One New Thing #6: DIY Leather Earrings

One New Thing #: 6

What: DIY Leather Earring Workshop with Molly of Molly Virginia Made

Where: The Broad, Richmond, VA

Cost: $100 + eventbrite fees

Fave thing: Crafting my own Chic Stripes x MVM earrings! 

On this week’s One New Thing, I died and went to fashion heaven. In Richmond (and dare I say way beyond!) Molly Virginia Made earrings are a work of art, easily recognizable in the best way, and seen on “the cool girls” everywhere, according to one workshop attendee.  

I purchased my first pair of these handcrafted leather earrings a few years ago - they are HUGE, bright turquoise and literally work with everything in my closet.  I’ve been eyeing another pair for a while now, but just hadn’t found one I wanted to add to my minimal wardrobe.

Cue - a workshop! As soon as I caught wind of the workshop, I saved the date and signed up. Now, this wasn’t a cheap workshop at $100 -but knowing that the price of Molly’s larger earrings were in this range (and I love a big statement earring), it was a no brainer for the chance to do it myself and have a really fun, new experience.

A few things about Molly - she started her business by crafting hand dyed marble leather bags and wallets and accidentally got into earrings when her cousin suggested that she make her a pair with all of her scraps. Scraps she had been trying to get rid of for ages! Little did she know that earrings would become her new, next best thing - craved and collectected by women everywhere. 

I went into the workshop knowing I wanted a white pair. I felt that would be a good addition to my collection - something I could wear with most things in a black, brown, gray, navy, and maroon closet but provide a great pop - just like turquoise drops. 

When I walked in, we were immediately greeted with a table full of colorful and neutral leather scraps and told to dig in to find things we liked. I was drawn to the white and then had a moment of inspiration - how cool would it be with a pop of neon yellow?? YES. 

As we were thinking, Molly instructed us to ask ourselves a few questions: Where did we want to wear these earrings? To work, something fancy, or every day? Did we want them to be a statement or more neutral? These helped a lot of us figure out colors, patterns, and size. 

From there, Molly showed us her own sketchbook of designs - her first step in creating - while assuring us we didn’t need to be artists. We pulled out pens and got to drawing and it was really helpful for me to take the vague ideas out of my brain and get them down on paper. I went a step further and cut out my paper design so I could visualize the design in certain positions before taking scissors to my leather. 

I soon had the size and primary color picked out. And then… I got stuck. My great idea of a a white earring - think: long skinny stick attached to an oval white section with a smaller bright yellow pop in the middle… only reminded me of a hard boiled egg.

This would not do. 

Once I saw it - I couldn’t UNSEE it. The best part was everyone around got a good laugh and helped me think through what I could do to fix it. 

I really wanted to stick with my original colors but also didn’t want something with too much contrast- black on white was too much, grey on white too not me. Eventually I came across a dark green shape that was edged in black that I felt would be perfect. But again, I wasn’t sure! I felt it had too many colors and I couldn’t think of how I would wear it in my wardrobe. I LOVED the look of it - it reminded me of Marni earrings which are to die for - they are just full of fun, bright funky colors and shapes. So I went with it! And I ended up loving them and wearing them the next day for girls night. 

The whole process was super involved - from sketching, to picking the scraps, to seeing what patterns and colors played well with each other. We then cut them out, glued everything to a black leather piece to provide more pop, binder clipped them together to seal the glue, put on earring backs, glued another leather piece to that, dremeled the edges, then glued the edges to smooth it all out and create a really unique professional piece of art to wear!

For someone who doesn’t like arts and crafts, I’ve been doing quite a few of these for ONT. However - something I really enjoyed about this was def making my own leather earrings, but understanding the TIME, thought, and creativity that goes into each pair that Molly makes. The hardest part was thinking of a design that would be wearable for me - I have a good idea of what I like and don’t like, but a lot of times taking that from the abstract to the practical can be challenging. For some reason I can do this very easily with clothes, but have a harder time when it comes to creating art, or decorating my home. I guess I’ll just rely on and buy from the pros!