Step #1: Gathering materials For these upcycled earrings a variety of different materials can be used. You will also need a box cutter, needle nose pliers, sandpaper (not shown in picture), a drill/hole punch, and optionally a paintbrush. Any kind of scrap material that can be cut into interesting shapes will work for this, such as thin scrap wood or plastic cut from used plastic containers (such as yogurt container lids). Earring hardware such as jump rings and earring hooks can either be bought or, for a greener option, can be taken from broken earrings you already have or earrings with a lost pair. Optionally paint could also be used for further decoration. I chose to use some thin scrap wood I had.
Step #2: Cutting Earring Pieces From whatever material you are using, cut out some interesting shapes that you want to use in the earrings. They can be as large or small as you would like. If you are using a thin wood material a sharp box cutter can be used to carefully cut in layers through the wood to create shapes. With plastic, scissors will work fine.
Step #3: Creating Holes and Sanding For this step, a small drill bit can be used to create holes in the wooden pieces wherever the piece will connect to either the earring hook or another piece of wood. For plastic a simple holepunch can be used. The edges of each piece should be sanded down as well in this step to both remove jagged edges and to further shape you’re jewelry pieces.
Step #4: Painting Pieces Depending on the look you want, the pieces can either remain unfinished or can be painted with acrylic paint. For example, half of each wooden earring piece could be painted with black paint for a minimalistic look. This is what I did for my earrings, blocking out half of the earring on the diagonal and filling this in in an alternating pattern for each piece.
Step #5: Assembly With the pliers, attach the jewelry pieces together with jump rings. Then, jump rings can also be used to connect the pieces to the earring hooks. The earrings are now complete!