The answer to this question might well be of interest to Etsy sellers whose craft is designing with beaded materials, to Etsy buyers who wonder what’s involved in the creation of the jewelry they purchase, or to other crafters who design with various components in other media.

Some years ago at a local craft fair, while his wife looked over my beaded jewelry displays, the husband asked me if I made the beads myself. I explained that I did not—because I was mainly interested in collecting beads in a wide range of materials and types and then combining them in designs of my own creation. That was the “fun part” for me. He replied in a dismissive tone, “So, you just assemble them then.”

Well, in a way, he was right, although his phrase sounds kind of harsh. Of course, an architect and the builders “just assemble” beautiful houses, public buildings, and other structures from materials such as wood and metal. I guess it’s always a challenge to appreciate what goes into doing something you’ve never tried yourself. Many times, I’ve heard people at fairs say, “Those are really pretty. Of course, if I had time, I could just make them myself.”

I’ve been collecting beads and designing jewelry for two decades. During that time, the craft has exploded in terms of interest and in terms of availability of materials, books, and classes. There are so many beaders now! And it does look easy. In fact, the fundamentals of stringing, wire bending, and so on are fairly easy to understand; they do take some practice, however.

But not all beaded jewelry is equally appealing. Why is that? Partly, I suppose, it’s a matter of taste and personal preference. But I’ve seen photos of projects in magazines and bead company catalogues that looked weird, awkward, impractical for everyday wear, or just too “handmade.” I happen to think that design has something to do with it.

There are some basic design elements that apply in many crafted creations, such as color, shape, size and scale, material, pattern, texture, function, and style. I’d like to describe and illustrate their role in designing attractive, eye-catching beaded jewelry.

Designing necklaces and, to some extent, bracelets can involve a wider set of considerations than designing earrings, partly because of the possibility of multiple strands, pendant centers, variety of clasps, and so on. I hope to talk about this interesting and complex kind of design in a later article. But let’s start with something that really does seem to be simple: designing beaded earrings.

The easiest place to start is with beads that are strung on a metal headpin. You begin by selecting the beads you’re going to use and adding them to the headpin. The process ends with a loop formed at the top and attachment to an earwire. (Never make the loop before you set up both earrings and have a good long look at your design!) For earrings, the design is limited somewhat by the number of beads and by the length and weight of the earring that hangs from a human ear.

To achieve balance in the design, it’s best to select a single focal bead that serves as the main element around which the earring design is built. Depending on that focal bead, you can decide what elements of trim or accent to add to enhance it in some way. It may also determine the color, size, and material of the other beads that you choose to include. Color is, of course, an important element in design.

Using a secondary bead that fails to either match or contrast with the dominant color (if there is one) in the focal bead produces earrings with the same effect as wearing a red plaid blouse with a pink flowered skirt. In fact, one skill that good designers develop over time is the ability to recognize color compatibility in beads (not to mention the ability to locate said beads in their storage boxes!). I very much enjoy this aspect of design and have even offered a “color match challenge” on my Etsy site for those who wish to send in a photo of an outfit that needs earrings to go with it.

What if the bead is more than one color? Sometimes a multicolored focal bead can present a good opportunity to use seed beads, spacers, or small rondels in various of the central bead’s colors to pull the elements of the earring together, to give the design coherence. Often, a perfect color match—say a sparkling crystal in exactly the same shade of blue as a lovely lampwork glass focal bead—is just what the design requires. But a contrast may also be useful, for example, framing a highly patterned stone bead with small jet glass rounds to set it off without detracting from the focus on its intricate pattern. With a really striking central bead of any type (or a truly unusual color), you may want to trim with something clear or neutral for the same reasons.

The role of metal beads, spacers, tiny rounds, and other accents can be an important part of the design and is affected by color as well. For a gold foil bead, for example, you don’t want to use silverplated spacers. Consider balance: enough metal to set off the focal bead, but not so much as to detract from it. Of course, your focal bead may well be metal, such as an intricately decorated silver ball in the Balinese style, so the secondary bead(s) may be the only color in the earrings.

