Ear Phone Earrings

Teaching has some strange perks. The joy of finding an abandoned set of broken earphones on the classroom floor has been one of my strangest.

You will Need:

• A set of broken earphones. I guess they don't have to be broken when you start but it's always nice not to waste. If they're already broken you get to make something cool out of something useless. You could even call it up-cycling, if you wanted to get fancy about it but I've always thought that the term sounds kind of like an exercise program that's destined for failure.
• Scissors
• Super Glue 
• Basic studs (See Vocab Tab)

How it's Done:

Step one is to cut off the ear pieces, leaving about a thumb length of cord attached to each. 

Step two is to carefully strip the cord (take off the rubbery covering to expose the wires inside) making sure you don't cut the wires in the process. Remove all the covering you can or the effect is somewhat spoiled. In this pair the wires were different colours on each side. This discovery made me happy because all the time I've spent checking my earphones end up in the right ear wasn't a complete waste. It also makes for prettier earrings.

Step three is to wrap the the wires around the ear piece in a criss-cross pattern and then tie a bow in it. Getting the bow right is quite tricky and takes some patience.

Step four depends on what you're working with. If the speaker part of the earphone is still attached and is relatively flat, just super glue the earring stud straight on. If this is not the case, first remove the speaker part from both earrings and then glue some of the cord you cut off, in a coil inside the ear piece to create a fairly level surface you can glue the stud onto.

The final step is to apply a small amount of super glue to each point on your decorative criss-cross where the wires meet. This is to hold them in place and stop them coming undone or slipping off. Keep the gluing subtle though.

Rating:

Effort Required: 5/10

You could save yourself some trouble and just cut the wire off completely but the criss-crossing has the double function of finishing off the earrings and giving them a way to end without making it look like you've performed some kind of brutal decapitation.

Durability: 6/10

The danger with these is not gluing well enough, especially if you stuffed them.

Cool Factor: 8/10

People who think they're cool walk around with earphones in their ears. People who are cool wear them on their ears. It's that simple. 

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.