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.

La Vie en Rose Necklace

This sweet lil piece of neck fancy has been making my eyes happy every time I see it.  The color combination, the delicate chain, and that pretty little pink rose are all just so...precious.  To look at it, you'd like that maybe I bought it for a chunk of cash-money.  'Cept I totally did not (well, the component parts, which were not much).  This pretty is handmade, sucka!

The rose bead is from the local big box retail craft store giant, and I think it's resin or something.   The turquoise beads were in my stash and I can't remember what they are but I know they're semi-precious stones and they're faceted and adorable.  Then there's a thin gauge silver chain, some silver-plated wire, and silver-plated jump rings and lobster clasp.

The turquoise beads are secured individually on the wire, and then a loop is wrapped on each side.  You end up with a bead with two little closed hoops on the ends.  These are connected to each other using a jump ring, repeated until it's the length you want.  I went with ten beads for each side of the necklace.

The rose bead has a hole running length-wise, so I used one of those wires with the stopper and one end.  You could also use a length of wire and melt your own stopper using a torch.  The rose is front-heavy and the hole was slightly bigger than my stopper, so I used two cranberry-colored beads on either end to secure it.  Wrap a loop on the top, and attach it to the two lengths of turquoise beads with another jump ring.

You could certainly keep going with the beads and jump rings until it's the length you want, and then attach the lobster clasp and call it a day.  But I wanted a little variety, and I didn't want to use up all my beads on this one necklace, especially knowing that some would be hidden on the back of my neck (and likely getting caught in my hair).  So I attached a bit of thin gauge silver chain, which ends up starting just above the collar bones.  The chain is cut to the length you want (I went on the long side because that's kinda been my fancy lately), attached to the beaded sections using a jump ring, then attached to the lobster clasp with yet another jump ring.

Bingo-bango, a lovely and very feminine neck fancy.  I love how the cranberry beads just kinda peek out from behind the rose like they're shy.

Easy-peasy thread-wrapped hoop earrings

These things are so cute!  I've been getting into a jewelry making phase recently.  Well, actually I've been in an everything-but-knitting phase recently, which is probably because of the nice spring weather.  So look forward to some new posts that have nothing to do with knitting.

Starting with these little darlings.  They were super quick to put together, and they're purdy durn adorable, are they not?

For this project you will need:

• Some cheapo hoop earrings (I bought a set of three from Target for $5)
• Embroidery floss in a color of your choice
• Beads, 10
• Jump rings, 10
• Super glue
• pliers 
• sewing needle
• scissors

I wrapped the hoops in embroidery floss using a friendship-bracelet-style knot wrapping technique.  The ends are super glued in place just to keep them from slipping or coming apart.  The knots are super tight and I made sure to cover every bit of the hoop so no silver peeks through.

I already had the beads and jump rings lying around in my craft supplies.  I can't remember what kind of stone the beads are, but they're a lovely mint green color in a tear drop shape that lends itself well to this type of dangle.  Once I had each bead on a jump ring, I held up the hoop to see where it would sit when worn and found the bottom-center spot.  I used a sewing needle to create a hole in the thread knot for the jump ring and inserted it through.  Then I counted three knots away and did it again, until I had two on each side of the center bead, for a total of five evenly spaced beads.

And there you go.  A nice dangly, simple yet unique jewelry piece that only took about 10 minutes to make!