Earring Charms

What was the inspiration behind this project?

Originally I designed these earring charms as a Secret Santa gift and l loved them so much that I decided to make them in every colour that the iForge had in stock.

I wanted to design charms that could easily be cut using acrylic scraps so they would be completely free. I mostly took inspiration from Pinterest where people had made similar designs using polymer clay.

I began experimenting with more designs including hearts for valentines day, and fairy wings which took advantage of the engraving features of the laser cutters.

As a fairly new iForge rep I found this a perfect opportunity to learn how to use CAD software like fusion360 and understanding the ins and outs of the laser cutters and their associated programmes. It was a perfect project to familiarise myself with design and manufacture.

What did you use when making this?

The first earrings I designed were flowers which I did on Fusion360. These were very simple to do using the circle and circular pattern tool.

I then exported the sketch layer as a dxf file and cut them out of 3mm acrylic using the smaller laser cutter in the iForge. This was because I found when I used the larger laser cutter, the earrings would fall through the slats before they could finish.

It was as simple as that, I then easily threaded them onto my hoop earrings and with multiple designs and colours, I could swap them out whenever I felt like a change and have a completely new set of earrings!

The earrings I used to thread the charms on were found on Amazon a set of 4 different sizes, in gold or silver, for an affordable price and good quality.

Did you enjoy this project?

I had a really fun time designing and making these earring charms in the iForge. I particularly loved coming up with new ideas such as using the engraving tool of the laser cutters to get the beautiful marks on the fairy wings. I was also inspired by my Secret Santee to layer up the different designs such as the pink flower and red translucent heart for valentines day.

I have already begun coming up with more ideas for charms such as stars and other wing types like dragonflies or butterflies. I also look forward to seeing any new colours of acrylic in the scrap bins of the iForge that I can take advantage of. I'm excited to think up more design ideas and build up my collection.