DIY Imperial Prism Earrings

 

Time for another anthro DIY! Above are the "Imperial Prism Earrings," currently sold at anthropologie for $138. I think it's a great, bold earring for holiday parties and the quartz points make it feel rather wintery to me. These guys are made from two quartz point beads, a bunch of little brass spacer beads, and rhinestones in two shapes (12mm squares, and 15x7 mm navettes) mounted in brass sew-on settings with two holes. A single piece of wire feeds through the quartz point, then the two sides go up through the two holes in the sew-on setting. There are 15 brass spacer beads on each earring - four on each wire between the quartz point and the square rhinestone, one on each wire under the navettes, and one single brass spacer at the top. After stringing on the last of the navettes, the two wires are pressed together, the brass spacer bead is fed on, and they are made into a simple loop closure and attached to a lever-back earring with a small rhinestone accent.

 

Here's my DIY version. I wasn't feeling the pink-and-white colour scheme of the original, so I swapped it. I was hoping to do green navettes with an opalescent white square rhinestone, but I couldn't find the components in the right size. I settled on jonquil ( a pale chartreuse) navettes and peridot squares. These actually cost me more than I'd expected-  and the surprising expense were the brass spacer beads, which were $0.40 apiece. As I needed 30 of these spacers to make the earrings (and I bought two extra, in case I lost one in the carpet while making), there was no way I was going to be able to make these for my usual "1/10th of retail price" standard. Alas. I used leftover quartz points that I had on hand, and gold-plated shepherd's hook earrings that I had on hand to keep costs down - all in all, I think I spent about $25 on materials. That's a bit more than my usual, but still, a far cry from $138. And I like them in green. I think they might be great for spring, too.