Accord - #35-38: the cork earrings (4 sets)

One of my recent thrift store finds was a bag of corks from wine bottles. Two things occurred to me when I purchased it: Why haven't I been saving my own corks? And: What the hell am I going to do with all these corks?

Here, for starters, I have sliced up one cork for earring pieces and one cork can make about four sets of earrings. Working with cork was more of a bitch than I had anticipated, but it mainly just takes patience when it comes to inserting needle tools and pins or else the cork will just fall apart.

For this first pair, I used an xacto knife to cut out a tracing of a circle. I then sealed with a matte sealer prior to inserting eye pins and beads.

I wanted something a bit more abstract for the second pair and knew that wire wrapping had to somehow be involved. The pictured thread didn't end up being used and instead the beads were on an eye pin that was inserted into the cork, which had a layer of orange acrylic pain and sealer applied. Purple wire was used for the wrapping and I have since learned that I really need to purchase thinner wire of better quality because the thick and cheap stuff is horrible to work with. 

For the third pair, I wanted to get away from doing bead-drop because it seemed like an easy design crutch to lean on. I used stretchy flexible bead wire (for the first time) to attach a strand of beads to an eye pin inserted into a cork which had a layer of turquoise acrylic paint and a purple stamping.

This last pair was a hodgepodge of buttons, wire, beads, and painted cork. I am currently experimenting with washers and washer oxidation (more on that in future posts) and wanted to use the design of a washer sized frame for the cork, but that wasn't necessarily a washer. Buttons seemed to work and I like the aesthetic of the mixed materials for this set.