Fri-DIY-day: Earrings! Love!

In my continuing quest to use up all the world's cool old fabrics, including scraps, I present to you: DIY fabric earrings. I have one slightly weird earlobe, which means I can't wear heavy earrings ... at the same time I adore giant earrings. I LOVE these because they can be as big as you want them, and will still be nice and light.

Plus they feature the colors and textures of old fabrics in a really fun way. And they are super fast and easy and relaxing to make.

What You Need

You do need a little specialized equipment to make these, but if you do crafts already, you may very well have these items lying around.

Fabric scraps
Kidney earwires
Iron-on vinyl: they have this at most fabric stores and on Amazon
1/4" grommets
1/4" hole punch/grommet setting tool (this is the one I have)
Cardstock
Glue
Scissors
Pinking shears

How To

1. Start by applying the iron-on vinyl to the wrong side of your fabric scraps. This binds the edges of the fabric so that they won't come unraveled, and applying it to the reverse side means that your still get to see the texture of the fabric.

Follow the instructions on the package of vinyl -- mine involved peeling off a liner, sticking the vinyl to the fabric, and ironing it in 8 second bursts using the paper I peeled off as a pressing cloth.

NOTE: If you have odd shaped fabric pieces and there is plastic showing in between them, you may want to put a sheet of paper underneath the fabric scraps to avoid messing up your ironing board with plastic.

2. Let the fabric cool. Cut into rough shapes.

3. Glue the fabric scraps to cardstock. I chose some fun contrasting colors for these and used an EXTREME glue stick. Press it down firmly to make sure it sticks real good.

4. Let that dry for a while.

5. What size and shape do you want your earrings? Decide, then cut them out using the scissors. Rather than try to cut through all the layers of both earrings at the same time -- which is easy to screw up -- I like to cut one, then use it as a pattern for the second.

6. Once you're happy with your shapes, use the pinking shears to trim around the edge. It amazes me how much cuter the earrings get after this step! Again, trim one, then use it as a pattern for the second.

7. Now punch a hole in the top of each earring. This is where your grommet will go, and should be fairly close to the edge -- like within 1/4" or so. Otherwise it won't fit onto the ear hook.

8. Time for grommets! The package I got had lots of different colors, and I kind of like mixing them up. You can put multiple grommets in each earring, use different colors for the left and right ones, whatever you like. Follow the instructions for your grommeting tool -- mine tells me to put the grommet in, then lay the earring face down on the work surface and use the tool to squish the back of the grommet.

9. At this point, you can bang them on your ear wires and be done, or you can bedazzle them / attach stickers / embroider a few stitches / etc. I kind of like the simplicity of just the fabric and the grommets, but you do you.