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!**

Refurbished Earrings

Have I mentioned how much I adore cheap things?

I know, everyone loves a deal, but I feel like my relationship with cheap and discounted stuff goes deeper.

That's why I had a minor freak-out when I saw these at Target for 36 cents.

Yes, that's right.  Cents.

The reason they were so cheap was that one of the gaudy blue ones was broken.  But that's fine.  I'm not a glittery sparkly kinda person.  Whenever I get clothes with rhinestones on them I end up picking them off.  I figured I could do something with those earrings, though, and worse case scenario I had a cute pair of flower studs.

 Here's what I ended up doing.  I've seen a lot of earrings like this lately, and they're really simple to make (especially when you already have the basic shape).

 First, I knotted my string of choice around the top of the wire earring.  Tie tight and trim the string.

Then I strung beads on the green string.  I decided they'd be a cool detail, and my roommate (who was half asleep throughout the entire craft time) said it would be okay.  I'm still not sure about how the beads make it all look, but obviously I decided to go with it.









Bring the string straight down and wrap around the bottom of the wire earring, through the hoop space.














You're going to then bring it back up the back and wrap around again.

 When you decide there must be a bead, just leave it where you want it while wrapping.  I almost did them randomly (what am I saying, almost?  I remade this earring dozens of times before I decided this was it), but then decided to add a bead every other wrap around.  It sort of made a paisley design that I dig.

 Wrapping, and wrapping, and wrapping...

And here it is!  All wrapped up!  Just tie another knot at the top and you're set.

 I think mine is much more wearable.  I like the fuller look of it.  Nicole told me it looks very hippy, and when I was modeling it I was wearing a necklace that she decided to critique.  That girl gets very critique-ie when she gets back from class...

I'm happy with how they turned out.  When modeling them, however, I came to the realization that I really don't wear earrings frequently.  Maybe these sweet pieces of bling will change that!

And here's the reason Nicole came back so late tonight.  How cool is it that she's taking glass blowing?  She comes home and cranks up the AC because of it, but I feel like that's fine as long as she keeps bringing awesome stuff back into the apartment.  I'm a fool for the whale, and am impressed at her attempted apple-turned-bell-pepper.

Leave me some love in the comments!  Any ideas of how to make these earrings WITHOUT cheating by using a broken earring form?