17 July 2014

Stained glass Glasgow Rose earrings


Charles Rennie Mackintosh and many of his contemporaries used a rose design that came to be known as the "Glasgow rose". It's a simplified rose design, which I discovered worked really well for these stained-glass style wire earrings, which are quite simple to make!

You'll need:
Thin silver-coloured wire
Nail polish in a red or pink colour (I used Bordeaux by Essie)
Earring wires
A pair of jewellery pliers would be useful, but not essential, as, if the wire is thin enough, you can bend it with your fingers

1. Bend the wire into two rose shapes, each about 1.5cm across. Start at the middle with a triangle shape, and work outwards from this as shown in the diagram, until it forms a circle. Try to make sure there are lots of points where the wire touches, so that the segments that need filled with nail polish are small. Leave a length of wire to support the rose as it dries.



2. Load up the nail polish brush with plenty of polish, and hold it behind one of the open areas of the rose. It might take a few attempts to get the polish to cling. Leave each area to dry before doing the next. To support the rose as it dries, you could stick it in a blob of blu-tak.

3. When they are completely dry, bend the ends of the wires into loops, and attach to the earring wires! If the nail polish covers the wire at the front, you can try gently removing it with a cotton bud and nail polish remover.

5 comments:

Alice said...

Ahhh this is amazing! I wasn't expecting the magic ingredient to be nail polish, but it works so well!

Stephanie | Make and Tell said...

Oh these are SO pretty! I love how easy it looks - I'll have to give them a go this weekend :)

Emma said...

Thank you Alice! Stephanie - I can't wait to see them if you make them!

The Beading Gem said...

Sweet! I love the Glasgow Rose style.

Jean said...

I like what you have done.going to try this real soon. Ty for sharing

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