As my regular readers would have noticed, my blog has been quite slow for the past few months.  In fact, I went almost two months without posting at all!  I announced in my latest newsletter that this was because we are expecting our third child, and as fellow mothers will know, you are pretty much forced to slow down in pregnancy, especially in the first and third trimesters!  Now that I am halfway through pregnancy, I am starting to get back to some work and hope to be able to post once a week and build up some extra posts for those last few weeks of pregnancy and the first few weeks after our baby is born.  I have really missed quilling and hope to get to some fun projects in the next few weeks!   While I work on those, I thought I’d continue to share some collections of my quilled jewelry that have not been shared yet on this blog.  They are not new, but they are not recorded here, as they should be!

So today I am sharing my collection of retro circle jewelry, some of my favorite designs!

This style of design came about from a customer request.  I first made this simple pin, in several different color combos, for a local craft fair:

retro circles paper quilling pin - Honey's Quilling

Afterwards, a fellow crafter contacted me to make a special order, a pin for someone.  They wanted it to be larger than this one, with a more random scattering of circles.  This is what I came up with:

 

green retro circles paper quilled pin - Honey's Quilling

The customer was very pleased and said it reminded her of a retro sort of design.  And the retro circles designs were born!  I made several sets of earrings in different color combos, and then branched to pendants as well.  They are a lot of fun to make!  One fun thing about them is that unless you are following very specific instructions or you make a whole bunch at the same time, they will all end up unique and different.

These first three you see are the first three pairs that I made.  The red ones have always been my favorite (red is my favorite color!) but they are all great.  These three were sold long ago.

I made this fun rainbow and black combo for myself – it matches so many outfits!

Here is a more recent pair, which is for sale in my shop. The two shades of aqua plus black is a very popular color combo!

This pair was a custom order.

Pretty pastels!  This pair is available here in my shop.

This pretty yellow pair was a custom request from my youngest sister.

These fun orange and brown ones were made specially for the tutorial for this style of earring.  Click here for the tutorial, or click here to purchase this pair of earrings.

Hearts

My mom is the one who came up with the idea of making the retro circles design into a heart shape.  She wanted a blue one for herself, and then I made several others as well. Most of the ones here were sold long ago, but the ebony and ivory heart is still in my online shop.  If you would like a tutorial for how to make this heart yourself, click here.

This ebony and ivory heart is one of my favorites – a gorgeous classic!  It is available in my Zibbet shop.

earthy pinks!

Pretty in pink!

I made this one with rose and rose with silver edge paper.

This is the original blue one for my mom.

Small Retro

I love the look of the original large retro circles earrings, but sometimes smaller earrings are nice, so I made these as well.

These cute little rainbow ones got bought so soon after I listed them in my shop that I hardly got any chance to admire them.  At least I have photos!

This cool set is made with black and black with touch of silver paper. The earrings have been sold, but the pendant is still available here in my shop.

The other pair of black and silver earrings sold so quickly, that I made another right away.  This pair is available here in my shop.

Pendants

I made this green triangle retro circles pendant for a Christmas collection one year.

This is a pendant I made as a custom request from a customer.  The silver border is so pretty!

This was the first retro circles pendant I made.

This pendant was a special order with mauves and blues.

Variations

I wanted to make some retro circle earrings that I could duplicate the exact size/shape of, so I created this design.  Customers can then order it in any color combo and know that the shape/size will be the same! Click here for the tutorial, or click here to purchase these earrings.

I made the same design in a grey/black/white color scheme as well.  Click here for the tutorial, or click here to purchase this pair.

Here is something a little different – fitting the retro circles into a pre-formed paisley.  You can purchase these earrings here in my shop, or learn how to make the paisley design with this tutorial.

Are you interested in making this style of earrings for yourself?  I have an instant download premium tutorial on Etsy and Zibbet that shows not only how to make these random retro designs, but other retro circle style designs as well.  Once you learn the basic techniques you can totally customize them to make them your own unique designs!

paper quilling tutorial quilled retro circle earrings pendant

Sealant for the earrings

For those are wanting to make your own earrings, you’ll want to make sure they are sealed to be sturdy and water resistant before using them as jewelry.  Click here to read all of the posts I have about sealant. OR if you want a quick answer and product names, I would suggest this:

  • Start by using a liquid sealer that will soak into your earring and make it nice and stiff.  I suggest Ceramcoat All Purpose Sealer (click here to read a review post with tips about this sealer)
  • Finish with a topcoat to make your piece water resistant and sturdy.  I recommend either PPA matte, PPA gloss, or Diamond Glaze, though there are others that work well also.

Stick around, there is lots to see around the blog!  Here are some places to start:

  • Click here to view free paper quilling tutorials!
  • Click here to view paper quilling tips and tricks!
  • Click here to view a list of places to buy quilling supplies around the world!
  • Click here to view some of my own quilling projects, with tips so you can make your own if you’d like!

*All products and supplies mentioned in this post I purchased and/or made on my own.

*This post contains some affiliate links, and some non affiliate links.  If you purchase products through the affiliate links I get a small percentage (at no extra cost to you!).  I only link to products that I believe in and/or love to use myself.  Thank you for supporting my blog!