Tooth brush rings

One of the things you learn in Scouting, apart from knots (not tatting!) is to save the most extraordinary things, in the hope that one day they may come in useful for handicrafts. This is especially relevant, if like me, you are with the younger section, Beaver Scouts who are aged 6-8 years old. Twenty years ago it was difficult to find decent craft supplies, unless you were prepared to pay a lot of money for them, so over the years I have looked at disposable household items such as packaging etc and thought, what can this be used for? Corks from wine bottles are very versatile, although nowadays they seem to be mostly plastic, the original cork ones though could be turned into trains, dogs and even the beaver animal. So it sort of became a habit to collect items that showed potential! That is why I collected the plastic rings from the Oral B electric toothbrushes, not for Scouting but for my own use, and now they have been re-incarnated into earrings!

I’ve been influenced by the patterns that others have designed using plastic rings and thought they looked great, many using HDT. Initially I took the tooth brush rings on holiday and had a play around, my first attempt was given to Tatskool and it is only in the last week or so that I’ve come back to the project with earnest, mainly because I would like to give some earrings away to friends for Christmas. So here are the results.

It wasn't until I made the purple pair that I got the pattern as near to perfect as possible.

Being constantly nagged by big sister I have even written the pattern down! Jane then gave me a few tips on how to write some of the instructions, and the result is the pattern below. I’m not planning on designing much as it is very time consuming and frustrating and I don’t have much patience. But the absolute delight in seeing a pattern that I have designed written down and in a readable format, instead of on a scrap of paper is wonderful! I hope someone may be inspired to have ago at this pattern and tell me if they do not understand anything, after of course they have cleaned their teeth!

Oh and here are the little plastic rings, just in case you

don't know what I am talking about.

TOOTH BRUSH EARRINGS


Materials required (size 20 cotton)
2 shuttles, 13 seed beads, plus 8 seed beads and a larger bead for bottom dangle
split ring finding.
A plastic ring, I used the plastic ring from the Oral B tooth brush! But any small plastic ring will do although you may have to adjust the stitches to cover it.

Abbreviations:

CR centre ring

Cl close
R ring

+ join
P picot

+ B add bead to picot before joining
VLP long picot

seta a first half of p
B Bead

seta b second half of p
Roch Ring on chain
Wsh 1 shuttle one
Wsh 2 shuttle two

6 beads Wsh 1 one plus split ring finding, 7 beads Wsh 2

Using both shuttles cover ring (wsh 2 at this stage is the ball) 5 – 5 – 5 – 5 – 5 – 5 this should cover the ring when completing all the way round the ring start with 1 SR continue as follows:


1 SR: 2 B 2 / 2 – 2
Wsh 2: Ch 4 B 3
2 R: 3 + B 3 + CR 3 – 3
Ch: 5 B 3
3 R: 4 + B 4 + CR 4 – 4
Ch: 3 seta a, 3 seta b (3 times)
4 Roch: 3 VLP slip seed beads + large bead + seed beads take bead from core thread move into ring and attach VLP to other side 3 Cl R
Ch: 3 seta b, 3 seta a (3 times)
5 R: 4 + B 4+ CR (as R3) 4 – 4
Ch: 3 B 5
6 R: 3 + B 3+ CR 3 – 3
Ch: 3 B 4
7 R: 2 + B 2+ CR 2 B 2
Ch: 5 B from core thread (3 times) 3 - 2 + with shuttle thread to remaining p of CR
8 R: wsh 1 2 + Ch 6 split ring finding 6 - 2 Cl take wsh 2 and shuttle join to CR
Ch: 2 + R8 3 B from core thread 5 B (twice) 5 attach to SR cut and tie