Cat Got Your Chain

Making sweater clips from earrings

As mentioned in other blogs Tim and I took a trip to Joann's where I picked up a few supplies for this project.

- a suitable chain

Oh wait, that's all that I needed. Yay!

What I had around the house:

-two extra small 1 inch alligator clips which I had left over from a past project
-a pair of large round cat earrings I bought in Alameda from Modern Mouse, a store which features Etsy sellers

I got together my supplies, chain, alligator clips, earrings, tacky glue, glue gun, and tweezers.

Comparing the chain length to other sweater clips I own I determined the length where I wanted to cut the chain in half. I did this manually by pulling apart the chain and twisting it, working it around where the chain links. Having the chain link open, I was trying to wind it through the hole in the alligator clip but the open chain link was too small so I simply placed it over the edge of alligator clip and glued it with tacky glue then waited a day for that to set.


While I was waiting, I attempted to take the backs off the earrings. This is where I ran into problems. Do I really want to destroy these earrings for the sake of a sweater clip. As a sweater clip I would probably get more use out of them... I've had these earrings for over a year and have never worn them. They are heavy on my ears and are so big... but they are cat earrings... maybe one day I would want to wear them... Ah! So I got the idea that maybe I can find the same round cat piece minus the earring backing from Etsy especially considering that the store I bought them from features sellers from Etsy. I was happy to find this guess to be true. So I waited a week for my cat cameos to come in the mail.

Now with the arrival of my cat cameos I am ready to complete this project.

I hot glued the chain attached to the alligator clip previously tacky glued on. In hindsight I should have just super glued it on in that beginning step and foregone the two glues. Also because the chain link which attaches to the alligator clip was so small it was kind of overkill to use the hot glue.

Last, I used the hot glue gun to glue the cat cameo to the alligator clip. I think here hot glue was probably the best thing to use since the alligator clip does not fit flat against the cameo.

 

Here is the finished project. Pretty spiffy if I do say so myself!