Holiday Earrings

Before I start I'd like to offer the following disclaimers:

1. I am not a professional photographer by any means.
2. It isn't easy to take good pictures with very little natural light (Oh, how I love the grey winter days in Central New York).
3. Shiny stuff is really hard to photograph.

Okay. I feel better now.

This afternoon after putting the boys down for their naps I tackled one of the approximately 8.2 million projects on my Christmas Craft To Do List. I wanted to make something small for our local children's librarian and also for the women that watch my kids at the YMCA while I workout.

I decided on giving each lady a pair of either snowman or Christmas tree earrings. I started making these two years ago and they are very simple to put together. I won't get in to how you bend and wrap the head pins here (there are tons of tutorials online if you want to learn). I will show you the tools I used and the sizes of the beads (all the beads I used are Swarovski - very sparkly).

Tools:

Supplies Needed for Snowmen:

For Trees:

Finished Products (ooooh pretty):

Those trees were especially hard to photograph. I don't normally use the 12mm Margarita beads. Our librarian is a big fan of bling though, so she'll appreciate the extra bit of sparkle.

Here you can see the difference in size between a tree with the 12mm bead on the bottom and one without. The taller one is still only about three-quarters of an inch tall, so it's not outrageously large (I actually think I might like the 12mm version better).

Of course you can go nuts with the color combinations and even use crystals on the snowmen in place of the pearls.

So there you have it, a quick and easy way to add a little sparkle to your holidays.