Showflipper
Tinkly, jingly, shimmering pieces of trinkets are fun and cool. But not always do you want to be the source of that jingle at a fun party with friends during holiday season. If you desire to wear a simple yet attractive piece of jewellery, then paper jewellery should be your priority.
Paper jewellery comes with an added benefit of being lightweight and non-reactive, unlike metal jewellery that can react with your skin and leave rashes on them when worn for a long time. In this article, we talk about some paper jewellery making techniques and see how to make paper jewellery all by yourself at home.
It’s not that difficult a task and if you ever visit e-stores like ShowFlipper that sell jewelry online, you will see a diverse collection of jewellery made out of paper. Many of these online jewellery stores feature paper jewellery that looks no less than the normal jewellery collections and in many cases, you won’t even know that the main material is really paper.
If these pieces really intrigue you, you can buy them at these sites, of course, but you can create some of your own too. Here’s how to make paper jewellery step by step. We go through the materials and steps required to make a paper rose chains, a quilled paper bead bracelets, and quill paper earrings simultaneously. So read on.
Learn a bit of Origami
Every piece of paper jewellery is bound to involve a bit of origami. Papercraft is all about creating new, innovative stuff just by folding a piece of paper into different shapes and angles, after all. You must have made paper boats and airplanes as a kid, right? That is pretty much it about making jewellery from paper. Just that the shapes are newer and more complex sometimes depending on what you are going to craft.
If you are absolutely clueless about a bit of paper folding and crafting, we strongly suggest that you go through some origami tutorials first. Origami, the Japanese art of paper folding and crafting allows you to create interesting and awe-inspiring shapes just using colorful papers. Learning the art will not only help you boost your creativity, but will also give you a headstart if you are going to design your own paper jewellery.
Basic Steps on How to Make Paper Jewellery
Research a bit
After you have familiarized yourself with the minimum skills required to produce some really beautiful paper jewellery, you will need to research a bit about what exactly you are going to make. Will it be a bracelet, a pendant, earrings, or just a simple ring? You can scroll through the web to search for some designs that you can implement and then accordingly proceed ahead.
Collect the required material
Once you are through with your decision on what you are going to craft, you can start to accumulate the necessary material. Paper and glue are the two basic requirements that will be common to all the designs and crafts. Here’s a list of materials that you would require for the jewellery discussed here:
- Paper Bead Bracelet- Coloured paper, a string, glue
- Quill paper rose locket- Red and Green colored chart paper, glue, a chain (to hang the locket from), metal wire
- Quill paper glittery earrings- White chart paper, glue, silver glitter, an imitation ruby stone, glue, earring base (from some old broken earring
Put them together
Now that we have all our stuff right in place, we can start actually crafting our paper jewellery. For paper bead bracelet, start with making paper beads. Take the colored paper (any color and texture of your choice) and roll it to get a slim paper cylinder. Stick the folded edges together to fix them. Now cut the cylinder in uniform pieces to obtain small, tiny cylinders (these are your beads).
Take the string and carefully put string the beads into it one by one. Seal the ends of each bead by making them stick to the string. When you have wreathed all the beads onto your string, tie the open ends of the string together to get a cool bracelet.
For the quill paper rise locket, take a narrow strip of red paper and roll it to obtain a round, rose shape. Similarly, roll the green colored paper in the shape of a leaf. Stick the free end of both these shapes together. Now carefully shape the metal wire into a circle exactly the size to act as a frame for the paper rose. Stick the rose to the frame and attach the framed locket to a chain. Voila! Here’s your pretty pendant.
Making Quill paper glittery earrings is as easy. Just roll two narrow strips of white paper around the metallic earring base and fix the free edges of the strips with some glue. You will get nice helical shaped circles when viewed from the top of the earring base. Apply some glitter on the sides facing up and then stick the stone at the center of the circle. And there you have your own sparkly earrings.
Final Verdict
If you are tired of wearing the same old routine jewellery everywhere and are looking for something different and interesting and simultaneously plain and simple, paper jewellery can be your niche of jewellery.
Making paper jewellery is really fun when you get the hang of it and it’s easy to start with. Even if you are new to jewelry designing, you can experiment as much as you want with these pieces of jewellery for the ease of availability of the material and cost efficiency. So try making some paper jewellery at home and let us know about your experience in the comments section!
