May Tutorial - Leather Loop Earrings

Well if you receive my newsletter you will know that I promised to get my May tutorials out on my blog this week. If you haven't read it and want to... here it is. http://us1.campaign-archive.com/?u=c6029baa40fd1321f00155764&id=cede576a91

Leather Loop Earrings

On to the tutorial. Here is what we will be making today. I've shown my gold leather necklace and earrings in another post and the tutorial for the making the leather necklaces were published in an April post HERE, so I needed a pair of earrings to go with my silver. These are so easy and lightweight to wear. You don't even feel like you are wearing long earrings, although by making them yourself you can adjust the length. These are inspired by a pair of earrings out of the Sundance Catalog HERE.

Supplies you will need:

• Earring findings (I used sterling silver lever backs)
• 1mm or .5mm leather cord
• silver crimp tubes with the loop
• misc. beads to dangle or if they have a large enough hole, slip onto the leather
• head pins if needed
• crimp pliers
• round nose pliers
• wire cutters
• needle nose pliers

Instructions:

1. Gather supplies as noted above
2. Measure two equal lengths of leather (mine were a little over 3")
3. Make wrapped loops on all the beads you want to dangle off the bottom of the leather loop using the head pins (Artbeads has a great tutorial)
4. Be sure to tuck in the wire tail after cutting your wire (see I need to do that to this one)
5. String all your beads on the leather to create your design
6. Make sure your cord or leather will fit inside the crimp tube
7. Insert one end of the cord into the crimp
8. Crimp the tube over the leather (be sure to not crimp too close to the loop as the loop will fall off....yes I learned this the hard way)
9. Crimp the other end of your leather with your beads in the center
10. Add your earring finding by opening the loop at the bottom and inserting the crimp loops. Never pull a jump ring or finding directly apart from each other, always twist apart gently until you have just enough room to insert your loops.

That's it, make your other earring to match or not....some of you may get really creative and I would love to see what you have done with these. 

Here is a picture of my completed gold and leather set, which by the way I am wearing today.