It won't be long now before heart month. Are you going to be making some heart jewelry? Well, I certainly did and had fun playing with my bail forming pliers (check out the tutorial on how to use them if you missed it). There are different ways to make beaded and wire work hearts so here are some tutorials to get your creative juices started.

As always, I shall add to this post any future heart tutorials I come across so do check my hub page Jewelry Making Tips to find it easily again.

You don't have to use bailing pliers - just your round nose pliers with some mandrels like knitting needles will work too. But bailing pliers made larger hearts quickly which is what I wanted. The above Heart Throb design for earrings and necklace can be seen in my new Etsy store which I recently opened partly to raise funds for cancer research.

To do the basic heart, cut about 3.5" of 20G wire and do inward curls with the larger cylinder.

As I preferred a rounded tip, I used the end of my round nose pliers to grasp the middle and then bent the ends towards each other.

Now this is the point where you can do all sorts of things to come up with designs of your own. You can curl the ends some more, make the heart asymmetrical or even leave it as it is. Add beads, chains, jump rings or other connectors and voila! Hearts galore!

Here is my final pendant and necklace design which was hammered and wire wrapped.

If you don't have bailing pliers and prefer smaller hearts anyway, check out the Daily Bread's video tutorial. She makes the heart component in a totally different way with just round nose pliers. Her smaller hearts make the daintiest of earrings as you can see on the left.



Yet another way to form heart components is to start with a round hoop as shown by lyrradd's video tutorial. This tutorial requires quite a lot of wire manipulations.



Judy Markwell's tutorial for a fun pair of heart earrings is worth a visit not just for the how to but she has a neat way of making a decorative eye pin.

Witty Living has a super easy wrapped heart tutorial using actual heart beads.

I highly recommend you check out Witty Living's other tutorial for making wire and Swarovski crystal heart earrings (or pendant). It's the cleverest way I've seen to wire a front drilled bead using a rhinestone headpin so it becomes a bail. Neato!

Beansproutcreations has really funky wire crochet heart earrings I just adore!  Check out her tutorial which uses fine 32G wire.

Original designs often come about when you marry two different techniques together. One awesome example is Sharon Bateman's tutorial for beaded heart earrings which involves both wire work and beadwork.

Bead Studio has this lovely bead and wire heart tutorial.

Bead Talk has a very clever cascading Swarovski heart pendant tutorial which requires a simple beadweaving technique. With 7 Swarovski hearts, this design really delivers!

If you are a beadwork fan, then you will appreciate My Daily Bread's puffy heart tutorial. Seed beads produce smaller hearts than bicones. She has a series of free video tutorials to show you how it is done.

Don't like crocheting with wire? Then try the yarn crochet earring tutorial on Craft Bits. They are really sweet. Craft Gossip suggests red metallic yarn.

A good way to make heart beads exactly as you like it is to construct it with polymer clay. Check out the tutorial by Holiday Crafts. Via
______________________________
Original Post by THE BEADING GEM
Jewelry Making Tips - Jewelry Business Tips