Serviette rings are in style

While I keep an eye on the trends, it’s rare that I’d actually follow them. But that doesn’t mean I’m not inspired by what other people wear. I love seeing how other ladies style themselves, and recently fell in love with this look on Sea of Shoes (I hope it’s OK to post the image here? I am not claiming it as my own so I think copyright-wise it’s alright).

I love everything about this look – anyone of any age could wear it (or a variation of it – grey instead of pink for the cardigan, for example… but I’m sure you can use your imaginations!) and as most of it is from op shops, it’s within anyone’s budget, unlike a lot of the designer outfits that Jane wears on her blog (which I love too, of course!). Anyway, what attracted me most about this simple outfit were the shiny things, as usual – yes, those huge gold earrings. Even though I have more than 100 pairs of earrings I don’t have any gold ones of this size, so I decided to try to make them instead. Off I went to the op shop, and what did I happen to find but these raffia (? some kind of straw-like stuff anyway) serviette rings for 50c each.

Yes, obviously these are the finished product, I didn’t buy the serviette rings with earring clips already attached, but I didn’t take any “before” shots as I was in too much of a rush to see if my DIY idea was going to work. And it did work! See?

All I did was use a thickish, sharp needle to poke a hole through the straw from the outer edge of the ring to the inner edge, then I inserted quite a long eye pin and bent it back under the inner edge like so (just imagine the earring is not attached yet):

I then used pliers to open up a jump ring and pass it through the hole of the eye pin…

… and at the same time placed the jump ring over the clip on a clip-on earring.

Using the pliers again, I closed the jump ring so that it couldn’t fall off the earring clip – and that was it! Of course if you have pierced ears you can attach serviette rings like these or whatever you want to dangle from your ears to earring hooks instead.

And the gold part? Well, I was going to paint them gold and I’m still considering it, but in their natural strawlike state they seemed to match the Asian touristy kitsch thing I’ve got going on in the hall of my apartment at the moment (most of which is also from op shops).

If you consider how infrequently you use serviette rings (personally, um, never??) and therefore how many must just end up in op shops or dining room drawers, this is quite a cost-effective way to add to your accessory collection – if you don’t wear earrings but like this look you could just thread a serviette ring onto some leather thonging or run it through a scarf and wear it around your neck. Go and raid your op shop (or your mum’s fancy tableware drawer) and give it a go!