Last week's
post about duct tape flowers reminded me about another duct tape project that
I've been meaning to try. I found the instructions for these duct tape
feather earrings on a blog and thought that it was such a cute and fun idea. I
decided to recreate the earrings, but with a couple of differences in
hardware. For the project, you need duct tape, two fish-hook earrings, two
crimp end connectors, scissors, and a pair of pliers, preferably one with a
small nose.
First, you
take a piece of duct tape and fold it over on itself so that the sticky sides
are together. My pieces are usually only about 6 inches long but you
can always make it longer depending on the size of the earring you want to
make. Now, you cut a feather shape out of your duct tape. You can either just
freehand it or you can trace a feather shape on the duct tape with a pencil.
Make sure that your feather has a small stem or tail at the end of it to attach
the crimp end connector to later.
Next, pick up
your scissors again and make a bunch of small cuts around the edge of the
feather. Make sure these are angled upward and that you cut the bottom of the
feather also. Now you're also going to cut out some of those strips and
leave large openings to make the feather look more like a real feather.
When you're done cutting, give your feather a little twist to open up those
slits a little more.
Now the piece
of stem that you left on your feather gets put in the middle of the crimp end
connector. The connectors that I used have two flaps that fold into the center
to crimp the connector to whatever you put in it. Using the pliers, fold these
two pieces in to cover and overlap the piece of feather.
Now you can
open the loop at the bottom of the fish-hook earring with the pliers and simply
slip the connector on to it and close it back up again. All done!
These
earrings are great for a trendy pop of color that's really affordable. Make
them with just one feather or add another, smaller feather in a different
color. Pretty neat, huh? It's amazing how versatile duct tape is becoming with
all the great colors and patterns that they've brought out. I hope you like it!
We'll be doing demonstrations
for these earrings at our Enchanted Lake store for the remainder of the month,
and remember, you can always drop by the store to see the samples of our
projects for great ideas and inspiration.
Puna @ Enchanted Lake
