Add a touch of sparkle to your outfit with these beautiful rhinestone earrings! These dazzling statement earrings are perfect for special occasions or a night out, and they’re really fun and easy to make.
We love making DIY jewelry, and these dangle earrings are the perfect activity for a fun craft night with friends. Choose your favourite shapes and colours and make your own earrings with rhinestones!
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How to Make Rhinestone Earrings
Materials:
- FREE Printable Flower Outline
- Clear Shrinky Dink film
- Rhinestone glue
- Blue rhinestones (various sizes; or colour of choice)
- Yellow rhinestones (ss20 / 5mm size)
- 4 Jump rings (10mm)
- 2 Earring hooks
Equipment:
- Small hole punch (1/8 or 1/4 inch size)
- Dotting tool (or toothpick)
Watch the step-by-step video tutorial:
Instructions:
Step 1: Find what you need
- Gather your supplies and materials.
Step 2: Make the earring bases
- Print a template for your earring shape. We used flowers here (find the link in the materials list above!), but you can use any shape you’d like. Find more links below the tutorial!Be sure to choose a template that’s roughly 3 times the size you want your finished earrings to be.
- Place Shrinky Dink plastic shrink film on top of the template and use a washable marker to trace around the shape.
- Repeat, tracing the shape a second time for your second earring. Carefully cut out the shapes.
- Use a one hole punch to make a hole in the top center of the shape. (We used a 1/8 inch single hole punch).To ensure that the hole is centered you can mark where you’d like it to be with the marker and then align the hole punch with the mark.For two tier earrings, make a hole at both the bottom and top center of the top piece.
- Wipe the marker off your shapes with a damp paper towel, and then bake the shapes according to the instructions on the Shrinky Dinks package.Our package recommended 1 to 3 minutes at 325 F, but we needed to leave them in for close to 5 minutes. The exact time needed will depend on how big your shapes are. The Shrinky Dinks will curl up as they shrink and then completely flatten out.
Step 3: Glue on the rhinestones
- Once your Shrinky Dink earring bases have cooled, use a piece of sand paper to lightly sand the front of the earring. This will help the glue adhere.
- Add a very small amount of glue to one area of your earring base. Make sure you apply it to the side you sanded.
- Use a dotting tool or a toothpick to spread the glue into a thin layer.You shouldn’t add too much glue at one time because it dries quite quickly.
- Use a wax rhinestone picker or other rhinestone tool to pick up a blue stone and place it into the glue.
- Repeat and fill the first area with varying sizes of rhinestones. Use small rhinestones to fill in the gaps.Then add a rhinestone of a contrasting colour (yellow) to be the center of the flower.
- Continue applying glue and placing the rhinestones in one small area at a time.Pay attention to where the hole is and add rhinestones around it. Be careful not to cover or obstruct it.
- Continue until the whole base is full of rhinestones. Check for any gaps and fill them in.Repeat with the second earring and allow the glue to dry.
Step 4: Add the earring hardware
- Once the glue is completely dry, use pliers to open a jump ring and connect it through the hole on the earring. Don’t close this jump ring yet.
- Attach a second jump ring to the first. Then use pliers to close the first jump ring.
- Open the second (top) jump ring and attach your earring hook to it.Check that the hook is facing the right direction so the earrings will hang rhinestone side out.
- Close off this jump ring and repeat, adding the jump rings and earring hook to the second earring.
- Your rhinestone earrings are complete!
Helpful Tips:
- If glue smudges onto the top of your rhinestones, wait for it to dry and then use a q-tip dipped in rubbing alcohol to remove it.
- Make earrings in all one colour, make a pattern with different colours, or use iridescent AB rhinestones!
Where can I get a template to make rhinestone earrings?
For the flower earrings in the tutorial above we used the top right flower from the first image on our flower outlines post. We also used a template from our heart outlines to make another pair of earrings.
You can also check out our many free shape outlines. We have tons of shapes available that would make adorable earrings, like cats, shamrocks, butterflies, and more!
Or, if you don’t want to use a template you can trace or freehand circles, triangles, and teardrops like we did for some of our earrings. Remember, shrink film will reduce in size by 40% to 45% in size depending on the type you use.
What else can I use as a base for rhinestone earrings?
We love using shrink film as a base for our rhinestone earrings! It allows you to choose your own size and shape, and it provides a solid base for the rhinestones. But you can also cut a base from felt, craft foam, or clear vinyl.
Or you can buy metal blanks or wood blanks from the craft store. Resin or acrylic shapes also work well!
What size and type of rhinestones are needed for making rhinestone earrings?
We recommend having a variety of rhinestone sizes available to you. We mostly used ss10, ss16, and ss20 rhinestones (which are 3, 4, and 5mm, respectively), but even smaller rhinestones are perfect for filling in small gaps on the earring. For example, we used ss5 rhinestones on our blue flower earrings, which are less than 2mm in size.
Flatback rhinestones are what you need to make these earrings. Flatback rhinestones, like they sound, have a flat back with no glue attached. This is as opposed to hotfix rhinestones, which have an adhesive on the back that gets fused to fabric with a special tool.
What glue is the best for making rhinestone earrings?
We used B7000 glue, which came with one of our rhinestone kits. It works well, dries quickly, and creates a strong bond. This is very similar to E6000, another craft glue.
Or you can use Liquid Fusion or a specific rhinestone glue, like Gem-Tac.
Add a little sparkle to your life with these DIY rhinestone earrings! We can’t get enough of rhinestones around here, and these rhinestone dangle earrings are SO PRETTY! We love the glimmer, the shine, and working with them is so meditative.
Here’s even more DIY jewelry ideas:
Our book Low-Mess Crafts for Kids is loaded with 72 fun and simple craft ideas for kids! The projects are fun, easy and most importantly low-mess, so the clean up is simple!
Where to buy:
You can purchase Low-Mess Crafts for Kids from Amazon, or wherever books are sold:
Amazon | Barnes and Noble | Books-A-Million | Indiebound | Amazon Canada
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