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Dotty Box Earrings

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

About the Class

Hollow beads are a wonderful way to create larger statement pieces without the heavy weight of solid metal, helping to keep your silver costs lower too.

In this intermediate class, I’ll show you how to make textured hollow box beads that can be turned into elegant earrings, as well as used for pendants, bracelets, and necklaces. Along the way, you’ll learn how to solder the beads safely, achieve a smooth finish, and attach secure earwires so you can feel confident your finished earrings will last well.

I also set myself the challenge of using silver left over from other projects for these beads, so I’ll show you how to recycle both silver wire and sheet into different gauges and profiles using a rolling mill. I’ve used a rolling mill to decorate the beads shown here, but hammers and texture stamps work beautifully too, making it easy to adapt the design and make it your own.

The shapes in this class are kept fairly simple so that you can focus on building confidence with the techniques, but once you’ve mastered them you’ll be able to experiment with other shapes and designs.

The Dotty Box Earrings class is part of the Jeweller's Bench membership - click here for more details

If you’d like extra support while working through the class, you’re very welcome to join us in The Jeweller’s Bench Café Facebook group, where you can ask questions, share your progress, and see what other students are making along the way.

READY TO JOIN? CLICK HERE

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

Reviews

"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.

Legal Disclaimer: Every effort has been made to show safe working practices and to discuss health and safety aspects of jewellery making, but in the end I cannot take responsibility for how the tutorial information is used and how safely you work. Take the effort to set up your work area safely right from the start!
All Rights Reserved. No part of this course may be reproduced or shared without express, written consent from the author.

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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