Handmade Ear Jacket Earrings, with height options.
This is the finalized version of my Handmade Ear Jacket Earrings - and have sold two pairs after posting it on social platforms (thank you!)
I am very happy to find that the design is so well accepted, though I must declare it once and for all here:
This design is not my "raw" design, I saw a machine made ear jacket like this on a magazine last year while I was pregnant with my son and for tradition sake, I was not supposed to hand make anything throughout the entire pregnancy, I waited, but started to sketch and brain storming if I were to make something similar with wire wrapping technique, how should I do so.
Handmade Ear Jacket with Three Height Options - Wire Wrapped Jewelry
My 3 years old got excited and decided that she wants to have her earlobe pierced after seeing me putting this on - the revised version of Handmade Ear Jacket. 😝
Technically there are 3 height options, but the one closer to the bottom is only suitable for those who doesn't have much earlobes (there are people born without), I am using the middle ones; and the highest height option is for those who has thicker or largerer earlobes.
I filmed this video while my 5 months old baby was taking his morning nap, so please excuse me if you couldn't hear me clearly, you may leave a comment or write to me to ask me if you need to know anything.
I first saw a ear jacket design last year while i was pregnant with my second child and then it's been on my to-try list since, today I finally get to play around with it. It is not perfect, there are rooms for making it sturdier and steadier, I will give it a few more try when I am able to. :)
The distance between the earrings post with the jacket is about 0.5", I understand that I should be making a few more length options but I have no idea what measurements should I be looking at right now - do share if you know!
Handmade Ear Jacket - Side View
As for the steps to transform that White Opal Swarovski Chaton Montee into stud earrings, be sure to subscribe to de Cor's Handmades Youtube Channel for free jewelry making video tutorials.
And... in case you don't know, I actually post more stuff on my instagram - http://instagram.com/decorshandmades, pop over if you are #instausers too, @decorshandmades or #decorshandmades.
Handmade Ear Jacket
That's all for now, I shall be busy for the next few days on refining my minimalist series before I post again, til then, see you around.
White Opal Earrings Studs with Rose color Earrings
Juggling my time caring for kids and career is very, very challenging, I am pretty certain that I won't be designing anything overly sophisticated because if the design process drags too long, I lose interest and design died.
I foresee myself creating more of simple yet elegant minimalist until kids are older - today I spent my afternoon sitting together with Nate after putting Claire to nap to see him learns to sit, and gosh he is drooling too much lol!
The White Opal Swarovski Chaton Montee ear stud is handmade too, wonder how I've transformed a chaton montee to stud earrings? I've got a surprise for you later - hint: be sure to subscribe to de Cor's Handmades Youtube Channel for updates!
This is how it look like after putting all pieces together:
Handmade double sided studs and earrings
Side view of it:
Handmade double sided studs and earrings
Adjust to align:
Handmade double sided studs and earrings
And finally, seeing it on me to gauge it's actual size:
Actual Size - Handmade double sided studs and earrings
This item will be available in my Etsy's Minimalist section soon.
Finalized Infinite Ring using cold connection technique, without soldering.
I have picked Aquamarine shed of Chaton Montees for this design, this is the first time for me to use colored Swarovski Chaton Montees and I like it very much. What do you think? :)
I finally got around to blog about my handmade bridesmaid earrings! It is not overly sophisticated, though the design does require some tedious work.
I didn't have a drilling tool when I started this project, so I used my tiny filing tool to slowly "drill" a hole on the hammered sterling silver, then I decided that I really should be getting a drill set, but I am not ready for drill press, so I thought I'd settle for something manual.
While I was waiting for my Hand Twist Drill Set to arrive, I found a 1mm hand twist drill from one of the Daiso outlet near where I stay, what a twist... I swear I've looked up and down for it, from Ace Hardware, local craft stores and neighborhood hardware stores, no one carries it, no one! Ace hardware has a mini craft drill and 0.6mm is all it could drill, the store assistant tried to force the 1mm bit into it until I stopped her, she is obviously not as intelligent as I thought she is (-_-). So try Daiso if you are desperate, this tool saves a lot of my time!
I also got this 4 x 4" Rubber Bench Block to go with the Rubber Mallet to gently set the shape of my jewelry, a must have bench block if you haven't already have one.
And... this is the finished product, it is tricky to set the Swarovski Chaton Montees neatly as though it was soldered on, and I am writing a detailed instruction on how to make this earrings, do check back for updates! :)
I have been playing around with ideas of making cold connectionjewelry and I must say I love it. :D The recent few commissioned pieces have adopted my new jewelry making preference (i.e. cold connection) and here's one of them. The initial idea was to have 3 stones connected, those stones are Swarovski 4mm Chaton Montees.
The above picture shows the 4mm Swarovski Chaton Montees being set onto the wires by utilizing very minimal frame area to deliver a tiny and neat outcome.
Then the three stones idea didn't work out quite well (i will try again in the next attempt!), the finalized pieces have got 2 stones on each side of the earrings.
