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April 26, 2013

Making Miguel Ases Style beaded earrings: Part I




After admiring drooling over Miguel Ases earring styles yesterday, I decided to get busy learning to make something similar.  My plan is to deconstruct some of the earring styles to their basic forms to understand how they are made and how to create my own.

I think the simplest design is the one on the left.  I love mandalas, so I naturally like this style.  I think earrings like this are perfect to wear 'everyday' - to work or with jeans.


I found a really good free tutorial for this beading technique on the
Fusion Beads website.  The beading stitch is brick stitch done around a component and it is really pretty simple.


So, here is my attempt.

I only did 3 rows, but it is taking shape nicely.  I like it enough that I will dig up a couple of more sterling silver spacers and try to make an 'official' pair of earrings in this style over the weekend.

I could have been a little more daring with my color choices though!  Just metallic smoke and black - both in round beads.  I think the other option is to use 'cut' beads - which I may incorporate into a future design.

One of my concerns last night when I was making these was the size.  As you can see, 3 times around is barely 1/2 inch, which is pretty small for a pair of dangle earrings.  But, when I checked the size of the Miguel Ases earrings, they are only a little larger at about 2/3 of an inch, and they have one more round of beading.  I guess that means I did everything right.

The bead I used for the center is a simple smooth  silver spacer bead.  I've gone through my stash and found several different styles that might work, but I decided to keep it simple and as similar to the original earrings to start with. The link above will take you to a bead that is similar to the one I used on Fire Mountain Gems website.  Note that I didn't measure the bead to see if it's the same size - mainly because I think anything similar is going to work fine.

8 comments:

  1. Wow, I also love his earrings and are trying to make my own. Did it work out for you?

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  2. I hope it worked out :)
    When I looked at Miguel's earrings, I always wanted to know how he got the taller beads to sit evenly on top of the center bead. I've attempted this but they always seemed to lean to one side :(

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    1. Leery me know what you figured out. ..

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  3. Hi - if you figure it out, your earrings will be better than his -- because on most of his earrings, the center beads don't sit exactly evenly above each other, they lean too. :-) I did have the thought of running a headpin through the beads I want to align, but haven't tried it yet.....
    --Destiny

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  4. Nice! I'm trying to figure out what type of components he uses in the center of some of his pieces; montees?

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    1. I don't think I have ever seen montees used. Usually he uses a spacer type bead with a flat edge and beads does round brick stitich. After beading is complete, I think the hole is covered with a swarovski crystal. I have also seen him use a round gemstone bead and brick stitch around that.

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  5. I am wondering the same thing, anyone figure it out?
    😨

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  6. I think he uses a variety of beads as the center. The key to making the beads sit flat is that the center bead needs to have flat shoulders (for lack of a better term) for the beads to sit on. I did a post on some of the beads that I use for centers here: http://www.lisayangjewelry.com/2015/06/diy-miguel-ases-style-finding-good.html

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