Tag: mallet

Craft Projects, Quick and Easy Crafts

Museum Admission Earrings

Jessica Smith

Museum Earrings Cover

On our trip to Philly this weekend my little sister took us to the Philadelphia Museum of Art where we got the coolest admission tags ever. OK, I’m not a huge museum goer, so maybe all museums give this cool little things out. Either way, I thought they were super neat. Depending on the day you go to the museum, you get a different colored tag to fold over your collar. Basically, it let’s the guards know you paid to get in and are allowed to be there. Some obnoxious, snobby people like to give the guards a hard time about wearing these on their collars, but I thought they were freakin’ awesome. Pretty much as soon as we got them I called dibs on them for crafting.

Museum tags

After we got home last night, I dug these bad boys out of my purse and quickly made an awesome pair of souvenir earrings.

First thing I needed to do was to cut off the tabs. The tin was thin, so I snipped the tabs off with scissors.

Museum earrings cut

Next, I pierced a hole in the top using a rubber mallet and a nail.

Museum Earrings hole

I flattened the sharp edges with some flat jewelry pliers, then added a jump ring and ear hooks to complete my set of souvenir earrings.

How easy was that?!

Museum Earrings

Adorable, yes? I love that when I wear them I’ll be able to remember our fun trip to Philly with Em.

Love statue

Me and Em

My older sister just moved to Chicago, so I guess that is next on our list 🙂

Craft Projects, Jewelry

Spoon earrings

Jessica Smith

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:

  • Spoons (at least two if you want to make earrings)
  • Pliers
  • Ear hooks
  • Thin chain
  • Drill
  • Mallet
  • Clamps
  • Hammer
  • Metal Stamps
  • Two pieces of wood
  • Sandpaper

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!