Wire G-Clef Earrings

The idea for these ones came to me while i was fooling around with wire, trying to make an ear cuff from a tutorial on Pinterest. Then I gave up and made these instead. The nice thing about them is that they're still part of the whole 'I love music' cliche, but they're more interesting than music notes.

You Will Need:

• A coil of wire. I can't tell you how much you need because I'm honestly not sure, but wire is still a really useful thing to have, especially if you continue to follow our tutorials (*spoiler alert*, we use wire pretty often). I know that you can also get some pretty radical colours and patterns, so go nuts!

• Paper  

• A printer or a pen/pencil

• Cutters (see Vocab Tab)

•  Round-nosed pliers (see Vocab Tab)

• Basic hooks  (see Vocab Tab)

Method

I'm not the best at wire work and even I could do this, so it's clearly not very difficult. The hardest part is getting both earrings to look the same. To avoid this issue, you can do a treble clef on one ear and a base clef on the other, but if you ask me, a treble clef is way more impressive.

On the paper, draw or print a picture of a g-clef that is the size you want your earrings to be. Mine are around 4 cm. Take the wire coil and use the round-nosed pliers to bend the end of it to trace the shape on the paper. When you're done, use the cutters to cut the g-clef off. I tucked the end of the spiral over the part that goes straight down for added stability.

When attaching the basic hooks, remember to think about which way the earrings will be facing when they're dangling off your ears. 

Rating:

Effort Required: 4/10

Like I said, they're not very difficult to make. They don't take much time and they're made with materials you should have around the house.

Durability: 4/10

Durability depends on the wire and technique that you used. The wire that I used is incredibly flimsy which made the bending easier, but they're not very durable. Beware of hugs and hair, because they tend to get tangled up pretty easily. For once though, you can expose these to open flame if you want to, so that's a plus.

Cool Factor: 6/10

These earrings are pretty cool. They're retro and elegant at the same time. I have received many compliments about these earrings, even though they're not incredibly original. They're still better than music notes by far.

If you have any questions, hate mail, comments, challenges or suggestions please feel free to make contact with the nifty little comment box below. Also, if you want to keep up to date on our latest posts, follow my earring board on Pinterest.

Safety Pin Earrings

This post is partly a response to a challenge and partly reassurance that looking hardcore can be quick and painless

For these there are just two things you need to know which may not be obvious from both the title and  the picture:

• Firstly, my earlobes are not actually that fat, it's just the angle.
• Secondly, these safety pins have been blunted. Please do not stick sharp pins through your ear, the idea of it freaks me out. To blunt them simply clip off roughly 3mm of the sharp end with nail clippers and then file it smooth with a nail file.

Rating:

Effort Required: 1/10

Putting them in backwards probably takes more effort than actually making them.

Durability: 8/10

These are so durable, comfortable and...um...safe that I almost wore them two days in a row.

Cool Factor: 5/10

The fact that you appear to have stabbed a sharp object through your ear gets some mixed reactions which can be quite interesting. The idea probably would be more effective with slightly bigger pins but this wasn't really enough of a challenge to merit me finding some.

Biscuit Earrings

Have you ever met anyone who was like, "Oh my gosh. You know what I hate? Biscuits. Especially chocolate chip ones. They're just the worst." ? Hmm, that's funny, me neither. The world loves biscuits, baked or unbaked. Let us all show biscuits our appreciation of their delicious, chocolatey goodness by exhibiting them proudly on our ears for all to see.

You will need:

• Clay in red, yellow and black. I used Crazy Clay by Bostik because it's air drying and lightweight. It's kinda got the consistency of foamy rubber and it's a little sticky too, which is great for this particular project because it gets the texture pretty realistic. If you don't like mixing colours, get clay in black and brown.

• Blunt instruments for poking clay. I used some special clay tool-type things that I got with a set a while back. The important thing is that you need 2 of them that are rounded at the ends and no bigger than 5mm in size. You could use the wrong end of a thickish crochet hook, palette knives or  the bottoms of fancy pencils that are rounded. Toothpicks are not a good idea as they just rip the clay apart and make it feel unloved so it doesn't co operate.

•  Some form of plastic or rubber mat for working on

• Super glue 

• Basic studs (see Vocab Tab)

 Method

 First you need to mix the brown clay to your satisfaction. If you were lazy and bought the brown yourself you can skip this paragraph. The key to mixing clay is just to carry on until you get it right. Bear in mind that it's easy to add more of a colour, but difficult to take it out again. Add small amounts until you get used to it. It takes practice. So mix roughly 2 parts yellow with 1 part red to get an even orange. Just squish it until the colour is even and there are no streaks. Remember that black is a really strong colour, so mix roughly ¼ part of black in with the orange until you get biscuit coloured brown.

