Free Tutorial: Trying What's Most Popular on my Pinterest Boards

It's not a popularity contest, but here's what's most popular

Pinterest has quickly become my favorite social media site.  

Every day, I can count on Pinterest to give me a daily dose of eye candy and new curiosities.

And every once in a while, I decide to actually try to make something that I've pinned.  Today is one of those days.

This pin for a free earring tutorial at Fradany blog by Anacely Olmedo is wildly popular, having been re-pinned 3054 times and liked 340 times since I first pinned it 39 weeks ago.  No other pin of mine comes close! (And by the time you read this and check the post, it will probably be much higher!)

But has anyone actually made it?  Now, I have!  

Here are my thoughts about this tutorial and the earrings I made from it.

First, when I pinned the free tutorial, I'm not sure I ever planned to make the earrings.  

What I was drawn to wasn't the completed earrings, but the individual elements:

• I like the top 'eye' and the technique used to make it
• You don't often see hammered twisted wire since it can be brittle - but it looks great
• I like the unique reversed spirals at the bottom

But, it is a free tutorial, and since it's so popular, I decided to try and make the earrings.

It took two attempts for me to get frames that I thought were the right proportion.  That's one minor problem with the tutorial - it doesn't say how much wire to use for each earring, although it does specify 18g.

Oh, and did I mention the tutorial text is in Spanish?  It's really a pic-tutorial, buy you can use chrome or probably other browsers to translate the text.  There isn't much text anyway, so it's not an issue.

For each of my wire frames, I used a piece of red brass wire 6 inches long.

Making the eye was difficult without a tool to make the roundness even on each side.  For the first pair, I used Oval Wubbers - but the pair of frames that I ended up liking, on the right, used my trusty Multi-sized Wrap N' Tap Pliers - in the middle sized barrel.

Then came the wire twists.  Both times, the twist for the first earring comes out perfect.  The second one - wonky.  Go figure.

The finishing flourish is the spirals - by far the easiest part of the earrings since she specifies that you use about 4.5 cm of wire.  Yay - that worked.  And hammering - no problems there.

Once I decided to use yellow brass instead of copper, I knew the feel of the earrings would be totally different, so I went with a dark aqua blue 5-6 mm crystal bead attached with silver wire. 

I would probably do a much simpler wrap - or add more beads, but I wanted to keep close to the original tutorial, so I followed the diagram as best I could.

And 3,000+ pins later, here's my version.  I think they look a little like a peacock feather.  I also think the tutorial makes them seem easier to make than they are, but all in all, they make up pretty quickly (once you figure out the details like how much wire, etc.)

And after looking at the earrings for a while, I decided they needed to be a little less shiny and threw them into patina.  Here they are in their slightly darker state.  They probably would have aged to this color within a few weeks anyway, but they feel warmer with the darker wire.

But, my question to you - is why is this pin so wildly popular?  Is it because of the unique earring style, the design elements or something else, like it looks so easy to make?

Your thoughts are appreciated.

Update:  Here's my next attempt at making these earrings 'my own' style.  Similar but different.