My love of chonky earrings is undeniably inherited from my aunty, on my father’s side.

And the love of stained glass is probably linked to her husband, who used to make stained glass art.

So let’s call these the Rowe earrings.

A while ago, I saw lumie glass on instagram, and immediately fell in love with the shiny beauty of it all.

I’m very much the person who tries to pick up all of the random hobbies… and then never really gets into them enough to do them properly (but has at least a bit of a go).

Determined to try my hand at some stained glass design, I bought a pile of ‘glass offcuts’ from someone on Etsy. They came, bounced because no card was left by the Post, came again (I paid), and then bounced again because the Post got confused about the second sending and sent it back 1 day after it arrived.

Anyway, after multiple postage payments, I eventually got a pile of glass, which I diligently sorted into sizes and shapes.

And then, I got some copper sticky tape and took up my soldering iron, solder and flux, and made these little guys:

Which, ok, immediately broke the first time I made them.

Mostly because I was soldering anxiously (I’ll do it outdoors in the future, instead of just trying to ventilate everything inside), and didn’t fix the copper tape quite right around some of the corners.

Plus, I didn’t file/sand the glass to make it fit perfectly, but instead chose to rely on a ‘close enough’ method of tessellation (the concept of ‘glass dust’ also makes me nervous).

To fix them the second time around I had to completely strip and resolder one of the earrings, and decided to also add some support to the top of the other.

Even so, it’s all a bit of a mess, the copper is not completely covered in all parts (nor is it even across the front and back of the glass), and I got frustrated by one of the half-soldered-on rings slipping around and ended up dousing it in super glue.

But you know what? Still cute.

By the way, if you’re wondering why I’m always looking down in photos, it’s because I’m looking at the camera view via my phone using the bluetooth and modern magic.

Technology is wild y’all.

Eventually I’ll work out the posing part.

Made early Jan, 2023, then fixed May