copper hammered to be sturdy. It's adjustable, and quite small because Laura is very slender.






I'm not sure what to call this (although a friend recommended that I name it "Awesome," heehee!) It is a swirly bracelet cuff that attached to a ring with a strand of beading. Kind of sort of like a handflower or slave bracelet, but not really...


The beading is attached with a removable hook, so the cuff can be worn on its own.

The cuff can be worn on the wrist (as shown to the left) and is long enough that is can be caught up in one of the adjustable rings and wrap around the fingers like a vine. Or, the bracelet cuff can be worn higher up the arm (above). Laura removed the green wirewrapped leaf and wore the cuff on her wrist without it wrapping over other fingers. (I hope that this makes sense and that I am not just rambling!)



This vine-like necklace was so fun. It's made with reversible beads and a ton of wire! The entire back just has strings of wirewrapped beading-- it was designed to go with the choker-length torc necklace and having leaves around the back of the neck would overwhelm it.



Fairy sandals, also known as foot thongs or barefoot sandals! These are so fun, but it was hard to size things properly so that the ankle width and length were right. I used a bit of elastic cord on the toe, but I tend to avoid that stuff as much as I can and the rest is beading wire and jump rings! I've got it all figured out now, and look forward to having the time to sit down and make some more.