Stamped Paper Charm Earrings

First, let me warn you. Stamps are like beads: You can never have enough. However, for this project, you only need one. You can find stamps at most craft stores or even your local Wal-mart.

You’ll need:

white card stock
1 small stamp (your choice)
black in pad
*colored pencils
**scissors
corsage pin
2 ear hooks
2 head pins (or eye pins)
2 jump rings (about 5mm)
choice of beads
wire cutters
round nosed pliers
flat nosed pliers

*I found a set of colored pencils at my local dollar store.
**Cuticle scissors work well for cutting out small shapes from paper.

1. Press you stamp into your black in pad, and then press it onto your white card stock. Use a firm motion, and do not rock it back and forth or your impression may smear. If you don't press firmly enough, you won't get a complete impression either. As you can see the stamped image below isn't quite right. So, you might want to practice on scratch paper first.

2. Use colored pencils to color in your stamped image. For my hearts, I used red in the middle and pink for the lace on the outside.

3. Cut your stamped image out as close to the outline as you can. Here the curved edges of my cuticle scissors come in very handy.

4. Repeat steps 1-3 for another "paper charm."

5. Use the corsage pin to pierce a hole through the top of each charm making sure the holes are in about the same spot.

6. Open a jump ring and carefully put the ring through the pierced holes of one of the charms. The card stock is pretty thick, so it shouldn’t tear.

7. Use pliers to close up the jump ring.

8. Repeat steps 6 & 7 so there is now a jump ring in each paper charm.

9. If you use head pins, cut off the pin ends, and use round nose pliers to curl the ends of both head pins thus making them into eye pins, but don’t close the eye. If you use eye pins, use round nose pliers to open the eyes a little.

10. Slip the charm onto each eye pin, and close the eye around the jump ring.

11. Slip on your choice of beads onto the pin.

12. Bend the pin tops over in an L shape, and trim off excess if needed. I usually have to cut off ¼ to ½ inch.

13. Use round nosed pliers to curl the ends.

14. Slip on ear hooks, and close pins around hooks.

I’ve found the card stock holds up pretty well. However, if you want to seal the paper, a stamper suggested the following technique to me:

1. Tap on embossing ink.
2. Sprinkle with Amazing Glaze available from Judi-Kins
3. Use about three layers of glaze.

One extra nice touch to add is to stamp a matching card and hang the earrings inside. Just use the corsage pin to pierce the card, and hang the hooks through the holse. What a great gift!

Here's a printer friendly copy of this file.

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All graphics created by Tammy Powley.

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