painted lace earrings

Wait, you said what now?  Painted lace?  How does that even work?  Pretty well, actually.  Toss in some lovely semi-precious stones and you've got something happening here.

The trick to using lace in homemade jewelry is to stiffen the lace.  I found the best way to do this is with acrylic paint rather than fabric stiffener.  Which is nice, because the fabric stiffener route requires dyeing the lace, which is a pain in the booty.  Unless of course you already have colored lace, but I did not.  Mine was boring old white.  If you do have colored lace, use the fabric stiffener and best of luck to you.  I found it makes it too stiff, while the painted lace is firm but still has some give.

I bought a yard of lace trim applique and cut out the bits in shapes I liked.  The piece I bought had a distinct, repeating shape with kind of a fleur de lis look to it, and allowed for several different options.  I made sure to always cut out two of the same shape. 

The next step is to paint these suckers.  I used acrylic paints for this.  I didn't test out any other type of paint, but I'm assuming acrylic probably performs the best anyway.  Plus it's readily available and inexpensive.  Set up the lace on a piece of foil and paint both sides liberally, then set aside and allow to dry overnight.

I went two-tone with one of these, but otherwise stayed with a single color.  I don't think I'll use any stones on the big blue ones in the front.  The little yellow flowers to the left will be attached to the inside a silver hoop for dangle effect.

Once your lace is dry begin adding pretties.  I did several different kinds.  The image below was a light gold colored paint (you can see shiny flecks if you look close), with olive green faceted, tear-drop shaped stones attached to jump rings through the lace.  I used a fairly big gauge sewing needle to create the hole before pushing the jump ring through, so I didn't bend the lace too much.  Ear hooks were attached to the lace with pieces of chain, all in antique bronze.

In this one, the lace was cut in almost the same shape as above, but I kept some of the little eyelet features in the bottom center.  The lace was painted canary yellow.  Three mint green tear-drop shaped stones were attached through the eyelet holes.  I used larger jump rings instead of chain to attach the ear hooks.

For this one I used a different part of the lace altogether.  This is the fan-shaped bit at the bottom, painted the same light gold as the first image.  I attached the lace to the ear hooks with larger pieces of chain, and attached a faceted pink stone to the center jump ring.

This one might be my favorite.  It's the fan shape again, but with some of the side elements left on.  It's painted a bright teal green color, with a piece of antique bronze wire wrapped around two sides of the lace to create a bar across the center.  Four faceted, raspberry-colored beads are strung through the wire, and the whole thing is attached to the ear hooks with pieces of chain.

This method makes a super dangly and unique piece of jewelry that has maximum wow-factor with minimum investment.  There are no more than four stones on each earring, which would be the most costly part.  The lace can be purchased on Amazon and or at craft stores, and it's a very inexpensive way to stretch your semi-precious stone-budget, while still getting lots of color.