Designing Matching Earrings

Too often, I will make a fancy pendant or a necklace without a matching pair of earrings. I come to regret this decision every time I need to go out to a nice dinner or one of my husband's symphony concerts, as my jewelry box gradually fills with either fancy statement necklaces, or casual, everyday earrings. So, after I designed the Fiberoptic Dodecahedron Pendant and its matching beaded bead, I took it upon myself to make a matching pair of earrings before calling this project finished.

Design Goal: Matching Earrings for the Fiberoptic Dodecahedron Pendant

Before I started, I knew that I wanted the earrings to have a couple of characteristics:

• The earrings should match the style of the pendant
• They should contain SuperDuo beads
• They should be smaller than the pendant but still complement its form.

Option 1: Beaded Beads in a Smaller Symmetry

The first route that I could have taken was to make a pair of Fiberoptic Cube beaded bead earrings, or even a variation on this design. Indeed, I wove triangular prism versions of this design for an earring swap a while back, and for earrings I actually like this variation better than the original Fiberoptic Cubes.

The only problem with this approach is that the square faces of this design don't match the pentagon-shaped faces of the pendant, and I really like how the pendant looks like it is covered with little stars, so I wanted this reflected in the earrings.

Option 2: A Previous Design also with SuperDuos

Another option I could have taken was to match a previous earring design to that of the pendant. For example, I could have explored this idea with the Snowflake earrings:

I didn't take this route because the lacy style of the snowflakes doesn't really match the more clear-cut style of the pendant.

Option 3: A New Design, with a Star like the Pendant

I instead settled on making a new earring design, and I focused on creating just one of the twelve stars present on the original pendant. I first came up with these earrings, which retain the pentagon shape of one of the faces of the pendant, and also use the same types of beads.

The only problem with these earrings is that the stars aren't as pointed as those on the original pendant. This is because I used a slightly simpler thread path to add the 15° seed beads.

Option 4: An Improvement on the New Design

To improve on this earring design, I went back to the lace overlay thread path that is used in the original pendant, and this makes the stars on the earrings nice and pointed!

In this photo, you can really see how the final earring version matches up with the stars on the pendant:

Success!

Are you ready to make your very own pendant and earring set? Patterns for the Fiberoptic Dodecahedron Set and the Fiberoptic Duo Beaded Beads are available exclusively at beadorigami.com!