I Heart These Earrings

So, as I mentioned a week or so ago, I recently got my ears pierced, and I've been making earrings all over the place in anticipation of being able to wear more cute stuff on my ears. Out of the blue I decided I wanted some cute, simple heart shaped studs and I had some left over brass from previous projects and decided that was the perfect material for these studs. I also took the time to take some progress pictures for you all to enjoy!

You can't tell from this picture, but it's actually two pieces of brass sandwiched and held together with rubber cement. I drew a small heart on a piece of paper and glued it onto the brass for a template.

Cutting cutting! It is very hard to take progress pictures like this with one hand.

Here they are cut out and ready to be filed. It was kind of a pain since they were super tiny, but eventually I managed it.

All done filing, so cute!

To attach the hearts to my earring posts, I used this two part epoxy.

Gluing. I kept having to readjust the posts because I was impatient and kept trying to move the earrings around before the glue had set, so the posts were getting nudged around everywhere.

And here they are complete! Again, I couldn't do any in the ear action shots because the holes are still healing but I really love how they turned out! It's really killing me that I can't wear all these earrings I've been making recently.

Feathery Earrings

If you hadn't noticed, I've been in a crafting slump.  The other day my younger sister showed me some earrings she wanted to purchase for prom but she didn't like the wooden beads on them.  I guess my craft starved mind needed sustenance because before I knew what I was doing, I told her "I'll make you some!"

And I gathered my supplies...

And then decided I'd share the process with you all!

The materials: -feathers -jewelry findings -jewelry pliers -jump rings -spacers or beads -easily bendable wire -sturdy wire* -hoop template*

_{*These are optional - I made my own hoops because I couldn't find any big enough.}

Here are the inspiration earrings.  From Asos.

Mark three inches from the tip of the feather.  See my earrings?  Made those to test this process out :)

Cut on your mark.

After cutting them I stripped the barb about 1/4" from the end.

Cut about 3 inches off of your bendy wire.

Wrap the wire about the end of the feather.  I got this technique from Corrine over at Craftovision(yaay, she's back!). Check out the video here to see how do do this.

Here they are, all wrapped up!

Here I took the sturdy wire and used the template to help shape it the way I wanted. Not pictured, I used my jewelry pliers to loop around one end of the wire.

I strung the feathers and spacers on and then looped the other end of the wire.

Connected with a jump ring.

Attached the earring finding and voila!

I sure hope they work for her!  I enjoyed making these earrings so much that I ended up making a few other pairs that I'm going to put up in my Etsy store, so if you want to pick some up then you can head over there!

UPDATE: I moved my store from Etsy over to Storenvy! The new store is located at: http://chezlin.storenvy.com/

Also, these earrings are sold out!