Divide the brown into 2 and roll them into balls. Work with one at a time. Gently flatten the ball so that it's about 4mm thick, while retaining the overall round appearance. It's got to be shaped slightly dome like. 

Chip placement is the most important part of this whole tutorial. You do not want people to look at your earrings and be like, "Wow, that is a poorly represented biscuit. It looks like the face of an old lady that spent too much time in the sun. Please never show your face in public again because you have insulted my favourite food."

 

Next, take your blunt objects (one in each hand) and GENTLY prod the surface of the clay. Move the surface around a little and create folds, holes and lumps. Kind of like playfully stroking it, but please try to retain the shape mentioned in the previous step. The purpose of this is to create texture and hence make it more biscuit like. So we want a textured, round, dome like lump of clay.

Now for the chip placement, which is way more difficult than you might think. For each biscuit, I recommend two large chips (one about 3mm and the other slightly smaller), 2 medium chips (around 2mm) and then several other tiny chips of varying tiny-ness to fill in uncomfortable space. 

For the big chips, decide where you want them to be and then use your blunt objects to gently poke holes in their places. Insert the big chips into the holes you created. Place the rest of your chips strategically around the biscuit, ie DO NOT let the chips fall where they may. Try to stay away from placement that resembles a smiley face, a rectangle or triangle. You may think I'm being OCD about this, but I'm not. I think.

Now wait for the clay to dry completely. Mine took 2 days. Super glue the basic studs onto the biscuits and wait for the glue to dry completely before wearing them.

Rating:

Effort Required: 6.5/10

Apart from the chip placement, it really isn't that much work. More work than most of the others so far, but that's not saying much. It doesn't take much time either, apart from the drying time.

Durability: 4.5/10

Remember the size and the fact that they're made of clay whenever you're about to swim or hug someone. Just be careful. Also, on the bright side, they're more durable than real biscuits. Also, do not let people eat them. The clay is toxic. And also the earrings won't handle that.

Cool Factor: 7/10

They're pretty cool. They will not be the only ones, but just watch people's faces when you say casually, "I made them *smug face*." They probably would've been cooler if it weren't for that chip placement. 

Please feel free to comment, suggest or challenge us. Right now we would probably even accept hate mail. Please. Feed back. Please. We don't bite... much.

Lego Man Earrings

As an apology for not having posted in so long I made sure to make this a cool one

What you need:

• 2 Lego men (they don't have to match)
• 2 pieces (roughly 0.5 cm long) of something cylindrical that's narrow enough for the Lego men to hold. I used a piece of piping I found among the Lego but you could also use something like a sosatie (kebab) stick 
• Basic studs (see Vocab Tab)
• Superglue

How to Construct Lego Man Earrings From These Objects:

To give you a better idea of how these earrings work the above picture is of my two Lego men sword fighting with their um...part-of-the-stud-that-goes-through-the-actual-ear things.

The only thing more epic than a Lego sword fight is a Lego sword fight that's happening on top of a Nelson Mandela quote. I told you this post was going to be cool!

To make them start by sticking the piece of stick to the middle of the stud with super glue. You may need to hold it in place for  a minute or so until the glue is semi-dry.

One the glue is completely dry, coat the inside of one of the Lego man's hands with superglue. It doesn't matter which had you use as you can always swap the Lego man's arms at a later stage.

Push the stick that's now attached to the stud into the Leg man's hand and leave it to dry.  

The benefit of only attaching them by one hand is that they remain fully adjustable and fully customizable. You can make them strike cool poses, change their clothes to match yours or even decapitate them if you so wish.

Rating:

Effort Required: 3/10

This rating is only for once you have all the ingredients. The effort involved in tracking down a pair of Lego men depends on your access to young children  and the severity of your parent's hording problem.

Durability: 6/10

Resistant to water but not corrosive chemicals or extreme pressure

Cool Factor: 9/10

When you're wearing Lego earrings everything is awesome!

Comments, Suggestions and Challenges:

There, see, I even gave you guys your own heading.....

M&M Earrings

Sometimes the reason I make earrings is that I see some I like but don't want to pay form them. This is one of those pairs. 

These are not real M&M's and I am not really just an ear. Just in case you were wondering.

You Will Need:

• A pair of coloured, flattened studs that are similar in size and shape to M&M's. I happened to have some already but they are pretty cheap and come in multicoloured packs. 
• A printer
• Paper
• Scissors
• Paper glue
• White paint
• a paint brush
• Varnish or Modge Podge

What To Do With All That Stuff

First, print an M that is small enough to fit onto your earring. The font used on M&M's is called Rockwell Condensed and the M itself it lower case. If you don't have access to this font you can find it online. 

