Captive bead rings are the trickiest of jewelry to get into your ear, especially by yourself! Luckily we have a few tips and tricks to help.
The Captive Bead Ring gets its name from the fact that the ball is held into the ring by pressure from the ring on either side. To get it out, theoretically all you need to do is pop the bead out! Of course this is much easier said than done!
If you can, your BEST bet is to get to your local piercer to install it for you.
BUT we know that sometimes life happens and you are unable to do that, so here is what you can do.
Try to pop the ball out. Put one hand on the ring and the other on the bead and pull. Sometimes the pressure on the bead is light enough that you can just pop it out!
If it doesn't, take a closed pair of scissors and put the tip of them into the ring closed in a position that when you open them it will release the pressure. CAREFULLY without cutting yourself, open them inside and release the ball. I DO NOT recommend doing this at all if the jewelry is in your ear.
The best thing to do without having to visit a piercer is to invest in a captive bead ring tool! If you change your jewelry a lot you really can't go wrong getting this guy. It seriously is a life saver and comes in SO handy! It has notches on the tip so you just put the ring on it and squeeze just enough and the bead literally falls out.
Once you have the bead out, if the opening is too small to put the ring in your piercing, twist the ends of the ring in opposite directions. The ring should now look like an s or a small part of a spiral! Now insert it into your piercing, and twist the ring back to its original position without the bead.
You can now pop the bead back in, or use the same process with the captive bead tool in reverse to re-insert the bead, and you're done!
I get this question every day, so I figured it could be addressed in the form of a blog post for all to learn!
Until next week,
Kourtney🖤