I knew I had fallen into a rabbit hole when I first started laser cutting. The ideas I have were coming faster than what I could manage. It takes a lot of time to prepare, laser cut, design samples, photograph, upload them to my Etsy store and blog about them!

I first started out with wood frames in classic shapes. These are tabbed holes which allows me to reduce the width of the wood.  Even with the single holes, designers like Laura Martin who kindly shared her picture with me, found a way of using jump rings to connect a charm and thus fill that space!


Designed by Laura Martin
Where there is a will, there is a way!  I, too, found another way to connect charms - the jump rings in this earring design do not slip as the tab keeps each from doing so.

There was clearly a use and demand for double hole frames as one of the first buyers, long time blog reader Sneaky Burrito, also suggested it.

So there are now smaller double hole frames for earrings  - ovals, squares and round ones!  I love the combination of natural wood color with metal. The charms I used were courtesy of TierraCast.  The ocean theme charms come from their Natural World collection. (For retail see these vendors)  These are high quality made in the US charms - I particularly love their fine silver plated ones.








You can also use other charms - perhaps polymer clay ones that you make.  I experimented with metal tags stamped by my friend Rocpoet - these were glued to laser engraved discs.

Stamping by Rocpoet

Shown here is my full collection of larger double hole frames for pendants and statement earrings.


Seashell Charm by TierraCast
available here.
As we can paint or stain wood frames, the colors make designs pop like this dragon and double hole pewter charms from TierraCast's Jade Collection. Notice how I connected them all so that the whole focal remains in the front - clasps will NOT slip to the front.



I love flowers so naturally (pun intended), there are also floral wood connectors!  The new ones join the lotus connectors such as these :



These are small enough for earrings or dainty necklaces. TierraCast has many small tag designs. The ones shown with the purple earrings below are called Chinese Lu (prosperity) charms. You can get them here.



If you look closely at the unfinished daisy designs below, you will notice score lines around the floral center. I put those in as an option. You can wear the designs either with the score lines showing or without as shown in the triple daisy necklace above.

I used white acrylic paint and metallic gold acrylic paint for the daisies. The purple floral connectors were done with water based stain. Please see the links below for more tips on how to prepare the wood connectors.

Just one word of caution. Some sealants do give a yellowish tint to white paint -  a couple of culprits were the water based varnish by Saman and also their natural beeswax wood conditioner. I found that out the hard way!  I had to repaint the daisies and use an artist spray varnish.


All double hole connectors are 10% off from today until Sunday November 3, 2019!

Before You Go :
Photography

 I used  my iPhone 8+ in natural  light for most of the above pictures.. I used  the Orangemonkie studio which comes equipped with LED lights - for artificial light photography in my windowless basement studio. The Foldio2 is particularly affordable. I use the Foldio3 with the extra light bar because I need the room for tutorial photography.  

My online class Easy Guide to Smartphone Jewelry Photography is now available. Read more about it here.  

Disclosure
This blog may contain affiliate links. I do receive a small fee for any products purchased through affiliate links. This goes towards the support of this blog and to provide resource information to readers. The opinions expressed are solely my own. They would be the same whether or not I receive any compensation.
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Original Post by THE BEADING GEM
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