Before attending a fancy art event, my friend asked me to create her some cool light up earrings. I wanted to design something that would be light weight, and be wearable without the battery for everyday use. I started with a small 3v coin cell battery and build my design from there. This project is prefect for someone just starting out, as it introduces your to LEDs and require minimal solder.

You can watch video here, it covers the same directions but with more banter from your truly.

Disclaimer: Depending on the colors of your LED the voltage may vary, and a 3V battery may be too much voltage. My red LEDs where rated at 2V, but I chose not to use resistors as I wanted to keep the simplity of the design. Setting up your LED like this can cause the battery to wear out faster or the LEDs to burn out. Since these earrings will only be worn for speical events anyways, I found the risk was worth ascetic value and simplicity of this project and I havn't had any problems.

Step 1: Get Your Parts

You will need:

2 3 volt lithium batteries

18 LEDS (9 for each earring)

bit of conductive wire

4 jump rings (2 for each earring)

2 earring hooks

More or less LED may be used depending on the size of them and your personal preference.Feel free to play around with varying sizes and colors.

Step 2: Arrange Your LED

Line up your LEDs and slide the battery between the legs of the LE.D Make sure that all the positive leds of the LED are on the same side, and on the positvive side your battery. You can tell if you have it correctly buy whether the LEDS are all lighting up or not.

Once you have them how you like them,I taped it together to hold it in place and marked the positive and negative sides with a marker to make soldering them togther eaiser.

Step 3: Prepare Your Wire

Prep your wire by striping a small section about 1 inch long. This is what we will attach the LEDs to.

Step 4:

Starting with the positive side, solder the wire as you can onto the top of the LED connecting them all togther. Make sure none of the LED legs cross over ecother. Trim the excess.

On negative side do the same thing, this time placing the conductive wire about 3/4 of the way up and solder it into place. Trim the access

This V shape we have just created will hold the battery in place.Test it out by slipping the battery in to make sure everything it working and the LEDs light up. Bend the LED legs if needed to hold the battery more firmly.

Step 5: Connect the Jump Ring

Solder the jump ring to the top of the positive side.

Step 6: Add the Earring Hook

Attach the earring hook by placing the other jump ring into the solder one, and then attaching the earring hook to that. Slip the battery in and your earring is ready! Complete this proccess a second time to create two matching earrings.

Step 7: Wear Them!

Take your new earrings out on the town! You can also removed the battery and just have simple wire earring. I think they cool both ways. Feel free to experiment with different LED colors and formations to create your very own design.