Mini Hummingbird Feeder Earrings
Introduction: Mini Hummingbird Feeder Earrings
Summer means Hummingbirds where I live. They buzz around incessantly, stopping for mere moments for a quick drink at our hummingbird feeders.
Hummingbirds are so beautiful, and so are most hummingbird feeders. I had been meaning for a long time to attempt to make hummingbird feeder earrings so that a tiny little hummingbird could stay at my mini feeder earrings as long as I cared to wear them.
It took some scrounging around to figure out what to use for my hummingbird feeder, but when I found my supplies it was super simple. Join me and you can have a hummingbird friend at your "hummingbird feeder" all year long.
*A quick note: Unfortunately, I don't think this project is suitable for polymer clay as the basis of the feeder is plastic and could not undergo the baking process that polymer clay requires. Some bold person may prove me wrong by baking their pieces and then attaching them to the plastic, but please don't put the plastic in the oven.*
UPDATE: <PERSON> is that bold person; she used polymer clay for hers. She adhered the pieces after baking. You can view hers in the Made It! section down by the Comments section.
Supplies
1. Two transparent red pushpins or tacks
2. A good pair of wire cutters (or pliers with wire cutters included)
3. Metal file ( a file for filing metal)
4. Thin wire ( I used 26 gauge wire for this, but you could just strip two bread ties or twist ties - the wire should measure about 2 1/2 to 3 inches)
5. Round nose pliers (or flat nose pliers - for manipulating the wire)
6. Needle or pin or stylus tool or any other small pointy object for modeling the clay
7. A tiny TINY amount of yellow clay
8. Glue that will stick to plastic (I had success with Gorilla Glue Super Gel)
9. A tiny amount of white air dry clay
10. VERY thin gauge wire (I used 36 gauge - this wire is so thin it resembles metal hair. about 3 or 4 inches)
11. 177
Metallic paints in white, grey, green, and red
12. Black paint
13. Tiny brush for painting (optional)
14. Varnish
15. Brush to apply varnish
16. Tacky glue or Mod Podge
17. Earrings hooks
Step 1: Disassembling the Pushpin
Taking the red pushpin, use the wire cutters to snip the metal pokey bit off as close to the base as you can.
BEWARE: do this in a "controlled" environment because the two pieces will most likely go flying across the room and you DEFINITELY don't want to not be able to find that dangerous pokey piece!
Discard of the pokey bit properly. I mean, don't just throw it in the trash can. There is the possibility that it could poke through the bag and injure someone. Wrap it up in duct tape and then throw it away.
With the metal file, file the nub left on the pushpin base as much as you possibly can. This will take a while .....
But you will finally be done!
If you don't want to try to file the whole thing down, just file the nub until it is no longer sharp. It is totally fine. That's what I did because I didn't want to damage the pushpin.
Step 2: Assembling the Hummingbird Feeder: Attaching the Hook
Now that our pushpin is a "hummingbird feeder" it needs a hook.
With the thin wire (the twist tie, bread tie, or 26 gauge wire), lay the push pin on the wire. The part that once had the metal bit should be laying across the wire as the new top of the hummingbird feeder.
Cross the wire ends over the pushpin middle, wrapping tightly and criss crossing the wires. Wrap the wire twice, then put a bend in both of the wires when they are on opposite sides from one another. This bend should be as close to a right angle (or 90 degrees) as you can get it to be, making the wires now go straight up to the flattened top of the pushpin.
Now bend both the wires over the pushpin top and toward the middle, where the nub was (or is). The wires should reach each other in the middle.
With the round nosed pliers, bend the end of one wire into a loop. Take the other wire and wrap it around the base of the loop as well.
Now you should have a hook for your hummingbird feeder. 177