DIY: Vogue Featured nOir Earrings

I swear I don't use polymer clay for everything I make.  I really don't.  But what do you do when you want to make these earrings and can't find long beads?

These earrings are not on nOir's site anymore but you can see them here on Vogue's 100 under $100  (#37/113)

You make them yourself.  Then you massage your bleeding hands and shed a few tears while wearing your fabulous new earrings.  Seriously, these earrings were tedious and time consuming to make, so save them for a Sunday afternoon.

Here's what you'll need.

 

• round nose pliers
• wire cutters
• polymer clay
• clay cutter blade
• pasta roller
• headpins
• jump rings
• small beads
• earring hooks
• baking sheet 

Step 1. Prepare your clay.

Roll out clay on the thinnest setting.  Cut into an even rectangle.   Then cut into smaller even pieces.  I do this on my baking sheet to prevent the thin clay sheet from becoming warped from too much handling.

Step 2.  Prepare your headpins.  *Make sure you use STRAIGHT headpins, not the wonky ones that come in the packages sometimes.

Roll strip of clay around headpin, making sure to edge clay as close to the headpin as possible

Roll into your hand or on table to erase the clay seam.

  

And repeat for each headpin.  I told you this was tedious.

Leave six headpins like these.  They will be the uppermost anchors.

Step 3. Bake.  Follow the directions on your clay package.  I baked mine at 275 degrees for about ten minutes.

 Step 4. Prepare your headpins again.

Trim your headpins.  *I should have done this step before I ever started attaching the clay, just so that everything would have been more uniform.  If you don't trim the pins at all your earrings will be very long.  I did trim mine and the finished product almost hits my shoulders.  Just make sure you trim the same amount from each headpin

Round off the excess wire.

For EACH headpin.  Cue the bleeding fingers.

Prepare a headpin without clay.  You'll string the other headpins onto it.

Begin stacking your small beads (which will act as a separator) and headpins.  You'll need six of these altogether.  Don't get to your last stacked headpin and realize you don't have enough clay headpins.  I used eight fringe pieces for each side of my triangle.

Step 5. Assemble your pieces.

Remember these six pieces you made?  Trim the head off and round each of the excess wire ends into loops.

 

Then attach two fringe pieces onto each.  You'll have your little triangle now.  HOMESTRETCH!

Use a jump ring to connect the three headpins together.

And add your earring wire before you close the jump ring.  Finished.  Now you can go cry.

Tears of joy, of course.  Because you have a beautiful pair of new earrings.  And you managed to save yourself $95.  All you had to pay was the small price of losing your fingernails.

All in all I think this was a pretty solid attempt.  They don't look exactly like the originals but they never needed to.  I did try using a gold bead at the corners like the nOir's but it was overkill.  Too many wires connected to each other.  The clay looks really sleek and the color is nice against the gold findings and the fringe has really great movement.  And now that I have them completed I'm glad I spent the time making them.