Feather Earrings: A Tutorial

Earlier this year I was totally wowed by this post by Jessica Jones of How About Orange. I'm surprised it's taken me this long to finally try it myself-- I love the idea so much. 

Because I fail miserably at doing things the same way anyone else does, I set about making earrings with layered paper, but used Mod Podge both to glue and seal and then finished with paint. I appreciate that you could use these as a girls night project and make a million of them with a very small investment in materials.

The supplies required to make these are so simple.

• Card stock
• Mod Podge
• Paint
• Earring wires
• Jump rings
• Silhouette

For this particular design, cutting with a Silhouette is pretty important. Not only would cutting this with an X-acto drive you to drink from the dusty and previously untouched bottle of moonshine someone gave you 5 years ago, the precision cutting required to then line them up neatly would be really, really hard to achieve. If you want to hand cut shapes, go with something simpler. I have a few options to share coming up. For now, on to the feathers!

I've shared the Silhouette cut file here. Mod Podge does a great job of stiffening paper. I chose to use 4 layers of card stock, but you could add more if you want them to be thicker or less if your cardstock is very heavy. So for one pair of earrings, you'll need to cut 8 feathers. Or 16 if you're putting two feathers on each ear. You'll see that there are two different sizes in the file, and of course, you can adjust the size/scale to your liking. I loved the negative shape that these create when you peel the feathers away. 

I like to work with Mod Podge on a clean sheet of freezer paper with the shiny side up. The Mod Podge doesn't stick to it easily.

Paper absorbs the Mod Podge, so you'll need to lay out your pieces and work with some speedy enthusiasm. Here you can see that one feather's tail is pointing right and the others are pointed left. We're going to give all four a quick coat of Mod Podge--

And then flip them one by one, adding a coat of Mod Podge before flipping the next.

Coating both sides before sticking them together gives them a solid finish when it dries, but also the tiniest bit of wiggle to adjust them and line up the sides evenly.

When you're finished with the assembly, pick up the feather and smooth the edges, seal the underside and all the way around and brush away any excess.

You may need to use a needle or pin to clear Mod Podge out of the hole that you'll use for the jump ring if any has gathered there. You can also adjust the shape with your fingers-- you may want it to dry flat or you may want it to have a bit or curl or curve to it. However you shape it up, gently plop it on a clean and dry spot on your freezer paper or non-stick surface to dry. Which won't take long at all.

And the jump rings and the ear wires, and you're good to go! And then there are 57 million options. Paint them any color you like.

And that's it. So simple, right?