Earrings that don't match but do carry a theme are a lot of fun. Like an "In" for one ear and "Out" for the other. In that theme, I designed these lock and key earrings. Originally planning to do them in gold and red, after a mix up at the bead store I wound up doing them in black and galvanized silver.
They will be a lot easier to make if you don't try to bead them with the holes and instead them with black beads where the holes are supposed to be.
I used Delica beads for my pair, then to make them look more like a pair, I used the same dangles on both pairs using headpins, silver wire, 5 mm black fire polish faceted beads and sterling bead caps, and joined the chain lengths with a wrapped link with the same beads. You can find instructions for wrapped loops
here and brick stitch instructions
here.
I think it would look good to have all 3 components on each earring as well. I stitched the chain directly into the brick stitch after I finished beading the tops between the two center beads.
Using the same technique, you could also just make a handful of the smaller hearts in a rainbow colors or complementary colors and dangle them from chains at different lengths. I think using the
size 15 Delicas instead of the size 11 you could use the components for a charm bracelet. Another suggestion would be to use black and copper and if you have access to old watch parts, gears and such to make a very steampunk pair of earrings.
I got the beads locally, but sterling components all came from
Halstead Bead Inc., a wholesale company I've always gotten great service from.
These are a couple of my favorite brick stitch books.
I recently wrote a
brick stitch Kindle book if you're interested.