Review: Spiral Earrings Tutorial by Sasha Si

If you do not already own Sasha Si's Spiral Earrings Tutorial, run over to her Etsy shop and buy it now. The basic earring is a quick and easy make, not to mention that it produces a beautiful pair of earrings, but this tutorial lends itself to tons of ways to vary the earrings and put your own spin on them. You don't need any prior beadweaving experience for this tutorial. Sasha explains every step thoroughly. If you can thread a needle, you can make these, yet because of the endless variations, they are great fun for advanced bead lovers as well.

I am having so much fun playing with this tutorial and trying different things! I'm going to show you a few of the variations that I played around with, and I'm sure there are tons more that I haven't tried yet. But I will!

(all bead-weaving in photos is complete, though in some I haven't put the ear wire on the earring yet)

Using different sized beads

Increasing starting bead count

The basic tutorial uses only two sizes of beads, 8's and 11's, (middle earring). I made a larger version using 6's and 8's (right) and a smaller version using 15's and 11's (left). I also made an extra long version of the earring by increasing the bead count at the beginning of the tutorial.






Then I wanted to see what I could do with color. Here is the red, white, and blue striped result of that experiment. I think it looks pretty cool. I'd like to see what else I can do with just color to make them look different.

I've also been substituting other beads for the 8's, and getting great-looking results! Here are the photos, captioned with the type of bead I substituted.

3mm crystals

3mm pearls

Super-Uno Beads

Miyuki Tiny Drop Beads

 I'd love to hear what variations you tried with this tutorial and how they worked out. Now, I think I see some daggers on my shelf that I want to try out with these earrings...

Cat