Outsource your jewelry box!

Hi! Do you think these are interesting?


Or these?


How about:


Or even:


If you like the look of hand-coiled wire earrings, but don't wanna coil them yourself, you can outsource the job. Seriously, it's super easy.

Here's what you do.

Wait for it...

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Go to Staples. Buy a box of these:


How easy was that?

There are lots of fancy-shaped paper clips available; I plan to try this experiment with others as I find them. But it was the antique-gold finish of these, and the elegant swirls, that really grabbed me. The box cost $2.99.

To make a pair of earrings, you'll need minimal supplies. As in, 2 paper clips and 2 earwires.


For some designs you'll need a pair of pliers, just to open and close the earring finding. But for many, you won't need any tools at all. You can just thread the earring loop onto one of the paperclip ends, and follow the shape around until the earwire is centered at the top.

I find it's best to start them all with this move:


I just flipped up the 'u'-shaped paperclip part, so it ends up being above the musical note. Then I uncrossed the wires of the musical note, so there are two swirls side-by-side. Like this:


You can simply thread on your earwires and wear them like that -


Kinda cute? That's a two-second earring. Can't be bad!

From that starting point, I just experimented and twisted and wiggled them into all kinds of fun shapes. I wrapped parts of the wires around a pencil to make some extra loops and curves. You can add a bead or two for variety.

But really, I think the wirework is the real focus. Oh, man, I looove these paperclips!


Wait til you see what else I'm going to do with them.