I don’t usu­al­ly wear nail pol­ish. I actu­al­ly don’t own any nail pol­ish before this. I don’t real­ly like how it feels on my fin­ger­nails, if that makes sense… Though I do like see­ing it on oth­er peo­ple’s nails.

And it’s spark­ly, and comes with built-in brush­es! It’s the best craft mate­r­i­al ever.

So! I had an idea to turn some hum­ble but­tons into spark­ly ear­rings with nail pol­ish. And it worked!

Fes­tive and spark­ly but not too flashy, and VERY sim­ple to make. Makes a nice last minute gift too :) It will take more than a minute though, the dry­ing in between takes a bit of time. So I would do oth­er things in between, like sleep, go to work, eat, watch TV, work on oth­er crafts, etc. Do refrain from sit­ting there and watch­ing it dry, like I did when I made the first pairs, because I just could­n’t wait to see how it would turn out! Noth­ing wrong with that. Except for the headache that the nail pol­ish fumes gave me :S

I made a cou­ple of pairs for the phys­i­cal shop and some as gifts :)

I used:

Nail pol­ish — a metal­lic opaque colour and some glit­tery vari­eties (I got these from the dol­lar store for $2 each)

Ordi­nary round buttons

Ear­ring posts and backings

E6000 glue (or GOOP works well too, from my experience)

Gloss acrylic var­nish (not pic­tured, because I don’t think you need it, I just have it on hand. It can be bought at art sup­plies stores and craft stores. I got mine at Michaels)

What I did:

Glue ear­ring posts on but­tons with E6000. Let it dry/cure overnight.

Stick the ear­rings on a piece of foam (I used a new kitchen sponge). Paint on first coat with opaque colour. Care­ful­ly put on a good, thick lay­er with­out it spilling over the edge. The nail pol­ish will sink into the but­ton holes and dents will appear, so just put on more thick coats after the each coat is dry to the touch (about half an hour), until the dents disappear.

And now put on thick coats of the spark­ly colours. I did 3–4 coats, wait­ing about half an hour between each coat, build­ing up a bit of a dome shape, like so…

I fin­ished off by paint­ing a thin coat of gloss acrylic var­nish around the sides of the but­tons and a lit­tle over the top, just in case the nail pol­ish peels off the but­tons, like it would on fin­ger­nails… but I don’t actu­al­ly think it would peel off with such thick lay­ers of pol­ish. But just in case.

And ta-da!

Sim­ple, right? And would­n’t it look awe­some with dif­fer­ent shapes but­tons, and dif­fer­ent colours of glit­tery nail pol­ish? I’ve seen some that comes with star-shaped glit­ters! If you do give it a try, I would love to hear how it goes!

Wish­ing you a very hap­py weekend!