Great Inspirations come from everywhere.

I was in my local bead store, yet again today...lol...I could spend hours in there and its just a tiny shop.  And she had made some cute earrings with chainmaille.

I thought they were pretty cute, and so I wanted to try them myself... so here they are...

I thought I would do a quick free tutorial for you all as well, after I figured out how to make mine.  My first one for wire jewelry.  It is to make these earrings.

Here is what you will need.

1/8" Jump Rings, any number, I wouldn't recommend doing any less then 3 layers though, to get the effect of it all.
Earring Findings

Tools
Flatnose or straightnose pliers to open and close the jump rings.

1.  Lay out how you would like your layers to look.  Each layer is made up of 3 rings.

2.  Starting at the bottom of the rings, close the whole bottom row, and open the middle ring on the next row up and add all 3 of the bottom rings to it.  close the ring.

3. On the row that now just has the 2 outer rings, close both of those. and then add one of those closed ring, then the cluster created in the last step, and then the next ring.

4. Repeat step 3 until they are the length you would like them to be, and before closing your last middle jump ring add your earring finding to it.

Here are some variations to this design,

These two sets I made by adding seed beads to my outer rings before attaching them.

These ones I made by making my first middle ring from an accent bead and a wire wrapped loop instead of a jump ring.

Here are some with different colored jump rings, from left to right, same color rings, all different colours from the same family, and then 2 sets of layered colored rings.

Enjoy!!

Lindsay