Rose Earrings

After folding a few sets of dangly origami earrings, I wanted to create a pair to be worn as studs. Each is made of four pieces, the flower itself, the calyx (the leafy stemmy bit that the flower sits in!), and the two leaves.

To make these durable enough, I coated them with a few layers of clear nail polish diluted with 100% acetone. I had done this on previous ones, and I think I diluted it too much, as when applying, some of the color on the rose began to mottle and run. Though it still looks quite nice :3 I diluted it to get it to a thinner consistency so that it would more easily flow itself into the delicate paper. After this, I did a coat of Army Painter's Anti Shine Matte Varnish on the flower, as the nail polish makes things extremely glossy (as you can see on the leaves). This was originally made for tabletop miniatures, but it works fantastically here! Having the matte finish also seemed to make the surface texture of the flower appear smoother. I think I will try to find a glossy varnish and apply that to the leaves to see if it will smooth out the surface texture.

For the metal stud part, I harvested them from some plastic earrings that I no longer wore. I affixed them with CA glue, which turned out rather messy. It was a thick gel one, which worked to my disadvantage, taking a long time to cure. I might remove them and clean off the glue best I can and affix them with two-part epoxy. I wanted to use materials on hand, but I think the epoxy would be better suited to the task.

Designs

• Kawasaki Rose - Designed by Toshikazu Kawasaki. I like Paper Kawaii's video on it. For larger versions, a design with less precreasing can be used. ~3.5?cm paper. I can't recall exactly!
• Calyx - From Origami 手工折纸 Design #3 in linked video, from ~3cm double tissue paper
• Leaf - From Origami Master Class: Flowers from ~2cm double tissue