Art Teacher Earrings

When I was at the OMSI on a date with my husband, we were given cute tiny plastic spoons for our dessert. 

To make these earrings, I heated a needle over the flame of a candle and used that to poke holes in the handles of the spoons. This worked perfectly. I first made a hole that was centered on the large part of the spoon but then realized I needed holes closer to the top to work with the size of my jump rings. It makes the final product a tiny bit messy, unfortunately. 

After that, it was the work of seconds to attach earring hooks with jump rings. 

Overall, they're delightfully subtle because they are see-through. They are also nice and light! 

After clearing out a desk drawer, I had a pile of paperclips I had never used. 

Since I had pliers at hand, I started playing with them. I quickly realized it was incredibly easy to bend them into a cute coat hanger shape, with just enough left at the back to act as an earring post. 

I raided my jewelry for extra earring backs, and voila! 

Now all I need to do is make some cute tiny clothing to hang on them.

In about a decade, this was the only project I came up with to use those ubiquitous letter beads. 

I strung them on a thin wire and added pink beads between each letter for spacing. I looped the wire at each end and connected an earring hook to each word. 

I did just notice the "S" is upside down. Dang.

When my grandma's bracelet broke, I dibsed these cool beads made from various rocks. I'm a bit of a rock hound, but I never wear bracelets, so I decided these needed to be earrings. 

To use as many of them as possible, I strung half of them onto thin wire in a loop, trying to scatter the colors and values in a balanced way. Then I repeated it for the second earring. 

I love the colors on these earrings, but I never wear them because it turns out rocks are heavy! I may eventually remake these into some lighter earrings with my few favorite beads.

I found some old keys in a junk bin.

So I used a needle and thread to sew them and a seed bead to earring hooks. Like a button, I sewed these multiple times to make sure they were strong enough. Then I hid the knot inside the bead and glued it in place.

These are some of my most worn earrings. They're not too heavy, but they are big and geometric and the teal beads match many of my clothes. And I can make up a new story about what they unlock any time someone asks.