I have a major (orange) crush on the Dolce&Gabbana accessories department. The jewelry, handbags, headwear and phone accessories that come out of the Italian house season after season are stunning enough to make a girl willing to work another job just to afford one or two of them. Among my current favorite pieces from the D&G Italian Summer collection are the intricate earrings dripping with ripe fruit that seems to be plucked straight from the orchards of Sicily.
And it seems I’m not alone—Beyoncé herself donned a pair of D&G lemon earrings on her Hawaiian vacation last week. So I set out to satisfy my Queen Bey taste on a pre-American-Idol-Jennifer Hudson budget. It took me awhile to source the perfect lemon drop beads and enameled leaves, but once I had all the materials ordered, these pretty earrings were a breeze to assemble.
For this project, you’ll need the following:
• rhinestones (I used these from Hobby Lobby, but you can use any rhinestone as long as it has a flat back and somewhere to attach a jump ring)
• flat earring posts (I used these 10mm ones)
• E6000
• leaf beads
• fruit beads (I used lemon beads from this bracelet and these orange beads mixed with these orange beads)
• daisy cabochons
• wire
• needlenose pliers
• jump rings
• eye pins
To make the lemon earrings:
1. Start by adding a bit of glue to the flat earring posts and gluing them to the backs of your rhinestones. Let dry completely while you assemble the rest of the earrings.
2. Add a bit of glue to the backs of the daisy cabochons, and attach them off-center to the bottoms of the rhinestones. Let dry.
3. Twist thin gold wire through 4 enameled leaf beads, creating a small loop before threading the wire back through the bead hole.
4. Add a gold jump ring to the top of each lemon bead. Thread two leaf beads onto each jump ring, making sure the leaves lay flat on either side of the lemons.
5. Attach the jump rings to the bottoms of the rhinestones. Et voila!
To make the orange earrings:
1. Start by adding a bit of glue to the flat earring posts and gluing them to the backs of your rhinestones. Let dry completely while you assemble the rest of the earrings.
2. Add one orange bead to the eye on the end of your eye pin. This will be the base for the earring.
3. Twist thin gold wire through about 7 or 8 more orange beads per earring, creating a small loop before threading the wire back through the bead hole. Now you’ll have a bunch of orange beads fitted with a thin wire loop.
4. Add jump rings to 5 or 6 leaf beads per earring.
5. Starting with the orange-tipped eye pin, layer on orange beads and leaf beads, alternating until you have a nice, full look.
6. Trim any excess, then connect the top of the eye pin to the loop at the bottom of your rhinestone teardrop.
