Pokeball Earrings

These are a sort of tribute to a friend of mine who loves Pokemon and bad puns. You just have to make sure you catch them all.

You will need:

• Two small, hollow plastic balls of some sort. Mine actually came from a magic trick my aunt brought back from Japan so if you can't think of another place to get some, I suggest looking there.
• Red and white acrylic paint (those being two separate colours. I don't mean pink.)*
• Black permanent marker
• Drill with thin bit
• Flat-end wire pins (see Vocab Tab)
• Round-nosed pliers (see Vocab Tab)
• Cutters (see Vocab Tab)
• Basic earring hooks (see Vocab Tab)

*By the way Meredith, I borrowed your paint. It's on my desk if you need it.

How to:

The first step is the painting. If your spheres don't have a line around the middle you should probably draw one on first. Mine did though. So there.

Paint the white half first because then you can touch up with the red. You'll probably need to do a couple of layers depending on the base colour but try to keep it smooth and even. Usually you will be wearing them both, not taking a photo of the best one like I get to do, so keep it tidy.

After you've painted half of it red and half of it white and done enough layers of each colour and waited for it to dry properly, carefully draw a line around middle of the ball at in black permanent marker at the point where the red and white meet. It's best to keep it thin at first because you can thicken it to even it out.

Once you've drawn a line right around the ball, chose the messiest portion of that line to draw on the black circle. (This is the part that goes around the white button in the middle.) It's easiest to colour the whole circle in black and then pain in the white part on top. Again start small and make it bigger to get it even. Also keep in mind that it's important to get line thickness and circle size the same on both earrings. You're just going to have to assume I did that too.

I used the back of the paint brush to stamp the white circle in the middle of the black because I felt like it was more accurate than my trying to paint one.

Use the red and/or white paint to neaten up the black if you need to. You may only move onto the next step once your Pokeball looks perfect and is completely dry.

The next step is to drill a hole through the ball from the middle of the red at the top to the middle of the white at the bottom. I guess that you could drill from white to red if you really wanted to, but the important part is that you get the hole in the middle and keep it straight.

Insert a flat-end wire pin through the hole from the white side to the red. Getting the pin through can take patience. Cut of the protruding section of pin to about 1cm and twist it into a loop.

Finally you may attach the hooks and wear them.

Rating:

Effort Required: 6/10

When I took on this idea I didn't actually realize how long it would take and what a delicate process doing it freehand would be. I could probably have fetched some masking tape and made this twice as easy but then I would have had to get up and look for it. It's up to you whether or not to believe the effort score of someone too lazy to even make her own job easier.

Durability: 8/10

My brain is vaguely throwing out the objection that paint is not supposed to stick to plastic but this paint doesn't seem to know that. 

Cool Factor: 8/10

It's Pokemon. If you disagree with this score you probably never watched it as a kid which means you are either too young to be wielding a permanent marker, too old to be caring about how cool you look, or think Pokemon is evil - in which case you have more pressing issues.

Army Man Earrings

I stumbled upon these two while looking for Lego in a decaying bag of leftovers from my brother's childhood. I enjoy the army-man/waitress combination because it looks like you're making a political statement when all you're really doing is wearing toys.

                         

Materials required for idea implementation:

• Two army men or any kind of small plastic figurine. These two are Micromen. I'm not sure of they're still a thing.
• A drill with a thin bit
• 4 jump-rings (See Vocab Tab)
• Basic Hooks (See Vocab Tab)
• Round-nosed pliers (See Vocab Tab)

Actions required for idea implementation

The man and the lady of this pair were made differently. The waitress lady was fortunately made angrier than the guy with the gun. Her arm made a good loop for me to put the jump-ring through. The designer of the soldier was not so considerate. I had to drill a hole in the corresponding place on his body to put the jump-ring through so that both earrings would hang at more or less the same angle.

You'll have to go through a similar process of examination and logical hole-drilling in order to attach your first set of jump rings. 

The second set of jump-rings is to make sure that the earrings hang facing outwards. For every one you add you get a 90 degree rotation. Play around with the number you use until you get the right length and angle.

Finally attach the basic hooks to the topmost jump-ring.

Rating

Effort Required: 2/10

The standard drill-a-hole-and-put-a-jump-ring-through-it score for this blog. I would increase it since it's usually more than one jump-ring, but sometimes you don't even need to drill a hole so it all evens out.

