DIY Silver & Gold Hoop Earrings

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Warning: If you love your hoop earrings, you might hate this post. I'm about to defile them by adding gold.

Here's the thing: As my going-on-23-year-old brain can remember it, Silver Hoop Earrings first became "all the rage" when I was in Middle School. Everyone had them. Some were smaller. Some were larger. But, by gosh, if you were a student at my school, you had a pair.

I even remember wearing them a big in high school. But then college... oh, college, you were the bane of the silver hoop trend. You killed it. Suddenly, I didn't see them around quite as much... and I only saw them in jewelry windows at WalMart (which I'm not judging -- didn't I just say I was there in the first place?!).

Moving forward to today... gold and bronze are big parts of my wardrobe. My favorite watch is rose gold. My David Yurman bracelet is silver and gold. I have a few bronze necklaces. It's suddenly okay to mix and match metallics like it was never okay before (or was I missing out on this trend for all of eternity? I should ask my friend Jordan over at ExclusivelyChic...).

So I realized a few weeks ago that, despite owning more than one pair of silver hoops, I was no longer wearing any of them for two reasons... (1) I just wasn't finding them cool anymore... and (2) They always felt weird to wear with other metallics because they somehow just don't mesh in their original solid-silver form.

My solution? Paint them. Using some Superlite Gold Leaf Finishes and a tiny paint brush from CVS (yes, they sell paintbrushes), I hand-painted gold-ish-bronze-ish stripes on one pair of my silver hoop earrings.

It reminds me of Dr. Seuss for some reason... but in a good way.

Here they were, naked and bare, solidly silver without a care in the world...

And here, in this tiny edge of the earring, you can see my reflection... there I am, sitting at Justin's kitchen table, holding up my trusty Nikon, just before I begin to alter everything these poor Silver Hoops know about the world...

My weapons of choice: Superlite Gold Leaf Finishes (from Home Depot), a paintbrush from CVS, and paper grocery bags to protect Justin's table.

Post-painting: The gold leafing dries pretty quickly. I'd estimate that I shot these about 5 minutes after painting. That's a darn good turn around time for a fast-paced person like me.

I know. Beautiful, right? :) I decided not to tape off my painting sections, because I wanted to retain a bit of a handmade edge to them. After all, it's jewelry... and the painting was hand done... so why not let it look that way?!

Ah. And there they are. Sitting in their home (a blue and gold jewelry bowl I just made... stay tuned for the tutorial). Rest tight, little hoops. It's been real.

DIY Camera Bag

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This year, I was determined to get to work on a homemade-yet-extremely-useful gift for my mother. We both shoot with a Nikon D5000 and had been working with fairly standard Nikon camera bags.  At the end of the day, however, those bags pose two problems. First, they're not particularly glamorous. It felt like lugging around a huge, unattractive... diaper bag. Shouldn't it feel badass to be shooting in downtown Chicago? Not when you're carrying around a diaper bag! Second, the bags were total theft magnets. I can't even keep track of how many people I know whose cameras have been stolen. Why does that surprise me when we carry around bags with NIKON or CANON written across the top? 

From now on, I will carry a camera bag that screams neither "Steal me, I have $1,000 of equipment inside!" nor "Look, a diaper bag!"  No, sir. I pledge (ha!) to carry a bag that is attractive. Chic. Fabulous. 

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