Inspired by Iced Tea | We’re All Ears Challenge

The folks at Earrings Everyday host a themed monthly challenge – We’re All Ears – with a reveal and blog hop on the third Friday of the month. For July, we get to be inspired by our favorite summer drink! Doesn’t that sound like fun! 🙂

It’s pretty difficult to think of a summer drink when it’s rainy and chilly here in Bangalore 😉 but while I sipped hot tea one cold afternoon, its sister, the iced tea, came to mind. What’s not to like about a refreshing drink that readily accepts different flavors being blended in, and still maintains its inherent ‘tea-ness’ underneath!

I thought I could use the dregs from my tea for a pair of paper-based earrings… (Let the creativity flow!) And this was the result –

The pattern

I spread the dregs on a piece of paper, then quickly removed them. I then reduced the amount of dregs, then re-spread them again on the paper for a longer while, and removed them again. I repeated the reduce + re-spread + remove process a couple more times to get a pattern of smaller, darker brown specks over larger, lighter brown ones.

The beads

I cut out long right angled triangle paper strips, and made conical paper beads by rolling the strips around a thin piece of wire, using glue on the paper during the rolling to ensure the beads don’t unravel. These form the bead bases.

I then cut a couple of squarish shapes from the tea-patterned paper, ensuring that they are slightly larger than the length of the paper beads. I draped each square over a paper bead, retaining the same conical shape – but looser, like a slightly oversized dress – and made them stay put that way using glue.

I used a couple of layers of Mod Podge for some gloss, which I then reduced by lightly rubbing the beads with some fine sandpaper. Then I squished the base of these tea-patterned cones a bit, and twisted them. Ah now that’s a look I like!

The assembly

For each earring, I strung a dark brown bead through a long gold-colored head pin, then added the paper bead, and made an eye hole at the top, to which I attached an earring finding. For more interest, I added tiny pre-wired black loreal seed beads to a jump ring and attached it to the earring finding.

Yeah! I totally love this earring pair – simple, light and pretty. 🙂

---

This is a blog hop, so please check out what the other participants have made by heading over to the reveal at Earrings Everyday.