Earring-Recycling - Make something shiny and new with those lonely single earrings...

Beware of autumn and winter, ladies - "It's Lose an Earring-Time Again"!

If I were to write a blog entry for every earring I have lost, I'd fill this blog pretty quickly. Last autumn and winter alone I lost at least four earrings. I blame the thick scarf that I was wearing - it kind of pushed the earrings out when I was briskly walking home after work. Losing my earrings really annoyed me. Ok, most of the earrings I wear are cheap costume jewellery. They didn't cost a bomb. But I liked them and some of them held special memories. And what's more: I was left with several single earrings that I had no use for because wearing just one dangly earring looks daft. It bugged me that I had all these earrings lying around but wasn't using them anymore...


So I had to come up with a way of recycling single earrings. I toyed with the idea of going to a jeweller's and having them fitted onto a charm bracelet. But are these cheap things worth the expense of having them fitted? No. Then - Eureka! - I had the inspired idea. I decided to turn them into a charm pendant. They are all the rage right now.


Here is what I did:

First I took the dangly bits all off the actual earring. (Keep those - you never know whether you might need them some other time...) In my bead box I had lots of silver necklace carabiners which came with little hoops. Those hoops are actually little coils, so I simply pushed the dangly bits onto the coils. That was quite fiddly, but you can use a piece of wire or simply your fingernail to push the wire of the coil apart and then squeeze your earring onto the hoop. Now the earrings are individual pendants which could already go onto a necklace.



I also put a hoop onto the fasteners in order to thread them more easily onto a necklace. The carabiners are integral to my design, because you can easily attach a number of pendants onto them for the current fashion.

I also had this silver wire circle which is actually for massaging your fingers. I never do that - but I like the design of the thing. So I attached a hoop to that, too, and also use it as a pendant. - Some of the pendants are very small and look lost behind the wire circle, so I made a little chain of hoops to hang them from.





If this kind of pendant is too bling for you, why not use it as a key ring. I think, my key ring is very posh and I look forward to showing it off!!!