Tutorial: Hair Sticks

I was making a batch of hair sticks today, and it occurred to me that I should take some pictures and show you all what I was doing.

Materials:
hard wood dowel rod
small screw eyes
head pins
beads
split rings

Tools:
saw
pencil sharpener
sand paper
awl
round nose pliers
flat nose pliers
split ring pliers
wire cutters




Here's a shot of the different pliers, in case you're unfamiliar with them. From the top, and going clockwise: round nose pliers, split ring pliers, awl, flat nose pliers, wire cutters.





Start with hard wood dowel rods from the hardware store.



Cut the rod to 5" pieces, and run the ends through the pencil sharpener.








Sand the sticks down smooth, and round out the point.












Like this. If you want to, you can stain and varnish the sticks at this point, but I kind of like the bare wood.












Use your awl to poke a starter hole in the center of the flat end of the stick.







Screw your screw eye into the hole.










It will look like this. You can put a drop of glue in if you choose.












Now, the fun part. Assemble your dangles. Have fun playing with different textures and color combinations.







Snip the end off of a head pin. Using your round nose pliers, make a loop in the end of the head pin.







Add your bottom dangle to that loop, and wrap the tail of wire around.







Add a bead, then make a loop in the top. Add your split ring to that loop, and wrap the tail around again. My finished dangles look like this, though you can experiment with other configurations.










Using your split ring pliers, open the split ring and put it on to the screw eye at the top of your hair stick.







Here's my finished batch of hair sticks! They work great. I have a pair I made awhile ago, and used them to hold my hair up in a bun and out of my face for my entire camping trip this past weekend. I'd put my hair up in the morning, take it down at night, and never worry about it in the meanwhile.


(EDIT: I put this batch of hair jewelry up in my Etsy shop, at http://www.etsy.com/shop/tangibledaydreams . So if you don't want to make your own, you can have one of these instead.)