Texture is another design feature. Some beads have smooth surfaces, but there may also be texture in the sense of marbling, patterning, threads of matrix, etc. as in some stones. Or there may be texture because of colors or shapes that have been embedded in lampwork glass, for instance, or in polymer clay beads. Of course, beads may also have a texture that you can actually feel on the surface, such as raised wire cloisonne; carved bone, wood, or stone; burnt wood or horn; soldered silver; raised glass dots; faceting in crystal and stone; or you can visually appreciate a surface enhanced by reflective effects with silver or gold foil, pearlized coatings, or AB (aurora borealis) finishes. And some beads have very colorful patterns on the bead’s surface that function as texture. The point is to enhance rather than detract from this texture, to use secondary beads and trim that are compatible with the texture of the focal bead.

When it comes to the type of materials to combine in an earring design, I personally like to feel free to explore a wide range. Sure, you can top a poppy jasper oval with a spacer and a small poppy jasper round. No problem, and very classic in design. But maybe you’d want to try some hematite in the mix as well. You can mix them up—to a certain degree.

You might use crystal with stone, pearls with glass, tiny wood rounds with slender stone tubes. But you probably wouldn’t want to use a patterned stone and a floral cloisonne bead together (back to the plaid blouse and the floral skirt). Also, some ethnic beads are naturally irregular and sort of funky in a way that precise machine-cut crystal or exactly cylindrical delica glass seed beads just aren’t.

The mix of materials also takes into account the weight of the final earring. With a big heavy stone, the trim just can’t weigh a ton. Everything you add increases the length, too, so that’s part of the design decision. The scale of the earring as a whole is important too. If the scale of the earring is meant to be dainty and delicate, don’t overpower your intricate filigree silver round with a 12-mm stone topping.

Mixing beads of different sizes can be quite interesting in a design. I like to use the thinner (.025 inch) headpins so that size 11 and 10 seed beads will fit on the wire. They can be great for picking up colors, separating other trim beads, and providing a finished look to the ends. Watch out to keep things in balance and, again, consider length and weight when using especially large beads of heavy materials. Cloisonne and silver and gold enamel beads, wood, horn, and polymer clay are all relatively lightweight. Stone, glass, and porcelain are heavier. But the size of the bead helps determine the weight. A very slender oval of stone may be lighter in weight than a large glass round, for example.

Mixing shapes is another feature of design that can make a big difference. Yes, you can do a design with three rounds, hanging hinged below one another, dangling from the earwire loop on different lengths of headpin, or separated by spacers. But sometimes you need to contrast shapes. In addition to rounds of all sizes, you can choose beads that are flattened (rondels), drops, squares, ovals, hexagons, octagons, rectangles, tubes, cylinders, bicones, diamonds, triangles, donuts, or irregular chips or nuggets.

The shape of the focal bead may also affect the kind of technique you use for completing the design. Framing is an important and useful technique for many designs in beaded earrings. It involves repeating the same series of trim beads at both ends of the focal bead. As it turns out, focal beads that are flat on the bottom (such as rectangles, squares, etc.) look much more “balanced” when they are framed. On the other hand, framing isn’t usually as attractive with drop-shaped focal beads; in that case, top trim is the direction to go.

Hinging, attaching another bead on its own headpin by joining the two loops, is a technique that sometimes depends on shape as well. If the dangle that is intended to move gracefully with motions of the head is too heavy, the effect is spoiled. Whether the larger of two elements is below or above the hinge changes the design, too, and both are possible, but usually the elements are of contrasting shapes (e.g., a round glass pearl dangling below a smaller bicone crystal or a silver arrow that is light and slender dangling below a turquoise oval).

Function is a design consideration as well. Even though earrings are jewelry and therefore ornamental in a tradition going back to Stone Age tribes, they are used in a wide range of particular contexts in modern times. Earrings are worn on an everyday basis, and you may want to design some that are perfect for wearing with jeans and a T-shirt but others that draw attention to that elegant dress at a special party. You may be designing earrings for a girl’s first party, her mom’s presentation at the office, her grandma’s favorite family getogether, a bride’s wedding, or as a gift for an unknown someone. So think about the function and the context in making decisions about the materials, weight, length, style, and overall effect of the earrings.

What are your thoughts on the role of design in creating beaded jewelry? What’s design got to do with it anyway!

To see lots more earring designs, check out my Etsy shop at http://www.beadedjewelrybysusan.etsy.com.