Tips on Effective Earring Design

When designing simple earrings, in which beads are joined in linked sections using headpins and eyepins, it's good to bear in mind three classic shapes.

The first is the Golden Triangle, in which the shape gently tapers towards the top- this is usually achieved by using a large bead as the base, and then progressively smaller beads above -see top left. Sometimes beginners make the mistake of putting small beads below large ones, which gives the opposite effect of an unstable "spinning top". It's also a good idea to seperate the beads  by not loading them on to one pin, but making seperate links for each bead, which imparts a lightness and fluidity to the design.

The other classic shape is the Diamond, in which the design tapers more or less equally towards to the top and the bottom. It may not be obvious, but simple single bead pendants can follow this rule, such as round beads, discs and olive shapes. Or the effect can be acheived by placing a small bead below a noticeably larger one, as in the picture left, in this case, the top of the "diamond" is the joined loops of the pendant and earhook, which is still part of the shape.

Finallly the Rod shape,  where a string of small pendants are linked together, see left. This works best when the beads are the same or similar size, or especially if their width is equivalent. If you have a series of pendants tapering upwards, then that's the triangle again. But where the beads are close in size, it can be very effective to have a small train of them, especially if the beads are quite small, say 4 to 6mm. Single rectangular or oblong bead earrings belong to this category too.

As we say, feel free to experiment, sometimes rules can be broken to striking effect. However, you might be amazed to discover that most of the earrings you design which look attratctive fit one of these three classic shapes.

Of course, there are other shapes you might consider. If you hang several pendants directly off the earhook, you get what is called a cluster. However, this is in fact the triangle again as the beads fan out from each other. Simlilarly, the "bunch of grapes" styles, where several pendants are hung off chain, works best if the pendants are of a similiar size, and hence this is really the Rod shape again.

For bracelets and necklaces,  see the related articles.