Friday Faves - Earrings

Several of you, though I'm guessing not all of you, know that I love earrings. REALLY love them.
You might call it an obsession, a fetish, or an accessory imbalance. But, call it what you will, I love earrings, and I thought I would share mine with you today.

I have amassed many pairs of earrings in my life. In total I think I've got between 85-90 pair of earrings. I counted a while ago but I don't remember the exact number. Almost all of the earrings I wore growing up are gone because they were mostly post earrings, and now I tend to wear drop earrings 99% of the time. I have zero tolerance for being stabbed in the neck by an earring post. Hooks are so much more gentle on the skin behind my ears.

Keeping track of all my earrings (specifically, rummaging through them all to find the ones I wanted to wear) had become a challenge in the last couple of years, so I finally devised a way to keep them all in one place. This was the resulting crafty project.


Ingredients: One unfinished glass-free frame from Robert's, several lengths of ribbon, staple gun, staples, white paint, clearcoat. Oh, and 3M hooks for the necklaces and rings at the bottom. LOVE those hooks.

There are some changes I would make to this having now gone through the process once. I would use eyelet screws on the inside of the frame where the glass would normally sit and I would either use thinner ribbon or wire. I kind of like the way the ribbons wrapped aroung the edges of the frame, but the earrings with the smaller hooks tend to slip off the ribbon because it is too wide and flexible.

Regardless of those little issues, I have loved having this earring holder. It keeps them all in front of me, and it turns my earrings into a sort of haphazard artwork.

A couple of years ago I decided that instead of spending money on random souvenirs on trips I take (which inevitably end up thrown away, lost, broken, or being picked up by me as I scratch my head and wonder where I got it), that I would purchase a pair of earrings for each vacation I go on (or multiple pairs, if I am visiting several locations in one trip).

It started in 2005 with a Thanksgiving trip to New York City and has continued up through mytrip to Alaska this summer.

I'm not going to lie--picking my favorite earrings was a challenge, because I wear so many of them frequently and love them for different reasons. But here are some of my favorites and where they came from.

These turquoise hoops are a recent purchase, custom made by her. (I love Etsy. Seriously.) They are to replace a pair of earrings I bought at the Adopt-A-Native-Elder Program rug auction and jewelry sale in 2005. I lost ONE of them just a few weeks later and have been looking for a replacement pair ever since.

This pair of red coral spheres I purchased at an outdoor market in Berlin right outside of the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church.

I wear these earrings at least once a week. They were a Valentine's Day gift from a coworker who knows how much I love earrings. We were on a business trip together and she gave me these and a great card with a quote from Van Gogh about painting. (She obviously knows me really well and is an extremely thoughtful person.) Thanks, Gena!!

These earrings were also a recent purchase, because I didn't feel like I had any silver earrings that were really basic but still had some substance to them as far as their size. These are maybe one inch across, so not huge skanky hoops, but they don't disappear once I've got them on, either. From Target (as are most of my earrings).

This pair was a Christmas gift last year from my best friend Happy. I wasn't sure how I felt about them at first, because up to that point I almost never wore anything but silver and cool colors. Thanks Hap! (For the earrings and helping me branch out).

This pair is also from the Hapster. She got them from a woman who had a booth at the Spanish Fork Fiesta Days fair. Apparently this woman never makes the same pair of earrings twice. I love these earrings, and I get tons of compliments every time I wear them (which is pretty often because they're really versatile).

And to wrap it up (I'm sorry... who knew that anyone could write this much about earrings??), these earrings are coming my way soon. Again, these are replacing a pair of earrings (my favorite pair EVER, hands down--I wore them every day of my mission and then some) because I lost one while napping on my parents' couch. It disappeared into the depths of the cushions or elsewhere, never to be found again.

They are also from Etsy (this shop), and I am sooo excited to have found some that are so similar to the one I lost (I still have its partner in my car so I could periodically stop by Argento and ask if they were making them again).

Okay, I'm done. If you read this whole thing, you are a trooper. :)