How to make earrings from food containers

Earrings from food containers

I showed how to make a tribal inspired necklace from old plastic packaging a few weeks back. see here This week I show how I made two pairs of earrings from the leftover packaging from that DIY.

You can use most plastic containers. They are firm, hold a shape well and are easy to cut. They are also not too heavy – particularly important for earrings. I used packaging from our Cauldron vegetarian sausages for one pair of earrings and the other was made the packaging from a falafel container. But don’t rule out heavy duty foil packaging. You could roll the foil and make cylindrical shapes.

More earrings from packaging

First up – give your food containers a good soapy scrub to remove any grease and allow to dry.

Next you need to decide what sort of shape you’re after. Geometric shapes are much easier to cut and lend themselves to current trends. So maybe play around with combinations of triangles and squares. Like the necklace I made a few weeks back – see that here – I first cut shapes in paper and juggled them till I was happy with their size.

Perfect packaging for this DIY

I used ordinary scissors to cut these, however cutting with a Stanley knife and a metal ruler might have given neater lines. Since I don’t have one here in the UK, I had to cut carefully. To make the holes, again a punch would have been great, but I don’t have one here either. So to make the holes I first used a thin sewing needle and then a thicker wool or tapestry needle to widen the holes.

If you decide to use more than one shape and connect them together you also need a few O-Rings. And of course you need some earring hooks.
Once you have cut and connected your shapes, add a pair of earring hooks to you earrings and your earrings are ready to wear. 

For more ideas for DIYs and recycling anything from sheets to electrical cable into fashion items visit the Greenie Galleries at the top of the page. And you can show and share you DIY creations on the Greenie facebook page. 

Till next week.

Greenie.