Festive Snowman Earrings Tutorial

(This post is part of my Frosty Festivities 2015 Blog Event – see a list of all the posts HERE)

Good morning! Today I’m sharing a tutorial for some festive snowman earrings – something to make for yourself, or as a DIY gift to give away this Christmas!

How cute are they? I love Christmas jewellery – you can see a special trinkets box I decorated to keep my winter jewellery in HERE, and some Christmas tree paperclip earrings I made last year HERE. I can never have enough, as I like to wear a different item of festive jewellery every day in December if I can manage it!

These little snowmen could also be adapted to use one as a charm for a bracelet or keyring, or as a pendant, if dangly earrings aren’t your thing!

To make these earrings you will need: white Fimo or other modelling clay (standard Fimo is better than kids Fimo if you have it), black and red acrylic paint, a tiny paintbrush, round-nose pliers and wire cutters (mine is a 3-in-1 tool), 2 head-pins, 2 fish-hook earrings, ALSO not pictured – 2 jump rings, a black fine sharpie or other permanent pen, and optional extras of Blue Tack, white acrylic paint, and varnish.

Step 1: Pull off four balls of Fimo. I used Kids Fimo as it’s what I happened to have, but standard Fimo is better if you have it – Kids Fimo is softer so it’s easier to mould, but it also means it shows fingerprints more and is easy to knock out of shape while you are working. Two of the balls should be larger and two smaller:

Step 2: Push the larger balls onto the headpins first, then the smaller balls. Shape the smaller ball so it has a pointy top:

Step 3: Make a couple of teeny-tiny balls for the pom-poms on top of the hats:

Step 4: Bake the Fimo according to the instructions on the pack. Mine took 30mins. Leave it to cool, then paint a red hat onto each snowman:

Step 5: When I was painting the hats I realised there was a lot of dust / tiny fibers baked in to the surface of my Fimo. I think this was because it was Kids Fimo, which does seem to be a bit stickier than standard Fimo. You can just about see them here:

Because of that I decided to paint both earrings with white acrylic paint, which worked a treat. It only took one coat to hide the dust!

Step 6: Once the white paint was dry I painted on the eyes and coal buttons with black paint, and used a fine black Sharpie to add the smiles. If you make any mistakes with the black paint you should be able to wipe it off while it’s still wet, using a baby wipe or damp paper towel. I attempted to paint the mouths several times before giving up and using the Sharpie pen!

You can also see above that I used Blue Tack to hold the earrings while I was painting them and while they dried.

Step 7: Use wire cutters to chop off the excess wire – I acutally cut mine a bit short – you need about 6 – 8mm of wire showing at the top:

Step 8: Use the round nose pliers to curl this excess wire into a hoop shape:

Step 9: Then you just use the pliers again to attach a jump ring and earring hook to each snowman. You can add a layer of varnish if you want to, I didn’t bother as they were just for me but I probably would if giving them away:

I’ve just noticed one of the mouths is a bit smudged, maybe I should have added varnish after all! Ah well, I doubt anyone will notice when I’m wearing them!

Be Inspired:

Make some festive earrings or other jewellery

Add a little red hat with a white pom-pom onto a character on your next project

Put together a snowman by paper-piecing or another technique

Here’s a snowman I paper-pieced onto a card years ago, cutting his hat and scarf out of patterned papers, so that’s another idea for you if you don’t want to make jewellery:

Remember that commenting on this post, and any post that goes live during November 2015, will count as another entry into the Grand Giveaway {NOW CLOSED}, but only if you’ve registered your interest in winning that prize right HERE!

I’ll be back tomorrow morning (8am GMT) with the next Frosty Festivities 2015 post!

I hope you have a great day,

Jennifer x