Monkey Fist Knot Earrings

 

Guys!  Guys!  I made earrings!

I love the monkey fist knot, and have been wanting to make a pair of earrings with them especially now that spring is officially here!  What better time to work on them while watching "New Girl"?  They were so easy to make, too!

I'm going to try to walk you through the monkey fist knot, but if you get annoyed with me you can go here for a pretty legit walk through.  Other than inserting a marble, his steps are pretty much identical to mine.

Take your piece of string and loop it over two fingers.

Wrap the string around your fingers three times.

Take the end of the string and stick it through the loops you've made, bringing it out the back.

This is what it looks like when you bring the string through to the back.

Wrap around your first loops three more times, so you have a sort of cross going on.

Notice that the string you've just wrapped divides your first wrapping in half- a top half and a bottom half.  Keep that in mind for the next step.

Here's the tricky part of this project.  Bring the string through the top half of your loop, and loop it through the bottom half.  Do this three times, just like you did for the other loops.

And this is what you have when you're all done.  Wait, what?  This doesn't look a thing like that knot!  Don't worry- I've got you covered.  Now you'll need to gather all of your patience, and tighten up the loops so that they'll get into that nice, circular, monkey paw shape.

Tightening...

Tightening...  Takes a lot of maneuvering, but keep with it!  Don't give up!

And here we go!  This looks a lot better.  At this point I almost stopped and made a necklace, but I decided to not allow my laziness prevail.

Take one of your loose strings, and pull tight.  Like, super tight.  Snip off the string as close to the knot as you can, as shown here.

Then, loosen the strings a little bit until the end you clip is inside of your knot.  Be careful not to work with it too much, just enough to make the end disappear.

Repeat.

And you have a monkey fist knot!

Grab a jump ring and your favorite earring hook.  Push the jump ring through one of your loops, and attach the earring hook.  After this, I applied some fabric glue to keep everything in place.  I'm not sure how well these hold up, but I figure the fabric glue will help keep it all in place.

Repeat these steps for your second earring, and you're all set and ready for the beach!  Is it summer yet?

I wish I could figure out how to take a clear close-up picture. But this shows you about the size.  Perfect for a pair of accent  earrings!














Whew!  Two posts in one night!  Although so far I have no views on my last one...  I have a great craft planned for this coming weekend, although I feel like I might not be able to resist doing it sooner.  Make sure you check back!


**Update- I wore these all day today, including about an hour long 60mph drive with the window down, and they held up perfectly.  No longer worried about their lasting power!**