Wearable Paper Earrings With Mandala Design by Iryna Stuperska

Hello, My name is Iryna Stuperska, I am Ukrainian living in Greece. I am designer and owner of an Artisan Jewellery brand "Narikella Jewellery". I am self taught artist and I take my inspiration from music, places I travel and meeting different people. I would like to share with you a very unique and special design that I have created living on volcanic island of Santorini. It represents and symbolizes a new life after eruption. I use black base paper to represent the black volcanic earth and gold edges to represent new beautiful life that comes after. I worked on geometry and calculated every level of a flower we will build together, therefore you just need to follow my instructions.

For the Mandala Earrings we will need:

• quilling paper of 3mm, 120 gsm
• quilling tool(needle)
• white glue
• water based sealer
• ruler cm or inch
• scissors or fish line cutter
• brush size 0 to 1
• 2 earring hooks
• 2 jump rings size 0.5mm (0.19inch)
• 2 tools for jewellery making

In order to make pair of Mandala earrings we will need 76 stripes of 5.5 cm / 2.15inch lenght.

I am using black quilling paper with gold edges, you can use any paper you have available in 3mm / 0.11 inch width.

Now as we have prepared our paper stripes, we will need to use quilling tool to make 26 coils like on a photo and glue the edge to keep them closed.

Keep using the quilling tool and roll the paper stripe in to coil and let it open, so we have 48 circles with diameter of 0.6cm / 0.23inches. Glue the edge to keep the size.

With hands only, please, take the circles (0.6cm) you made and press it on one side to make teardrop shape as on the photo. You need to do so with all 48 circles.

Using the needle of the quilling tool, please make 24 teardrops with left and 24 teardrop right tale as on the photo.

If you use gold edged paper make sure you have all teardrops look at you from the gold edge.

Now that our elements are ready we can proceed to create the Mandala design itself. Use moderate amount of glue and glue together 7 coils between each other in to a little flower(please see photo). You need to make 2 flowers with 7 coils each. Put aside and let them dry well.

Start gluing teardrops in to the heart shape. What is important here, is to apply a little amount of glue on a tip of a teardrop. You want their sides to be separate but tips are connected, please see photo. As they dry, press with your fingers on the connected tips and form heart shape.

We are ready to form the mandala by connecting all elements.

Connect now little flower (center) with heart shaped elements. Important: you do not need to glue heart between each other but only the thin tip that connects with little flower(center). Second photo shows how it should look like after gluing 1st level of hearts.

Continue gluing thin tip of the rest of the heart shaped elements in to already glued hearts as on the photo number 3.

The last you glue is 12 closed coils (6 each on every design) between the hearts as on the photo 4. Let it dry few minutes.

Congratulation the biggest and the hardest part of our tutorial is done. Now we will cover our design with sealer to make it wearable and last. As an alternative to the sealer, you can use Mod Podge glue for decoupage (matt or shiny). Please, apply if from both sides in moderate amount. Let it dry for 15 minutes and then do the same with the edge of the design. You will know that its dry as our mandala will become harder and not sticky.

Important: different sealers offers different level of protection and hardening, so you may need to apply it one more time. This you will understand after touching your dried design, it has to be strong an hard. Please use only water based sealers to prevent allergic reactions.

Our mandalas are dry and now we will use jump ring, earring hoops and 2 jewellery tools to make earrings. Open the jump ring with the tools and insert in design where coil is to connect mandala with the hoop earrings.

I use darker stainless steel hoops and jump rings to make them look harmonious with black/ gold mandala as well as durable and non allergic.

After connecting your design do test your earrings and enjoy wearing them. They like to be stored in nice little box before going to sleep or taking shower.