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Dragonfly Earrings (Tutorial)

by Rena Klingenberg.

These pretty dragonflies make charming, lightweight earrings.

I found the dragonflies in the floral aisle of a local dollar store.

I knew immediately that they needed to become earrings! 🙂

Supplies:

• A pair of earwires.
• Chain nose pliers.
• Flat nose pliers.
• Wire cutter.
• Sharpie marker – for marking your pliers.
• A pair of dragonflies with embedded wires. They’re made to decorate floral arrangements or potted plants.
  My dragonflies measure 55mm (2.16″) from nose to tail, with a wingspan of 60mm (2.36″).
  They may be a seasonal item, available mainly in Spring and Summer.
  I found mine in the floral aisle of a local Dollar Tree store.
  Also look for these dragonflies in these places:
  • The floral department of craft stores
  • Florist shops
  • Plant nurseries
  • Greenhouses
  • Farmers’ markets
  • Yard/garden department of home improvement stores
  • You may also find something similar in store aisles carrying little girls’ hair barrettes, headbands, ponytail elastics, etc.

  And if your search doesn’t turn up any dragonflies, you might find butterflies or other lovely creatures to turn into earrings.

  Also – in case you can’t find pre-made dragonflies, I’m sharing tips below on how to create your own for this earring project.

Tips for Making Your Own Dragonflies:

Note: Since I purchased my dragonflies for this project, I have not made any of them. So I don’t have any photos of how to create them.

The tips in this section are simply what I would do if I were to create this type of dragonflies for earrings. 🙂

Here’s what I would do to make dragonflies similar to the ones I purchased.

Polymer clay would be an excellent, lightweight material for making the dragonfly bodies.

You could use colored clay or add colorful paint on white clay.

Glittery powders or iridescent finishes would be a nice touch.

And instead of embedding a straight wire that runs downward to the tail (which is how my dragonflies are), I would simply embed a wire through the top of the dragonfly’s head, with a loop sticking out of the top of the head.

You could use my Make a Plain Wire Loop (Video Tutorial) to make your wire loop component.

To make wings similar to the ones on my dragonflies, you could run two parallel wires through the widest part of the body, and attach translucent fabric wings to the wires.

A sprinkle of glitter or shimmer would make the wings magical.

Now here’s how to make the earrings.

How to Make Dragonfly Earrings:

First, purchase or make your dragonflies.

Here’s what I bought:

Next, we’ll need a wire loop above each dragonfly’s’ head, so we can hang them onto earwires.

My dragonflies came with a long wire protruding from the stomach, but it runs downward to the tail:

So if your dragonflies have wires pointing downward (like mine), we’ll need to make those wires point upward instead.

Here’s how to do that.

With the tips of your chain nose pliers, grasp the wire right next where it comes out from the dragonfly’s stomach:

Very gently and slowly, bend the wire upward – so that the wire runs upward beyond the head:

Now your wire should look like this:

Next we’ll make a wire loop, just above the dragonfly’s head.

We’ll want both dragonflies’ wire loops to be the same size.

So use a Sharpie marker to draw a line about halfway down one jaw of your round nose pliers:

Use the tips of your round nose pliers to grasp the wire, just above the head:

. . . and bend the wire stem over your pliers, making an angle that’s slightly wider than a 90-degree angle:

Now your wire should look like this:

Use your round nose pliers to grasp the wire tail, right at the beginning of the bend you just made.

Your wire should be resting on the Sharpie mark you drew on your pliers:

Wrap the wire tail around one jaw of your pliers in a complete loop:

Your wire should look like this:

Now use your wire cutter to trim off the remaining wire tail:

Your wire should look like this:

(Normally I would have made a wrapped wire loop for extra security, but this wire was very hard and would not have wrapped very well.)

Now you can use your flat nose and chain nose pliers to straighten and fully close the plain wire loop you just made:

Now make a wire loop at the top of the other dragonfly’s head, similar to how you made the first one:

Now get out your earwires:

Use your flat nose and chain nose pliers to twist open the earwires’ loops:

Now on each earwire, hang one dragonfly; then use your flat nose and chain nose pliers to twist the earwires’ loops shut again.

Your finished dragonfly earrings may look something like this: