#30dayglowup - Day 9
Gorgeous, simple hoop earrings for around £1 an earring? Let's find out how...
I’ve been a
bit of a piercing connoisseur since I got my first non-lobe piercing around 7
years ago, and I’ve learned a lot along the way. My total expenses on both
piercings and earrings (especially hoop earrings) must be well into the hundreds
by now, and I do have a bit of an acquired taste when it comes to the jewellery I
like. Silver jewellery is my one true love in life and I’ve always been drawn to
it but if you visit any piercing shop and ask for silver you will most likely
get titanium because it’s very safe for piercings and good for healing them.
However, I do not like the darker, duller titanium colour compared to the
white-silver look of sterling silver. I also don’t like ‘sleeper’ style earrings
with the thinner section to close it because these aren’t the gauge you tend to
be pierced at and so your piercings may heal over slightly, and because I have
a tendency (bad habit I should say) to fiddle with my hoop earrings and having a thinner
section tends to cause irritation.
Things I look for in my earrings:
- Light, reflective silver
- Continuous ring (no jewels or ball closures)
- Dainty and not chunky
With these
being A. difficult to find and B. retailing for around £5-£10 on Etsy (meaning with
my 12 ear piercings it could cost £60-£120, not including postage), I had to
find a better alternative.
And that
leads us to this post today – I recently went into a YouTube deep dive about making
you own jewellery and I’ve discovered a way to make many earrings for much cheaper.
Disclaimer
Piercings,
especially through cartilage, are very sensitive and very easily irritated. PLEASE
be careful about what you put into your body; make sure it’s clean and not sharp
or doesn’t have any rough edges. I am not responsible if you don’t take precautions
with your jewellery and your piercings react badly, but if you are careful this
can be done safely and is a way of getting earrings for cheap.
Pricing
For working
out the price I’m going to assume you have the basic DIY tools that I already
had dotted around, if not my apologies it will cost a little more upfront (the
same in the long run however). I bought a ring mandrel (£9.29) and 20-gauge sterling
silver round wire half hard (£13.95 for 1 m), totalling £23.24 (these were
purchased from @SJJewlerySupplies on Etsy). If you take an 8 mm diameter hoop
which I’d say is about average, its circumference equals around 25.12 mm or
2.51 cm. 100 cm (in a meter) divided by 2.51 cm equals 39.8. Let’s say you
scrap a few trials runs and there’s some extra waste here and there, you’re
still getting at least 30 hoop earrings for around £25. Now this is a ballpark
figure because shipping may be different or you have to order more tools or
maybe you already have them, but it still works out for around
1 hoop earring for £1
Not bad
right?
Things you’ll need:
- Sterling Silver Round wire half hard
(You can choose your gauge – I did 20-gauge)
- Jump ring mandrels
- Ruler
- Calculator (You can use your phone)
- Wire cutters
- Hammer
- Metal file (You can use a nail file,
but it might get worn down too much)
- Something to sterilise your earring
(I used rubbing alcohol)
How to:
1. Measure your wire and cut
The size of
your hoop depends on which piercing you’re planning on putting it in and your
personal preference. For me, I like 6 mm in my tragus, 8 mm in my cartilage,
daith and rook and 10 mm in my conch (these all fit pretty snugly). These measurements
are the diameters so to get the circumference you multiply by π (around 3.142).
Example: 10 mm conch hoop x 3.142 = 31.42 mm (3.14 cm)
You then
cut the wire at the point that you've measured.
2. Shape your hoop
You want to
use your ring mandrel to wrap the hoop around it. I initially use my fingers to
get that first shape and then use the hammer to get it into place. This bit is
a little fiddly and awkward and it probably the most time-consuming part, but
it’s important if you want your hoop to be the correct shape.
If you’re
struggling here are some tips:
- Clamp the ring around the mandrel so it’s easier to hammer it
- Try gentle pressure with plyers to get the ring tighter
- Try and do it slowly with gradual changes instead of all at once
3. Open out your hoop the correct way
You want to
open your hoop so that it resembles a spiral shape and not just pull it outwards
as this will ruin your hard work in creating the shape, like so:
These last 2 steps are very important for the health of your piercing!
4. File down any sharp edges
The ends of
your hoop should be blunt and smooth – you don’t want to cause any damage to
your ear by stabbing it unnecessarily. File the whole way around the end until
it’s smooth to the touch and there’s not possibility of it hurting you.
5. Clean using a disinfectant
Think about
how many grimey tools you just used on this earring – it’s going to be covered
in germs and not beneficial for your piercing whatsoever. Get some rubbing alcohol
or a disinfectant and thoroughly clean your jewellery before it goes anywhere
near you piercing. This is super important as, especially if you’re piercing is
new (Although please don’t change if it it’s less than 6 months old or your
piercer says otherwise!) you don’t want to be exposing it to germs and risking
the possibility of infection.
To conclude:
That’s it!
To close it you just bend it back into place once it’s in your ear so that the
ends meet. You can do this with any color of piercing not just silver, the Etsy
shop I recommended above is great for any type of jewelry you want. Again, please
please be careful with your piercings and take care of them – if they’re looked
after well, they can look amazing, but you don’t want any issues with them,
which I’ve learned the hard way. When you put the jewelry in be very gentle and
try not to irritate your ear as much as you can – I find it easier for someone
else to do it for me a lot of the time.
If you’re
unsure about this method or your own skills, you can still try it but don’t put
anything in your body that you’re not fully comfortable with. I would say you
can use this method to make a nose ring, but I tend to prefer the half open
hoops with the back at the end (if that makes any sense) for my nose because,
as I said before, I have a bad habit of fiddling with my jewelry and my nose is
pretty sensitive. Let me know how you find it if you have a go though I’d be
very interested to find out.
Thanks for
reading! This marks day 9 of my #30dayglowup series which I hope you’re
enjoying so far (Drop me a message if you have anything in particular you want
me to post about!). For me, piercings and jewellery are a huge part of my
confidence and when I’ve had to take them out in the past for sport it has
thrown me, so I see them as a vital part of my glow up journey. When someone
has cool piercings, it does tend to be the first thing I notice about them as
well – I personally just love how they look especially when they’re been done
well!
For the future I do plan on getting more, but
for now I’m pretty settled with this method of getting jewellery that I like,
even though it is a bit time consuming. I’ve also had a bit of a love affair
with rose gold for the past year or so (It’s so much easier to get matching jewellery
when it’s all one colour), but silver is really my true love especially seeing
it on tanned skin or deeper skin tones. I am still open to purchasing jewellery
though if I want to invest, so if anyone has any shop recommendations let me
know, especially if it’s cheap but high quality! I will say however I do have a
strangely deep knowledge of jewellery Etsy shops and I see a disturbing amount of
jewellery shop ads on a daily basis (shout out to cookies), so I do know a fair
amount about these things.
Please
message me via any of my social media accounts or comment below if you have
questions, and let me know how you find this if you give it a try or have any tips!
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