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Earcuffs
by Erika Hammerschmidt
How to Wear French Hook Earrings if your Ears Aren't Pierced
I don't have pierced ears, and it always frustrated me to see all the beautiful French hook earrings that I can't wear without converting them to clips, which are not comfortable and not as pretty.
Then I found that it is very simple to make a French hook into an ear cuff. All you need is a pair of needlenose pliers. (I even managed to do it with my bare hands once, though it's not easy or pleasant, and there's a greater risk of breaking the metal.)
What you do is bend both ends of the French hook all the way back. It ends up looking like this:
The look is a bit different from wearing it on your earlobe:
When you put it on your ear, follow the usual rule for putting on an ear cuff: Don't bend the metal, bend the rim of your ear to fit through the gap in the cuff. You may have to put it on near the top of your ear and then slide it down to the right place:
Experiment to see what's the right size for the gap to be: big enough you can squeeze the rim of your ear through, but tight enough it doesn't fall off.
Once they're on, I barely notice I'm wearing them. And other people mistake them for pierced earrings all the time. If you want a big step up from clip earrings in both comfort and beauty, I highly recommend ear cuffs.
Now that I've developed this technique, I've begun offering it for all the earrings I sell. (Currently, the ear cuffs I offer are sterling silver to go with silver-colored earrings, or gold filled to go with gold-colored earrings. If you would like a different material, contact me.)