By Maddie Garvis//
Like many others, Dani Casey found herself stuck at home and without income due to the COVID-19 pandemic in mid-March. Casey is a junior, double majoring in Elementary/Special Education at Hood. Once her online classes wrapped up in May, she decided to use her love of art to make money from home. She had never made jewelry before but had some experience working with clay from ceramics classes in high school.
Casey designs and creates her own polymer clay and wire earrings that she sells online and ships to customers. Although many of her designs appear to be simple to make, there’s a lot more involved in the process than meets the eye.
“Oh boy, it is a process,” Casey said, “I think of an idea whether, you know, it’s completely from my head or I see something online, then I will begin to create each and every pair, using different colored clays and making them into what I want.”
For her clay earrings, Casey uses bakeable polymer clay of various colors, hypoallergenic stainless-steel earring hooks, and stainless-steel jump rings.
The first step of the process is to knead the clay until it’s pliable enough to sculpt into the desired shape. For some designs this could mean attaching several pieces of clay together, like adding red horns to a sunny side up egg, Casey’s take on “deviled eggs.”, or just molding one piece of clay into the desired shape. She then uses a pushpin to poke a hole through the clay, where a ring is eventually placed to connect it to the earring hook.
Casey then bakes the clay earrings on a sheet pan in a conventional oven for 17 minutes at 265 degrees. She uses rounded jewelry pliers to open the jump ring and thread it through the hole she made in the clay. Then she attaches the jump ring and clay piece to the earring hook and closes the ring with the pliers. And there you have it. A clay earring.
“I’d say it takes 30 to 45 minutes to make one pair of the clay earrings,” Casey says. “It also depends on how long it takes me to make the clay design, so the more complex shapes can take longer to do.”
Some designs that Casey has made include sunflowers, mushrooms, marbled sand dollars, rainbows, and snakes. Casey sells her clay earrings for $8, plus $4 for shipping, and has since branched out to making wire earrings as well.
For the wire earrings, Casey uses 22-gauge silver wire, and the same jump rings and earrings hooks that she uses for the clay earrings. She starts the process by cutting the length of wire she’ll need off the spool, then uses rounded jewelry pliers to bend the wire to the shape she wants. Once she has her desired shape, she uses the same process of opening the jump ring with the pliers and using it to connect the wire design to the earring hook.
“The wire ones probably take about the same amount of time,” Casey says. “I save a little bit of time since I don’t have to bake them, but since I’m new working with the wire they take a little more time due to trial and error.”
Casey has made wire moons, butterflies, clouds, cacti, mermaid tails, pumpkins, and a recent favorite of hers, wire daggers. She sells her wire earrings for $9, plus $4 for shipping.
Casey also does all her own marketing. She started a new Instagram account, @dmc.creates, in late May to reach potential customers and has since gained 250 followers. During the summer she posted a photo of a new pair of earrings daily, but since classes have started back up, has dialed down to about one post per week.
“I really enjoy interacting with the art community on Instagram,” Casey said. “I think there’s a lot of nice people and supportive people there. That’s probably one of the biggest things I’ve gotten out of this.”
Besides the obvious benefit of a source of income, it seems that making art and connecting with customers and other artists can positively impact a person’s life in other ways.
“I’m proud of myself for finding a way to make money that uses my love of art,” Casey said. “And I’m happy that I found a hobby that can be a means of creative expression.”
Casey plans to continue her earring business until she graduates from Hood in 2022. After college, Casey hopes to find a job as a special education teacher at an elementary school near her home in New Jersey.
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