Peacock Feather Earrings Tutorial

Peacock Feathers are a popular trend right now in fashion and design.  When Craig Olsen decorated my swanky new living room and dining room they added fabulous accessories embellished with peacock feathers… and seeded my love for these pretty little feathers.  I found a peacock feather mask at a garage sale – and for only one dollar – it’s a great value on future craft supplies.  Flash forward a few weeks later when I was introduced to guitar goddess Ariel.  While admiring her gorgeous feather earrings,  I immediately knew what my next craft project would be!   Peacock Feather Earrings!  The perfect fashion forward accessory for the girl who loves a little funk in her fashion.

I found a ton of tutorials for making Peacock or feather earrings, and I combined a few techniques to settle on a method that was easy and suited my vision.

First trim your feathers.  Just pull off a few of extra feathers from the left and right sides.  You need to expose the shaft of the feather in order to get a good surface to work with.  You might have to trim the shaft of the feather depending on its thickness.   Both the feather shaft and the jeweler wire need to be able to feed through your bead together.   Trim the feather shaft on the back carefully with a pair of scissors.

Trim the length of the feather shaft so that it doesn’t protrude through the top of the bead once you feed it through. You also need to test that both the shaft and wire will fit through your bead. Once you have applied the glue, there’s no going back. Apply the glue to the trimmed feather shaft and insert it into your bead – following quickly with your beading wire. The beading wire needs to extend about a 1/2″ to allow room to wrap the wire.

Bend up the wire as shown, then tightly wrap it around the feather shaft. The wire and the glue will ensure that your feathers will withstand any headbanging you might engage in.  Now thread your crystal bead.

Using a pair of small needle nose jewelry pliers – grab the wire at the top of the bead – bend over to one side – wind the wire around the closed jewelry pliers to create a loop.  Use the jewelry pliers to grab the loop you just created and tightly wind the wire around the space between the loop and the crystal bead.  Trim the wire and use the pliers to round out any part that is sticking out.

You are now ready to add your jump ring and earring hook and wear these pretties to your next rock n roll concert!