Jewellery: Earrings

I love earrings. My favorite type of earrings are long, dangle-y types. The problem: I don't have pierced ears. This presents a problem for me. All types of earrings provided in stores are for pierced ears only...and the few that ARE geared towards the pierced-less, are rather gaudy, giant things, designed to hide the clips. UUUUUHHH-GLY. Why is it that there can't be fashionable styles in the market place for those who haven't take the giant leap to painful piercing?

I now make my own earrings, due to this lack of stylish earring designs, with a little help from the internet. I have made a few designs from tutorials found online and added my own flair to them. I LOVE ear cuffs. I think they are the neatest thing, and was SHOCKED (yes, shocked) at how EASY it was to make my own. The only cuffs I had seen were solid pieces of flat metal, and that was in the late '80's (twenty-some odd years ago). I never knew that it was so simple as merely twisting some 20 gauge wire in a creative way, that one could create pierce-less earrings.

Some ear cuff designs I have made:

I made these with flimsy 22 gauge wire, but I can easily remake these with the more sturdier 20 gauge. The point is, here are some interesting re-creations and modifications I have made. I'm quite proud of the creations I have made. But my latest creation, I have outdone myself in it's simplicity. While they still hold risk of coming off (for the mere fact that they are not for pierced ears), this latest style I found (again online) and found it will stay on (even with vigorous head shaking) all day, just don't tug or pull on them.

I think this one shocked me most in it's simplistic design. It's nothing more than a wire ring. If I were to wear these with a more flimsy type of wire, they would fall off in no time. Again, using 20 gauge wire, I call these earrings "Slip-ons" as opposed to "Clip-on's", for the mere fact that you don't open or close anything, and simply slip them onto the ear either up by the jaw line into position, or down from the outside of the ear. I love this design because it gives the illusion of pierced ears, and the best part...NO PAIN WHATSOEVER!!!

The common problem I have found with common clip on type earrings is pain with the pinching clips. You can only wear clips for a couple of hours (not even), then you have to take them off. This ring here, doesn't hurt AT ALL, lasts all day, and can accommodate a lightweight charm.

Where I got the design idea, they showed the piece with a small crystal-like charm. Curiously, I attached a set of stars I purchased while visiting my mother, and voilà...I have my own earrings, and it looks like I went through the painful process of having a hole poked through my skin. I think with these, I may experiment with a thicker or stronger gauge wire to see how much better I can get them to stay and see how heavy a dangle I can get away with before they fall off.

They say necessity is the mother of all invention. If there's a will, there's a way, and the will I had was to have the opportunity to wear beautiful earrings without a painful process (let's face it, I have zero tolerance for pain, it's amazing I had children).

Perhaps a new jewellery line, designed and made by me...we'll see.