by Judy Markwell


CLICK HERE for a One Page PDF File suitable for printing. You may still want to look at the instructions here, also.

The holidays are upon us, and for a lot of us, that means gifts and parties, and these two pair of shoe clips would be great for either!! The clips with the ribbon and cloisonne beads make up really fast and are very pretty - they'd be a great last-minute gift .

This tutorial uses these Items from the Savvy Woman's Beading Emporium:
Shoe Clip Bases
50 - 4mm Crystal Bicones (I used clear AB)

You'll also need these supplies:

  • 50+ Head Pins
  • Pkg of 3 sized of Pearls (cheap ones are fine - they're down on your feet after all)
    I used 2mm, 3mm, and 4mm
  • 22 Gauge Wire
  • very fine wire
The tools you'll need are:
  • Flat Nosed Pliers
  • Wire Cutters
  • Needle Nosed Pliers
  • Chain Nosed Pliers (not absolutely necessary, but use them if you've got them)
Just to make sure you're keeping your numbers straight,
the instructions and amounts that follow are for ONE clip.


First make 25 of these, in two different lengths.

For 12 of them, Put the beads on a head pin in this order

  1. smallest pearl
  2. crystal
  3. largest pearl
  4. middle sized pearl
  5. smallest pearl
Then finish off each head pin with a loop. If you're unfamiliar with how to make one of these, check this tutorial

For the other 13 of them put the beads on a headpin in this order - This makes half of them a little smaller than the others.

  1. smallest pearl
  2. crystal
  3. 2 middle sized pearls
Here's what you'll have - seperate them by size.

Now you need to make a spiral. Start by making a tiny loop with your needle nosed pliers, and then use your flat nosed pliers to twist the spiral as shown. Make it about as big as a nickle, or 2 cm, and leave a long tail as shown. That will make it easier to work with later.

This spiral isn't really going to show, so you don't need it to be especially uniform in size, but you do need the spaces between the rounds.


Now thread all of the head pins that you've finished onto the spiral, starting with the shorter ones. You'll need to work them on there closely, I've got some pictures that follow to give you a good idea of what you're trying to do.

You may need to push the spiral out (see the pictures following) into a cone shape to get the head pins worked onto it. That's okay, you can straighten it back later.

Here's another view from above the back. See how I make a little bit of a cone with the spiral to get the head pins on there?

Cut the wire very close to the where the head pins end on the spiral, and use your needle nosed pliers and make a wrap a small loop around the spiral to close the loop, as shown here. There is a larger picture if you need it.



At this point the head pins are kind of falling around, instead of staying where you want the, and being very firm.

The way we get them to stay in place is by wrapping the fine wire around all of the head pins. Start by attaching the wire somewhere close to the very center head pin. Wrap the wire around the very base of the head pin close to the spiral, leave a little bit of wire and then wrap go to the next head pin.

The idea is to leave a little bit of wire between each of the head pins, and to go completely around each one. In fact, you'll go a little further than once around each headpin - make sure the that wire actually crosses itself before you move on to the next pin.

Don't worry about how the head pins look as you're working, you'll straighten them out later.


Before you cut the little wire, flatten the spiral back if you've had to mess and wire the shoe clip onto the back, using those two little holes in the back, and making sure to put the top of the clip on the outer edge of the spiral. Now turn the clip over and arrange the wires to suit you, referring to the picture at the top if you'd like.

We'd love to hear from you. Please email us to let us know if this tutorial was helpful to you, or what you'd like to see here in the future. Also, we'd love to see anything you made using the tutorials. And if you're having any problems with the tutorials, let us know that too. Again, if you'd like to print thise tutorial, CLICK HERE for a PDF File suitable for printing.

Thanks again for your interest.

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