Autumn Wedding Jewelry Ensemble

This past autumn, I had the honor of designing a jewelry set for five bridesmaids!

The color theme was reds and golds, with hints of pearl and green. Each of the girls would be wearing a different dress in the same color, and each girl had different jewelry requirements (pierced/non-pierced ears, short/long necklace, etc). 

The necklace shape is also adjustable-- since I created a braided base, it could be gently pinched into a pointed shape, or a flat, or rounded style. If you look closely at the pictures of the bridesmaids, you'll see that each necklace is worn differently!

The bride wore a thick lace veil with a bright, bold wreath of red and gold flowers and leaves on top, and the jewelry was designed to coordinate with her style.

It goes without saying that these five sets were a fair bit of work! Each necklace had a braided base that looks very similar to my braided circlets. Beads and glass leaves of all kinds were woven on in matching patterns, and beads adorned the adjustable golden chain.

These are the earrings and ear cuffs designed for the bridesmaids!

The ear cuffs were beautifully decorative; the bride loves fairytale styles so I had fun going overboard with the sparkly bling!

One of the girls had double piercings and wore two sets of dangles! I'd never really heard of that kind of pairing before, but wouldn't you agree that it is a lovely combination?



The other girls all wore variations of my Enchanted Forest Earrings in gold and red.

I also created a pair of barefoot sandals for the bride! The picture below is with shoes from our outdoor photoshoot, but these "fairy sandals" work well barefoot, too!

This is the entire set of jewelry, representing a couple weeks of work!

I didn't photograph the rings very well, but in this picture you can see the leaf flower ring and the gold-and-red wirewrapped rosette ring on the maid of honor!

This was one of the most unique weddings I've attended, style-wise, and I had a blast designing jewelry for such lovely girls!

I've created many pieces of jewelry for various brides, and I've even designed an entire set of jewelry for a bride, bridal party, and mother-of-the-bride, but this was the first time creating wedding pieces for someone I knew! I am also friends with all of the bridal party, so I had the opportunity to take their personal styles into consideration.

In addition, I also helped out last minute by being the second shooter at the wedding! I wound up taking over three hundred pictures of the ceremony, photoshoot, and reception.

It's not a fairytale wedding with friends until you do a hilarious gag photo, is it?

The park we took photos had at these awesomely weird concrete frogs...

So... I did mention that this was a group of my friends from high school and that everyone involved are fantastic geeks, yes? While the main photographer was off taking sweet pictures of the bride and groom, the bridesmaids and groomsmen posed with my Lord of the Rings weaponry.

Aren't they just too cute?

Best wishes and lots of prayers for the new Mr. and Mrs.! 

DIY Simple Ear Cuff Tutorial {Video}

Awhile back, I made a picture tutorial on how to make ear cuffs. Amazingly, it has been my most popular blog post to date!

I've had several people write to ask questions about how to do certain steps, and I felt that a video tutorial would probably be helpful!

The video is embedded below, but if you can't get the embedded video to work, here's the link!

Here's the picture tutorial for how to make a simple ear cuff. I also have tutorials on making a swirly ear cuff which can have interchangeable dangles and a double-loop swirl ear cuff!

Swirly Ear Cuff Tutorial

This is not the easiest ear cuff tutorial; if you are just getting started, I'd suggest making several of the Simple Ear Cuffs to warm up!

A primer for those unfamiliar with ear cuffs: You don't need peircings to wear these! They slide on to the cartilage of your ear. (Here's a description of the proper way to put on ear cuffs). It's typical to wear only one ear cuff for bold designs, but the simpler ones worn in pairs are great replacements for regular earrings. They are far more comfortable and customizable than clip-on or screw-back earrings!


This swirly design is by far my favorite and it is the best-selling ear cuff style at my Shoppe.


For this tutorial I am using 20 gauge enameled copper wire to make a right-ear ear cuff. My favorite wire to work with for this type of jewelry is silver plated copper; it is pliable enough to bend, sturdy enough to last, and of course is very good quality.

Begin with several inches of wire. The basic swirly cuff needs only 6 inches.

Create zig-zags an inch (or slighly over an inch, depending on your ear type) long, just like I did in the simple ear cuff tutorial.

Add the swirly at the top and bend the bottom wire down. Make sure the swirl and bend are not in the middle of the "arms." At this point, you need to have either a left-ear cuff or a right-ear cuff, or else the cuff won't fit either ear properly. (See the Simple Cuff tutorial for details, study the blue cuff in particular).

Bend the bottom bit of wire at one inch.

(Note: if you want to dangle a bead on these ear cuffs, make sure that the swirl you add in later does not overwhelm this bend. I'm not really sure how to describe this, but you'll notice that I keep the end of the ear cuff pointy. Usually I make it even pointier than I did for this tutorial.)

This is the perfect time to hammer the wire to harden it, if you so desire. Don't hammer the "arms" and make sure you don't harden the wire so much that it becomes brittle. I didn't hammer this example.

Fold around an appropriate marker and use pliers to finish bending the very ends so that the cuff creates a proper circle. (See the other tutorial!)

The finished ear cuff! The left image shows it worn normally (but slightly cricked; I didn't have a lot of patience while taking these photos!) and the right image shows it worn upside down on the "wrong" ear.

You can use a longer piece of wire and add in extra swirls and twists and all kinds of goodies on both the top and bottom.

A couple more fancy designs, click to englarge.

(I did warn you last week that you'd be seeings lots of pictures of my ears! Do you know how difficult it is to get pictures of your own ears???)

This ear cuff (which is on my shoppe) uses interchangeable dangles. You can see that I left the bottom of the swirly extra pointy. On the right you can see that it makes my ear look a little pointy and elvish. :)

This is a double ear cuff set with many interchangable dangles made from Czech glass leaf beads.

It's meant to be worn by people who don't have peircings for normal earrings. I like double ear sets to be very simple and elegant and in neutral colors so that they can camouflage as very unique earrings. Normally when I make bold ear cuffs, I only wear one.

And voila! You are set to make and customize your own ear cuffs! If you make some, leave a comment or send me a picture (shealynnsfaerieshoppe{at}gmail.com), I love seeing what others do with my tutorials. :)

You may use this tutorial to make your own ear cuffs, or your own modified design, for personal use or even for selling. All I ask is that you please reference me (Shaylynn Ann / Shealynn's Faerie Shoppe), and include a link back to my blog where appropriate. I do put a lot of time in coming up with tutorials and offering them for free, so thank you for this courtesy! And if you don't feel like making one of your own, they are available in my Shoppe and can be custom ordered!

Doodled Earrings (Day 18-19)

(Hey, be sure to visit the Pink Lemonade blog to enter a giveaway of one of my chainmaille cross necklaces!)

(Also, I'm running Black Friday-Cyber Monday sales. Starting today and lasting until Monday, get free shipping on your order from Shealynn's Faerie Shoppe, plus special sale prices on many items! It's the perfect time to get Christmas presents... plus it'd make me very happy. :D )

30 Day Drawing Challenge...

Day 18: Just a Doodle

  Day 19: Something New 

During Thanksgiving, I was doodling some new jewelry design ideas. Then I realized that my doodle counts as the "something new" challenge...

When I got back, I made the earrings I drew.

 They're available in the Shoppe!
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 My family thought it was so funny that I behind and got stuck coming up with ideas of what to draw for this challenge that I made up. I suppose I wasn't really clear when I started this challenge: it's not my idea. I was inspired by this picture that has been making its rounds on Pinterest. I just wanted to see how many of my online friends would like to join me in my (admittedly crazy) venture to actually do this!