Dotty Box Earrings

Learn how to make hollow boxes and turn them into earrings!

About the Class

Hollow beads are a delight to make as they allow you to create larger  pieces without the heavy weight of metal - which also, of course, helps  to keep your costs down!

This is the second of my classes on hollow  beads, and time I'm going to show you how to make little boxes that are  perfect for earrings, as you can see here, and also as beads for pendants, long necklaces and bracelets too.  As well as tips for soldering safely and getting a beautiful finish on your beads I will teach you how to attach secure earwires so that you  can be confident that your finished earrings are going to last.

I set myself the challenge of using silver left over from other projects for my beads, and so I'll also show you how to recycle both wire and sheet into different gauges and profiles by using a rolling mill. I've also used a rolling mill to decorate these beads, but hammers and texture stamps also give beautiful results.  I've kept the shape of the earrings simple so that we can concentrate  on the techniques, but once you've mastered those techniques you'll find it easy to make ovals, teardrops and more!  

The Dotty Box earrings class is part of the Intermediate Silversmithing series of classes, building on the basics taught in the Silversmithing for Beginners series. Enrol on the whole series, save money and learn great skills!  

If you need any extra help as you work your way through the classes do join us over on The Jeweller's Bench Café group over on Facebook - the perfect place to ask for advice and to show off what you've been making.

You will need:

Materials:
approximately 0.5mm-0.7mm thick sheet metal large enough for four discs, rectangular wire, 0.8mm round wire

Equipment: (all the jewellery making kit listed here can be used for many different projects) Soldering kit - see here for more details
Jeweller's saw and saw blade
Bench peg
Ruler and (ideally) callipers
Sharpie
Engineer’s square
Disc cutter and hammer
6" flat file and needle file
Emery paper
Ring triblet
Nylon Hammer
Steel bench block and leather cushion (or folded tea towel!)
Needle files (small files) and fine emery paper
Flat nosed pliers and wire cutters
Stepped mandrel or anything round and the right size for shaping earwires.
Bench drill or pendant drill with 0.9mm drill bit
For polishing - a tumble polisher or elbow grease and a silver polishing cloth.

An explanation of all the tools and materials that you need is included in the videos, and a downloadable equipment and materials list is available with the class.

Once you've mastered how to make round box beads why not experiment with other shapes? The pendant show here was made with two piece of rectangular wire for the walls, soldering together to form a leaf shape. Go one step further by piercing a design from the top before you solder everything together!

2 hours 15 minutes long, 15 lessons

Course Curriculum

"This makes something fairly complicated easy to master"
Diana H.
"Another fab class. Place all the solder pallions in the centre of the backplate, before lining them up to the wall It's obvious, now you say it, Joanne!! These look gorgeous, and now I want to make a pill box."
Dawn G.
"Inspirational"
Frida Å.

Joanne Tinley

Tutor and Founder of The Jeweller's Bench

The Jeweller's Bench is run by Joanne Tinley. She has been making her own jewellery for as long as she can remember and left her first career as a school teacher to set up business as a  jewellery designer and tutor nearly 20 years ago. She is
self-taught and like many people started with wire and beads. Learning how to solder, however, opened up a whole new world of jewellery making,  one that she is keen to share!

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