How To Turn Clip Earrings Into Post Earrings

If you're like me, and you think the old-school style clip-on earrings are a torture device right up there with the Iron Maiden and the Rack, then you might like this post. It's very easy to change clip-on earrings to posts, and I'll show you how!!

First, gather your supplies.

You'll need some rubbing alcohol and cotton balls, a pair of wire cutters, some craft glue that says it's for gluing metal (easy to find at Michael's or similar craft store), some post earring backs with a flat surface for attaching things (find at a bead store or the aforementioned Michael's) and your clip-on earrings. I also have a paper clip, bent open,  and some of those things that go on the back of your post earrings to give them more support. These are optional.

Here are my earrings:

I LOVE GLITTER

 They are late 50's or early 60's, with multicolored glitter pieces encased in Lucite. I got them at a flea market for 10 bucks :-)

Here's what the backs look like:

The next thing you'll do is cut off the whole "clip" mechanism, right where it attaches to the back of the earring. Use your wire cutters for this. Depending on the age & type of metal, sometimes it cuts like butter and other times you need to put some serious muscle into it. The ones above were tough! I had to have my Hubby do it :-) Your goal is a perfectly flat surface upon which to glue your new post backs.

Once you've cut off the clippy thing, hopefully you'll be left with a back that's nice & smooth, like the ones above. If you're left with a little ragged bit of metal, try to clip it off as close as possible to the back of the earrings, and if necessary you can smooth any rough edges with a nail file.

Next, you want to clean the backs of the earrings with rubbing alcohol to create a good surface for the glue to stick to.

Once the alcohol has dried (which just takes a couple seconds) get ready to glue. The glue I'm using is called "Industrial Strength E6000" and it came in a little set with three other different types of craft glue.

To make the tightest bond, you'll want to put a bit of glue on the flat part of the new post attachments, and a bit on the earring back itself. I use a paper clip for this. Then join the two together and hold it tight for a minute so it sets.

You can see in the pic above that I didn't glue my backs on dead-center, but instead more towards one side. This was actually a bit of an experiment, to make the earrings hang a bit lower on my ears. I didn't love the results, so I recommend that you glue them right smack in the middle. Whatever you do, just make sure you do both earrings the same!

Read the instructions for your particular brand of glue to see how long the glue needs to dry thoroughly. I usually let mine dry overnight.

Voila!  Non-torturing earrings!!

Just a tip:  this works best on lightweight, or fairly lightweight earrings. If they're really heavy they'll hang down at a funny angle.
I have not yet tried this technique on any screw-back earrings, but I don't know why it couldn't work just as well...I'll update when I try it out!