Recently at a family party I noticed that my sister in law had a pair of really cool looking earrings on that appeared to be made out of pop tabs. I have seen bracelets and purses made out of pop tabs, but never earrings. I thought they looked really cool so I asked her where she got them and she said that Josh (her husband) made them. I was quite impressed and figured that if he could make them then I could definately make some. I checked out a few different tutorials on how to these earring and then decided it was time to start creating. Here's my tutorial for making these cool and creative earrings. Hopefully it makes sense and if not please feel free to ask any questions!
Pop Tab Earrings
What you will need:
- Hammer
- Sandpaper
- Nail Clippers
- Cardboard or a scratch block of wood
- A tac
- jump rings
- beads
- 2-4 Pop tabs (If you want some color instead of the plain metal color get some tabs off of energy drinks)
- Earring attachments
Step 1:
Bend the little tab back on each of your pop tabs and sand the area after.
This is what your tabs will look like. For this tutorial I'm doubling up on the pop tabs, but it is ok to just use two. I have a picture of another pair I made just using two tabs at the bottom of this post.
Place your pop tab on your cardboard or other hard surface. I had a little scrap of wood that I used. Place tac at the top of the tab and pound with your hammer until you feel the tac go through the tab. Do the same thing on the other end of the tab. Sand the backs where you just made your holes if necessary. If you are using two tabs for each earring you will want to put them both together and hammer the tac into both of them at the same time so that your holes match up.
Step 3:
Grab a jump ring, open it up with some pliers or nail clippers wide enough to place through the hold at the bottom of your tab(s) and then pinch it shut to close the gap.
Attach another jump ring onto the jump ring you just attached to the pop tab, this time placing a small bead onto the jump ring and putting in on to face the opposite direction of the other jump ring. Pinch it together.
Step 5:
Attach a jump ring at the top your tab. Make sure to pinch it shut. Next, add another jump ring making sure it faces the opposite direction. Attach your earring onto this jump ring and make sure to pinch this ring shut.
Step 6:
If you don't mind your earring being simple you can go ahead and skip this step, but if you are like me and are totally not into simple then go ahead and add more jump ring and beads onto the sides of the tabs. You can add as much as you like:)
You now have a cool, trendy, new set of earrings to show off to the world!
This is another set I made using a total of two pop tabs instead of four. A positve thing about doing double tabs is that they can be reversible so you get "two pairs" of earring in a sense. They are a little more time consuming though. I think I got the single tab earring set done in about a half hour. The double tab ones take about 15 minutes longer. This was my first time doing these too so I'm sure the more you do the faster you get.
You can find this awesome post linked up to the following Fantastic Parties:
1 comments:
Tiffany I love these!! good work
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