Think Out Of The Box !!!

​The phrase is a cliche. You might have heard it every now & then in your entire life time so far and fed up of hearing it ! I know .

Here I’m talking about an earrings idea. I have been working like this since 2014. What led me to think about it is I need to give a brief story. 

When I started making my own earrings, fish hook earring findings were easy to use. No body in person taught me working with clay . I learned from internet following great artists- Ginger , Cindy, Cynthia , Marie Segal , Anna Oskina , Rusalina etc are very few of them. It’s sad that last day Marie left us forever. I read their writings , blogs, watched videos . I joined groups on Facebook.  These gave me so much exposure to various techniques, brands , possibilities etc. Initially I was concentrated on earrings, beads n pendants only. I will make different size / shape beads. Using EYEPIN or head pin connected with earwires. 

Over  couple of months I didn’t feel any uniqueness in “ Using “ kind of similar type earrings myself. I loved studs but have 2 problems:

1) that time couldn’t find TLS or Bake&bond. 

2) the stud sometimes hurts back of ears accidentally.

Brain Stormed !

My friend Nini ( she was my colleague from a small city in Kerala, later that time both of us living different parts of England. She was my first customer) suggested to use fish hook earwires to dig in the clay. So that will look rather like a stud instead of hanging. Bonus it won’t hurt you as no stud post sticking out. 

So I made a Prototype.

I removed the coil & bead from standard fish hook. Straighten the bend near eye . Made a thick disc. Put a slit on it to dig the earwires. Then smoothen the surface no metal part visible outside on back. Then did some daisy embroidery like filigree on other side . Cured it . And sent the photo to her .

She loved the Black disc earrings with red embroidery ( appliqué) on it . Instantly place the order with matching necklace I had made just prior to this earrings . 

Then I made few earrings in the same way. Don’t have good pics of them sadly. 

I think I didn’t made those in in past 5-6 years because meanwhile I invested little more $$ in clay . Purchased different types of earwires. Totally forgot that I did it in the past. 

But last month I made it again. I want to make few studs . But couldn’t find my stuposts until I finished a pair like this . They were in the first place where I used to keep my supplies. But they remain hidden from my eyesight to remind me about the past experiment. I took few photos to show the steps. 

How To :

1) remove attachments from ear wires.

2) Make discs of clay . Make slit in the back. Place the earwires in the slit.

3) Using a tooth pick smooth out the slit . So the wire goes inside. Here I left the eye ( loop) visible to add dangles. Otherwise keep that too inside.

4) Textured the front part with a bead .

5) Applied acrylic paint all over the texture. Leave it for few minutes to dry. We will wipe excess paint leaving some paint in the groves of texture. This is called ‘ANTIQUING ‘ .

6) Use wet wipe to clean extra paint . 

Meanwhile I preheated my oven until desired temperature. As I use Premo / Soufflé from polyform company 275 is my oven temperature. 

7) Cure ( bake ) for 45-60 minutes these are about 5 mm thick. I attached a conical jhumka as dangle on these studs. 

How To Make Conical Jhumkas?

I plan to eventually make a video tutorial for this. 

I will share my old prototype n other few earrings for reference. 

Thanks for reading,

Love,

Maneesha.