I sold Scrabble earrings at last week’s fair and I realized I never did a post about them. They are easy to make and fun to wear.
To make them, clamp your tiles to a piece of wood and drill a small hole in the center. Then, feed a thin wire through the hole. Twist one end around the other, then form a loop out of the other end and wrap back down the wire. Attach an ear hook, and you’re done!
I was a crafting machine this weekend and tackled a project I’ve been meaning to try for some time now: spoon stamping! I have a bunch of old, silver spoons sitting in my craft room (not sure at this point where they came from) that I was able to break in half pretty easily, and from there went about flattening and stamping both the spoon and the handle.
What you’ll need for this project:
First off, break your spoon in half! You can bend it back and forth until it breaks, or get it started with wire cutting pliers. Both ways work. Both ways are fun. After all, who doesn’t like to break stuff?
Your spoon will be rough where the break occurs, so sand the edge until it is smooth.
Then, place your spoon onto a piece of wood.
Sandwich your spoon with another piece of wood and tap on it with a rubber mallet to flatten in out.
Once it is flattened, take the top piece of wood and tap your spoon with a hammer. This will help flatten it out even more. Note: My spoon is all sorts of wobbly in the middle, which I really like. I didn’t try to get all of the wrinkles out.
With my spoon flattened, it was time to stamp it. I bought a small set of stamps off of Amazon, so I pulled those out and got to work. It was pretty easy… just place your stamp where you want it and hammer gently. If you hammer too hard, you’ll see little circles around your letters.
Once your letters are stamped into your spoon, you can fill them with sharpie and then clean off the excess with a dryer sheet or a jewelry cleaning sheet. Both work remarkably well for cleaning up old silver.
Next up: drilling holes. Clamp your flattened and stamped spoon onto your piece of wood and drill through the tops using a small drill bit. My electric drill is MUCH better at doing this than my cordless drill. When your holes are drilled, attach them to ear hooks (I used chains to do this) and your spoon earrings are complete.
If you have cool handles too, you can turn them into earrings as well using the same process.
Happy Tuesday!
So we survived the storm, phew! Looks like Maryland didn’t get hit as hard as expected. I’m stunned by the photos of New York and New Jersey and hope everyone stays safe up there.
My Dad lost a big tree in his front yard that luckily didn’t fall on his house. We don’t have power, but there’s no real damage to our house — we’ll live!
All of the rest of my family is safe, to my knowledge. Thank goodness! I did manage to make a bunch of jewelry yesterday before it got too dark outside. I pulled our sofa up to our bay window and a nice little work station. Check it out… I strung black chain along with the beads! And it is aqua. Love it.
*crossing our fingers for power back soon and thanking our lucky stars that our house was unscathed*
A Smith of All Trades 