How to make stud earrings

I made little stud earrings from glass head pins a while back. You can find that post on the Greenie Galleries at the top of this page.

Been wanting to make stud earrings from buttons for a long time. I quite enjoyed perusing the button section of various shops looking for buttons to use. The options are endless – fun animal faced buttons, bright coloured flowers, pretty stones, shells, crystals or pressed metals to name a few.

Button Earrings

I also looked at beads and other items in bead and craft shops. Don’t forget you can always buy FIMO or any other polymer craft clay and make your own shapes. They come in a range of colours including neon, which means you can tackle the bright colour trend with a cute pair of DIY earrings.

What you need to make button earrings

So finally I got around to making these button stud earrings. Here’s how.

You need: –
a pair of stud earring posts or clip-on earring bases
a pair of small buttons
pliers or wire cutter to remove the shanks –  if your buttons have shanks
a file to file down the shank after you have cut it to ensure a sooth surface for glueing
two part adhesive glue

To make: –

Keep the buttons upright using adhesive tack

I decided to press the front of each stud into a piece of Press Stick or Blu Tack and then press the adhesive tack onto a flat board.

That way I could ensure the buttons remained upright while I glued the posts to them. However this may not be the best idea as the tack removed the coating on the pearl buttons and I had to bin them. The others were fine but if the glue should run down the sides of your button the tacky adhesive will be stuck fast to your buttons. Two part adhesive is far less viscous than Superglue and doesn’t run all over the place.

If you buttons have a shank, then you have to remove it and file down the area where the shank was until the back of your button is smooth. This is so the earring base fits snugly to the surface of the button. Smooth surfaces also ensure successful glueing.

Once you have your buttons ready, mix your glue and pop a drop onto the back on the button. I use a match stick and mix the glue on a piece of cardboard such as old food packaging. Using your pliers pick up the earring stud base and set it onto the glue before the glue dries. Leave to dry as per the manufacturers instructions and your earrings are ready to wear.
Voila!

Visit the Greenie Galleries at the top of this page to see photos of other DIY projects. And you can like projects on the Greenie Dresses for Less facebook page.

More next week.

Greenie.