Carefully cut out the M so that you are left with a stencil outline of it. 

Glue this to your earring with paper glue. Be carefully that all your inner edges are stuck down properly.

Once the glue is dry, paint the M in white. Use two or three coats of paint. When the paint is dry you should be able to remove the paper stencil without any hassle or residue. While you doing all this I advise patience and caution but once you are done you can enjoy the realization that actual M&M's are not printed neatly either so minor mistakes just make these more authentic.

The final step is to varnish or Podge the whole earring so that the paint can't be easily scraped off the plastic.

Rating:

Effort Required: 5/10

Cutting and sticking the stencil is fiddly work, but after a couple of brush strokes they look pretty sweet.

Durability: 8/10

The advantage of not having made these out of actual sweets is that they are way tougher. The biggest danger with them is abrasive forces, which I personally, don't have near my ears all that often.

Cool Factor: 6.5/10

This one was a tough calculation. They are sweets, which is always cool, but they're my least favourite pair of the sweet earrings. This is partly because they're not as noticeable as some of the other pairs and partly because M&M's are just not that great.

Simple Beaded Earrings

These elegant earrings are easy to make and go great with pretty much anything. With pretty beads available in a range of different colours, materials and sizes, the possibilities are endless. Go nuts!

You will need:

• Pretty matching beads (as many as your ears can take)
•  Basic Hooks (See Vocab Tab)
• Loop-end wire pins  (See Vocab Tab)
• Round-nosed pliers (See Vocab Tab)
• Cutters (See Vocab Tab)
• Jump rings (See Vocab Tab)

Method

 Arrange your beads the way you would like the earrings to look. You can add small coloured glass beads if you're just using two big beads, like the blue ones in the middle. The beauty of these earrings is that you can let your creativity loose and see what happens.

Thread the beads onto the wire pins in your desired order. Then use the pliers to twist a little loop at the top of the beads and cut off the excess.

Attatch the beads to to hooks using the jump rings. This step is optional depending on the length you want.

Rating:

Patience Needed: 1/10

There's really no patience needed to make these. They're simple to make and they'll be on your ears in hardly any time at all

Durability: 8/10

Because they're so simple, they don't really get in the way or get hooked on anything. They are as durable as your bead material and wire working skills.

Cool Factor: 3/10

Obviously their simplicity means that they're not incredibly original, but they are as cool as the beads you use. So go out and find the awesomest beads you can!

Pinwheel Earrings

Do you remember how cool these things used to be when you were elbow height? Wearing them is almost as cool.

You Will Need:

• Paper. Preferably the kind that has a different colour on each side
• Basic Hooks (see Vocab Tab)
• Scissors
• A needle/pin
• A Pencil
• A ruler

Note: The silver bead in the picture was already part of the hooks I used. If that's not the case with yours add two small beads to your list of necessary supplies.

How To Do:

First cut out two 3x3 cm squares of  paper. The earrings are going to stay roughly the same size as the original square. If you'd like to start with a different size you are welcome to adapt your own measurements. I'm certainly in no position to stop you.

Using your pencil and ruler, draw two lines connecting opposite corners diagonally so that you have an X shape.
Take your needle and stab a hole in the center of this X. 

Measure and mark and distance of 0.5 cm from the center of the X along each line that extends from it.
Cut along the line from each corner of the square up to that point.

Take a look at the picture as a better explanation. The zigzag lines show you where to cut.

Carefully erase the lines you have drawn. Next take a corner of one of your newly created triangles and bring it across to the center of your square without folding it, like this:

Put your needle back through the hole you made in the center of your square and use it to skewer the corner of the triangle and hold it in place. Try to get the hole you make as close to the very tip as possible but be careful to leave enough space around the hole that the needle doesn't tear through.
Do the same for each alternate corner like so:

Now take your earring hook and straighten out the loop at the end. Remove the bead if there is one and put it to one side.

Carefully push the square onto the straightened out loop end through the hole you made.

Thread on each of the corners you've pierced, in sequence to form the pinwheel shape.

Put the bead back on to the hook and make a loop in the end of the wire to secure it.

A word of advice:

One question I've got a lot while wearing these is "do they spin?". The first time I was asked I didn't actually know and so we tried it out and I ended up having to wipe someone's spit off my ear. To save you from this I will tell you now that the answer is "Yes, with enough air and the right angle they spin. Please don't blow on my ear."

Rating:

Patience required: 6/10

They are small and fiddly. Knowing that any rushed movements could end up ripping through the paper and force you to start all over again is kind of stressful but it's a good kind of stress- the kind where you get cool earrings in the end.

Durability: 1/10

All just part of the charm you know?

Cool Factor: 7/10

They are cute, functional and remind people of childhood? Score!