It’s almost embarrassing to write a tutorial for the red, blue and white earrings in my Etsy store. They’re so easy to make.

I started by die cutting red, blue and white faux leather. The die I used cuts three chevrons at the same time. It also makes the holes in the faux leather. So then I mixed up the colors, joined them with jump rings and added them to the earring wires. All that was left was to take photos and list them on Etsy.

The hardest part was learning to handle jump rings. They’re tiny! It’s important that they stay perfectly circular, so the chevrons can move freely against each other. It’s also important to close them all the way. If you don’t, you’ll constantly lose parts of the earrings. Ask me how I know! 😤

When you’re opening jump rings, you need to twist the ends apart from each other. When you close them, you need to twist them back in alignment with each other and the ends need to touch. The best advice I’ve heard, is to keep twisting the two ends together and apart until the ends touch. These are really fine movements and you just have to keep practicing. Fortunately jump rings are cheap. Breaking a couple while practicing is much cheaper than giving a customer a refund because their earrings keep falling apart.

Tools

It’s possible to manipulate earring wires and jump rings with just your fingers, but it’s not pleasant. Two pairs of small jewelry pliers will set you back $10-15 and they’ll make your life much easier. If I were starting over, I’d probably get a little kit with a zippered case. You don’t need to spend more than that when you’re just starting out.

You need something to cut your materials with. I bought a set of used cutting dies from Taylored Expressions. You can also get dies from Amazon for a lot less money. Here’s a set that will give you lots of popular shapes that you can use together or alone. I want to get these Halloween themed dies. I could make the kitty shapes in lots of different colors. That would be so cute!

Materials

You can make earrings out of so many materials! Faux leather is one of the most inexpensive and durable materials. Here’s a comprehensive package with lots of solid colors, printed patterns, glitter, texture etc.

You can also layer 4-5 papers plus decorative paper on the top and bottom. If you go that route, you need to glue and seal the paper. The result is super lightweight and very durable.

And of course there’s resin. I hear good things about this brand of UV resin. You cure it using a UV light. It’s much faster than regular resin. That’s important to me because shorter drying time means less time for cat hair to settle on my project. 😂 If you’re using resin on its own, you’ll likely want molds. Simple geometric shapes a are good place to start.

To turn your pretty materials into earrings, you’re going to need jump rings and earring wires. It’s nice to have a variety of colors. But what really matters is that the earring wires are nickel free.