Jellyfish Earrings (recycled Plastics)

We always have plastic jars at home that probably end up in the trash instead of being recycled. In this tutorial, I want to show you how these plastics can be transformed into a piece of sustainable jewelry. We can create unique and fun jewelry while creatively helping to prevent environmental pollution.

For this project, I selected clear plastic and wanted to recreate a beautiful jellyfish with very large tentacles to create these beautiful earrings, which are sure to turn heads.

I hope you like my way of creating earrings using recycled materials.

Materials

1. Clear plastic bottles
2. Gold wire
3. Colored beads and seed beads (white, blue, and clear)
4. A candle or lighter
5. A needle

1. Recycle clear plastic jars. These can be from dish soap, all-purpose cleaner, degreaser, etc. Any jar will do, as long as it's transparent, since this tutorial will show you how to make jellyfish-shaped earrings, and one of their main features is their transparent tentacles.

2. Wash and disinfect them thoroughly.

3. Once they're dry, use a craft knife to make cuts to remove pieces of plastic. As you can see in the image, the jar I chose had too many curves and a lot of texture in some parts, so I made the cuts on the front and back of the jar, where the plastic could be best used.

4. Make two circles, the first one, which will be the top part of the earring, will be 5 cm in diameter and the second one, which will be the piece that goes underneath, will be 4 cm.

5. Make strips: 4 strips of 7 cm, 2 strips of 6 cm, and 2 strips of 11 cm.

6. With a candle and the help of the fire, hold the strips at each end and pass them slightly close to the flame, twisting the strips so that they take on a spiral shape; these are the pieces that will give the appearance of the tentacles.

7. Now, using a lighter, do the same along the edges of the circles, passing the flame around the entire edge briefly and making quick passes with the fire, until the piece takes on the desired shape of the top of the jellyfish. After passing the flame along the edges, quickly pass the flame under the circle to curve the piece slightly, as shown in the images.

8. Using a needle, make holes to pass the wire and the pieces of the jellyfish earring through.

9. Cut a 12 cm long piece of jewelry wire, into which you will insert the beads or seed beads you have selected. I first arranged them according to how I wanted them to look and then glued them with cold silicone where I wanted them to be permanently placed. You can also fill the entire wire with beads or seed beads, but I wanted to play with the wire and the beads and thus create a design.

To finish assembling, take the gold wire and make a hook clasp at one end. Since each piece has a small hole, begin threading the pieces onto the wire in the order shown in the images. Start with one of the tentacles, then the wire with the beads and seed beads. Close the loop and twist the wire to continue adding the pieces. Next, add a blue bead, then one of the small jellyfish head pieces made with the circles in step 5, followed by a small clear seed bead, another blue bead, and another small clear seed bead. Attach a gold clasp (I chose this one with a seashell design) and finish by closing the clasp with the wire and cutting off the excess. This will give you some cute jellyfish earrings.