Earring collection + How I make my handmade earrings

Here is my collection of earrings, both bought and handmade!

(In order of upper left-upper right-lower left-lower right)

• Red doodle children earrings - These button-charm things I found at school; My teacher regularly picked up free junk craft supplies for bulk to use during art class, and I made some cute earrings with them! The charms were tricky to fasten on the earring though, since the loop on the charm was rather thick.
• Golden flower earrings - Bought at Five Below, one of my go-to pairs.
• Black sun and crescent earrings with blue gem - Bought at Hot Topic and are a great accent piece for my cooler-tone outfits.
• Miniature gummy bear stud earrings - You can barely make them out, but off-camera they are a shimmery translucent pink color. I was gifted them from Claire's.
• Large transparent smiley face earrings - Gifted from Spirit Halloween. I kind of wanted this plastic baby parts earring set, but opted for something I would probably wear more often.
• Handmade Lemon Demon earrings - This probably ties with my handmade Peeps earrings for being the most difficult to make, but I don't wear these earrings as much anymore.
• Handmade Peeps earrings - I chose yellow and white for the colors to match a Peeps shirt I have, which have white and yellow Peeps on them.
• Handmade Oreo earrings - My first handmade earrings set! Super cute, and I still wear them to this day.
• Handmade banana-plantain earrings - I wear these for my bright warm-tone outfits.
• Handmade s'more earrings - I made these when I was on my s'more craze. I remember eating, like, two s'mores a day, since I have an indoor marshmallow toasting appliance, lol!
• (Not pictured) Thin silver hoop earrings - One of my closet staples, of unknown origin.

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Now it's time for me to explain my process of making handmade earrings!

1. When I have a rough idea in my head of what I would like to make, I simply take some Sculpey III of my desired colors and start rolling them all into balls to soften the clay, mixing clays together for any colors I don't have. (Before touching a new color, I wipe my hands with a baby wipe to avoid color contamination.)
2. I start making the earrings, I guess. If you want any tips, I really just mold primitive 3D shapes first and see how I can pinch or flatten them to make the shape I want. (ex. For the Peeps, I made two spheres, pinched one end to make a teardrop shape, and fold the thin end over to make the beak and tail of the Peep). If I wanna blend two pieces together, warm water usually helps a lot.
3. I skew in metal eyelets for where I want the earring to dangle at, and leave them in while baking.
4. I bake my earrings as directed on my clay packets (for Sculpey III, that'll be 275 degrees Fahrenheit for 15 minutes per 1/4 inch of thickness, which universally translates to 16-20 minutes for typical earrings in my experience). If I'm not too sure on how long I should bake them, then I shoot for underbaking them rather than overbaking.
5. Once I take the earrings out of the oven and let them cool, I take out the eyelets, add a dab of jewelry glue, then quicky reinsert the eyelet and let it dry. I also am sure to let the glue take about two hours to dry, even if the glue says it "drys fast."
6. Finally, I take some pliers and fasten the eyelets onto some earrings, add some earring stoppers (???), and I rock them! :-)

I hope my process helps someone else on SpaceHey make their own earrings. DIY jewelry is always really fun, and fairly inexpensive!