We’ve all had this happen…our earrings become tarnished, or the cheap materials they are made of chip and turn funny colors. If they aren’t real gold or silver, chances are we can’t do anything to fix them, and so often we throw them away. I’ve made a habbit of never throwing earrings away, and I don’t plan to start now. I don’t even throw away earrings that have lost their mate (instead, I have a mini Christmas tree for my apartment that does not have ornaments, only lone earrings who have been repurposed). So I decided to find something to do with some old hoop earrings that had lost their luster. I turned them into miniature dream catchers.
Here are my hoops, tarnished and gross.
For supplies I used: Scissors, needle-nosed plyers (mine are for jewelry making, but a regular pair of needle nosed might work also), a needle, and embroidery floss. You can also use thread, if you’d like the piece to be more delicate and detailed. It will take quite a bit more time that way, so I went with embroidery floss.
First you choose your frame color, and tie it off. You can place a dab of superglue if you’d like at this point in order for it to stay.
Then start wrapping the hoop with the floss, being sure to place each wrap next to the one before it, making them as tight as you can. Once you are done, tie the end off as well and add a dab of superglue if you’d like.
Now, take your accent color of floss/thread, and tie it off near the start of your hoop. Decide on a point a little farther along the hoop, and wrap the floss around it so it comes back up and through the inside of itself. Continue to do this around the rest of the hoop until you reach the end.
Next, continue to make the same type of looping knots, but instead of using the hoop as your guide, use the previous segments of floss you’ve just created. Do this repeatedly until it gets too small to continue (you may have to use a needle and the pliers for the last few). Then tie it off.
Use beads or feathers to make accent strings, and then tie these to the hoop.