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How to Make Wrapped Loop Earrings

by Rena Klingenberg.  © 2003 – Present Rena Klingenberg. All Rights Reserved

I make wrapped loop earrings because the loops can’t come open accidentally and let the earring dangle fall off the earwire. Because they make earrings more durable, they’re a nice quality feature for your handcrafted jewelry.

Here’s how to make a simple pair of earrings with a wrapped wire loop at the top of the bead; below, you can see the wrapped loop just above the pearl:

Tutorial: How to Make Wrapped Loop Earrings

Skill Level: Beginner

Supplies and Tools:

Round-nose pliers

Chain-nose pliers

Flush cutters

2 Earwires

2 Beads (I’m using white coin pearls)

2 Headpins – approx. 3″ (75 mm) long

(When you’re making wrapped loops, you need to have extra wire at the top because you’ll be wrapping it around the main headpin stem. To make this practice wrapped loop easier, I recommend using 3″ (75 mm) headpins for this project to be sure you don’t run out of wire, and that you have enough to hold onto easily.)

Procedure:

First, gather your tools and supplies:

supplies for wrapped loop earrings

Let’s start by putting one bead on each of our headpins:

put beads on headpins for earrings

Now grasp your headpin above the bead with your round nose pliers, about halfway up your plier jaws. One jaw should be touching the top of your bead.

Bend the long tail of your headpin at a 90-degree angle, snugly over the bottom jaw of your pliers.

(For extra help, you can watch my 3-minute video on How to Make a Wrapped Wire Loop.)

bend headpin at 90-degree angle above the bead

Now move the pliers to grasp the headpin tail wire you’ve just bent.

Your pliers should be grasping the headpin tail, right at the curve of the bend you’ve just made.

Hold the end of the headpin tail in the fingers of your free hand, and begin to wrap it around the top jaw of your pliers to create a loop:

move pliers to top of bent wire and wrap headpin around pliers jaw

Wrap the headpin tail all the way around the top jaw of your pliers one time, to create a full loop with a long tail going off to the side.

Turn the pliers as necessary so you can make a full loop around one jaw of the pliers:

Put down your round nose pliers and pick up your chain nose pliers.

In the jaws of your chain nose pliers, grasp the loop you’ve just made:

With the fingers of your free hand, hold the headpin tail wire. Begin to wind it neatly around the main headpin stem just below your loop, winding down toward the top of your bead.

Hot Tip:

To make professional looking wire wraps, be sure to pull your headpin’s tail wire firmly away from the stem wire as you wind it around the stem.

The wire you’re wrapping must be held taut and straight.

Continue wrapping the headpin tail onto the headpin stem to make a total of about 3 nice, neat wraps.

When you’re done wrapping, you’ll have a bit of the headpin tail to cut off neatly with your flush cutter:

Use your chain nose pliers to squeeze down the newly cut tip of your wrap wire to make it lie nice and flat, with no sharp edge sticking out.

Gently twist open the bottom loop of your earwires with your chain nose pliers, to hang your lovely new wire-wrapped dangles onto them:

Now gently twist the bottom loop of your earwires shut again with your chain nose pliers. All finished!

Before I learned how to make wrapped loops, I used just a simple loop on the headpin above the bead. People would often come back to me and say, “Oh, the dangle came off my earring”. It was always because the loop had come open on the headpin above the bead.

Since I began making wrapped wire loops several years ago, I’ve never had that happen again.

It’s so worth learning how to make wrapped loop earrings – they’re much more durable and professional looking!