Let me know what you think!
Corra @ de Cor's Handmades
This tutorial is a tribute to the Handmade Wire Jewelry and Craft Community and strictly NOT FOR SALE. Instructions are for personal use only. Any attempt on reuse of this document’s text, pictures or any resources without the author's authorization is strictly prohibited.
You CAN teach the technique to others once you learn the technique; you CAN NOT use text nor pictures from this tutorial as teaching material to teach others.
You CAN produce this Crystal Flower once you learned the techniques; you CAN NOT reproduce the EXACT Crystal Flower for sale, but you can make them as gift to your friends and family – you get the idea. You CAN create your own Crystal Flower with your own designs/colors/materials, by applying the techniques introduced in this tutorial for sale, but yourself must make it instead of your employees.
3.2 X 6” of 30ga silver wires
(note: you will have 4” of wastage for each wires, but 6” works best for me,
you may cut a shorter wires but I would suggest not shorter than 4” each so
that there’s room for your fingers to work.)
Draw two squares on
to the blank. This is to help to determine where to punch the holes.
The sheet metal
puncher will probably leave a mark on your blanks so to avoid that, use a small
piece (5mm X 5mm) of card to do the trick.
Get
ready to punch through the card.
Punch through the
card firmly.
Leave the card on the
puncher.
Position the tip of
the puncher at the crossed point of two straight lines.
Punch through the Silver Stamping Blank firmly.
Overview of the sterling silver blank with a
punched hole.
The small piece of card will fall off the
puncher and this can complicate stuff so to make things easier, I use 3m
Micropore Surgical Tape (1/2") to stay put the card, why 3M? Because I
find that other tapes will leave some sticky leftover on my pliers and I don’t
want that, I don’t have that issue with 3M’s product.
Get ready to punch the rest of holes.
Overview: Punch holes
on the rest of crossed straight lines, you will have total of 8 holes on this
metal blank. Don’t throw away those silver dust, collect and keep them, you may
be able to trade it in for new silver if you accumulated lots of them.Step 2: Filing and Polising Sterling Silver Blanks
File the punched area to make them smooth,
make sure they doesn’t cut/ catches the skins.
All filed and smoothen.
Polish your silver stamping blanks to remove those
lines. I use Shine
Rite Silver Polish Polishing Cloth (8 X 5 Inches) to restore it’s shines
before moving on to the next step.Step 3: Attaching Swarovski Chaton Montees onto the Sterling Silver Stamping Blanks
Pick up your 6” of 30ga wires, fold half, and thread it through the Chaton Montees as shown in
the picture.
Hold the right wires with your non-dominant’s
index and middle finger, bring the left wires go on top of the right wires, threat it through the holes via the exit
of the right wires, and then bring the wires out via the initial exit of the
left wires.
Close up view.
Gently pull the left wires out and minimize
the loop.
Repeat the same process for the other set of
holes.
Overview: wires in tack now.
Orient the Chaton Montees as shown in the
picture, we are going to work on those holes without threaded wires. Bring the
left wires of to go on top of right wires, bring the wires back out through the
same initial exit hole.
Overview:
Rotate the Chaton Montees to have the un-threaded wires on top.
Repeat the process of threading the wires.
Now all holes have exiting wires, and 4
small loops.
Place the Chaton
Montees right at the center of the Silver Stamping Blank, thread all wires to
the back of the Silver Stamping Blank via alternate hole.
Now we are going to attach the Chaton Montees
onto the Silver Stamping Blanks. You may start at any Chaton Montees you want. Bring the wires to the front via the next hole
on the right.
Pull the wires out
completely.
Thread the wires through the Chaton Montees’
hole as shown in the picture.Tips: Point the wires-end upwards when threading it out from the hole while pressing the rest
of wires down, otherwise threading the wires out could be quite challenging.
Gently
pull the wires out.
The green circle area is where the previous
step ends; red circle is where we are going to work on now.NOTE:
Always work
diagonally to increase the chance of having the Chaton Montees to sit right at
the center of the Silver Stamping Blanks.
Chaton Montees is now
attached onto the Silver Stamping Blanks.
Side view.
Now we have 4 sets of loops attaching the
Chaton Montees, we are going to use all the wires to coil 3 times on the right
wires of it’s left loop; you may start from any wires you want. To coil, bring the wires underneath the right wires of the left loop.
Coil 3 times.
IMPORTANT: When coiling, the wires on the left might get
pulled out, making the loop bigger than it needs to be, so please remember to
fix this by pulling the exiting wires of the hole before proceeding to the next
coiling process.
Go around to repeat
the process, remember to pull the exiting wires before coiling onto the wires.
Trim away the excess
wires with your flush cutter, or, waggle the wires to break (Here’s the video
on how to break the wires naturally:
Project Completed.
All yours now, go and make something beautiful and have fun! :)
to arrive, I found a 1mm hand twist drill from one of the 
to go with the 
to gently set the shape of my jewelry, a must have bench block if you haven't already have one.