Durability: 8/10

The beauty of making earrings out of stuff that was originally intended to withstand children.

Cool Factor: 7/10

Again, this will depend on the figurines you use. Mine are pretty small and light-weight so they tend to go wandering off into my hair. The matching but not really matching thing is cool though. I feel like people get more excited when they have to put in the effort of checking both the earrings you're wearing.

    

Beaded Bobby Pin Earrings

I saw a version of these earrings on Pinterest and thought they looked really cool. There was no tutorial, but I gave them a go and made up my own.

You will need:

• Seed beads in varying colours and sizes. The ones that I had were a tad too big, but I used them anyway.

• Round-nosed pliers (See Vocab Tab)

• Cutters (See Vocab Tab)

• Flat-end wire pins  (See Vocab Tab) 

Method

Before I start, here is an expertly drawn diagram of the earring by itself. 

 

First, decide on the bead sequence. For best results, arrange them in order of size. The amount depends on the size of your beads and the desired length. I used 7 beads and mine are about 2cm long. 

When selecting you wire, make sure that it isn't too thick to go through your earring holes. Start threading the beads onto the wire, beginning with the smallest bead. When the beads are all threaded use the round-nosed pliers to bend a right angle in the wire as close to the top bead as possible. 

Then continue to bend the approximate shape of the wire in my illustration. It doesn't have to be exact because you can easily adjust them once you've tried them out.When you have the general shape, cut off the excess wire using the cutters.

To put them on, simply hook them through your ears and then pull them up so that they run parallel to the lobe. You may find that you need to make them tighter, or that the line of beads runs too straight, so just take them out adjust them.

Effort Required: 2/10

Overall, they took me about 5 minutes to make. It's really not a lot of work.

Durability: 9/10

There isn't much you can do to break these bad boys without hurting yourself. They aren't bulletproof, unfortunately, but you can do almost anything to them and they won't budge. Just make sure that they are tight enough and you're good. If they do bend out of shape from something, you can just bend them back again, no biggie. 

Cool Factor: 5/10

These are what I like to call my 'lazy earrings'. If I'm going somewhere and I don't feel like coordinating, I just put these in. It's a relatively obscure type of earring, so they aren't too common just yet. It also depends on your colour choice, but these earrings really open up a world of possibilities. Who knows, you may be seeing more of this earring base in the future. 

Let us know what you think! Your input is greatly appreciated, so if you have any comments, challenges, suggestions or feedback of any sort. If you like what you see then please follow us and  if you want to keep up to date on our latest posts, follow My Earring Board on Pinterest. Thanks for taking the time to view our blog!

Leather Loop Earrings

My sister is in Johannesburg for two weeks, so I'll be posting until she gets back. These earrings are actually the result of my brother, who bought a really cool bottle of Poncho's Coffee Tequila that comes with a pretty leather thing around it's neck. He wanted me to make him a manly leather bracelet out of it and this is what I did with the off-cuts.

You will need:

• Leather string

• Scissors

•  Basic hooks (See Vocab Tab)

• Loop-end wire pins (See Vocab Tab)

• Round-nosed pliers (See Vocab Tab)

• Cutters (See Vocab Tab)

Method

Cut two equal lengths of leather string, roughly 10cm in length. Bend them in half and tie them in a knot where the two ends meet at the top. Use the pliers and cutters to bend the loop end wire pin around the base of the knot and cut off excess. Attach the loops of the pins to the basic hooks and viola!

Effort Required: 2/10

There is very little to do to make these earrings because they are extremely simple. They took me a minute to make. If you have any suggestions or ideas to make them more complex or more effective please leave a comment.

Durability: 7/10

The upside of them being so simple is that there isn't much that can break. They tend to get hooked on things, but because it's a pretty big loop they normally unhook themselves. 

Cool Factor: 4.5/10

They may be simple, but there is definitely something to be said of their simplicity. They're elegant and pretty, but random enough to deserve a spot on here on Glue and Random Objects. They are not very effective if you have brown hair and they are not incredibly original, but they match with pretty much anything and they are worth making, considering the time and effort involved to achieve the overall effect.

Let us know what you think! Your input is greatly appreciated, so if you have any comments, challenges, suggestions or feedback of any sort. If you like what you see then please follow us and  if you want to keep up to date on our latest posts, follow My Earring Board on Pinterest.