Acrylic Earrings

I made my first laser cut acrylic earrings a couple years ago when I took a fabrication class in grad school. I would wear these earrings all the time because I was lazy and they kinda went with every outfit. I would give them to friends and bring a few with me to networky events and if someone complimented them, I would give them a pair.

Even though I still really love the design, I got a bit tired of wearing them all the time and I didn’t want to keep making the same thing over and over again. When Yaz asked me to vend at Heavy Heart’s one year anniversary show, I was delighted and honored and I wanted to create something new and special for the special event. 

I sketched out this initial rough design in my sketchbook. I liked the idea of a heart weighing down another heart. I put a gap in the bottom dangly heart so that it could be looped through the upper heart.

When I put the design into Illustrator, I realized there’s quite a bit of empty space that could be easily utilized. So I quickly designed a couple smaller hearts with a star icon similar to my previous dangly star earrings.

I tested the design out on some spare clear acrylic and realized the gap in the heart outline looked stupid. I decided I could just repeat the non-gap design and attach the bottom dangly heart with a jump ring instead.

It was fun coming up with different combinations for the little hearts and big hearts and the pink hearts and the iridescent hearts. I made a total of 8 big dangly earring pairs, 10 charms, and 4 pairs of smaller less dangly earrings.

I am probably most proud of how I constructed these overlapping double hearts. They dangle very happily and always manage to fall back into place together. They remind me of a great song called Two of Hearts by Stacey Q.

I buy my materials from my favorite store in New York City: Canal Plastics Center.
I’m working on a song right now that goes like:

Canal Plastics Center is in lower Manhattan on the border of Chinatown and Soho. They have a great wide range of plastic materials at affordable prices. My favorite is the iridescent acrylic, although I really love the fluorescent colors as well.
If you have the time and are looking for a good meal in the area, I would deeply recommend getting some pho and a thai iced tea at Pasteur Grill and Noodles at 85 Baxter Street.

One of the benefits of my full-time job is that I have access to a makerspace with a laser-cutter and other cool fabrication machinery.
My tips for laser-cuttin’ are:

- don’t be afraid to take your time and run a few tests on spare material
- remove any adhesive protective film before you put the material in to the machine
- if you have a bunch of small pieces, once the laser is done cuttin’, throw down a layer of tape on top of your plastic before you remove it from the machine so that you can take it out all in one piece

I feel like there’s not much else to say about laser-cutting other than that it is extremely satisfying to watch the laser cut the acrylic. Watching the little flames leap up and lick the acrylic, the thick sweet toxic burning plastic air filling up my nostrils. I imagine the bright hot laser cuttin’ into my brain like how it’s cuttin’ up that plastic. And it brings me peace.

Overall, it took me about a couple hours designing and laser-cutting and maybe three or four evenings of watching season two and a little bit of season one of AMC’s Interview with a Vampire and assembling the pieces.

Season two of IWAV was sooooo good, it got me watching 2 hour Youtube deep dives on why Louis is Like That. The acting and writing is stellar, there’s so much drama, and the plot is very engaging. I feel like I haven’t seen a good series like IWAV in a while so thank you to my dear friend Sarian for begging me to watch it!

Here is a ticket link to the Heavy Hearts show on November 16 at Trans-Pecos !
Come thru if you’re cooooool. And wear a mask!
I’ll see you there !

AS ALWAYS :
FREE PALESTINE ,
FUCK FASCISM ,
FUCK ICE ,
KNOW YOUR RIGHTS