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.