I had thought I'd never make a pair of these earrings again.

Never mind that I've sold every pair I've ever made, never mind that I just made five pairs for a wedding, never mind any of that. It's too much of a pain, too complicated trying to figure out how to attach the bead cap without detracting from the drops, too much time and frustration for too little in return.

Then I saw these bead caps, fell in love and needed to make another pair.

The thing is, most bead caps are meant to be used as bead caps. I know that sounds strange, just bear with me. For this style of earring, you need to use a bead cap that has a lot of openwork to it. Now in general, the bead caps with all that openwork are designed to be used with large beads. Therefore, when you try to attach them to an earwire, it's difficult to do so in a manner that doesn't reveal whatever dirty trick you used to make the connection. You could rig up something with some smaller beads, but the beads are either so small that they go right through the cap, or they're large enough to be clearly visible underneath the cap.

This has all been quite possibly my largest point of frustration with this design, so when I found bead caps that have a closed loop at one end, I just had to get them. These ones were perfect: just the right amount of detail with holes at the bottom for adding the wire and chain. They'd been sitting around for a month or so until a couple of days ago, when I finally got up the nerve to sift through my beads and select 16 that would be worthy of these earrings.

I added the first and second drops, no problem. I turned the bead cap to start the third drop and discovered an issue: the third and fourth holes had been covered over with silver.

For a metal as soft as silver, you'd think it would be easier to drill. I instead found myself swearing at the clamp because it was bending the cap, swearing at the drill bits that weren't the right diameter or slowed to a crawl as soon as they hit the metal. Once I got an actual hole established, I then had to change out the bits about three times to make the hole the right size. Meanwhile, Jeff's watching all this and insisting that I'm going to break something.

I didn't.


'Rainbow Waterfall' earrings in sterling silver with Tunduru sapphires and white topaz

Labels: chandelier, design, drops, earring, jewelry, sapphire, topaz

Perhaps my single largest goal over the summer is to completely organize my studio. Now, over the past couple of weeks I had made at least a small amount of progress; the tops of my work tables are actually visible now, for one thing. There is one thing, though, that has eluded me ever since my studio even came into existence: the junk box.

The junk box is a large hexagonal papier-mache box that I painted metallic purple. I had actually forgotten what was decoupaged to the lid, it's been so long since the box was actually closed. (For the record, it's a fractal print that was done so long ago, it was when the trial version of Ultra Fractal didn't put those annoying watermarks on everything.) This box has been steadily accumulating junk in it since before I moved to my current house.

By "junk", I mean "pieces of jewelry that haven't sold and are worth more broken down into their component parts". It's a "What the heck was I thinking?" box. It's a "Wow, I've come a long way since I made that!" box. It's a "Hey, didn't I have another one of those earrings somewhere?" box. Incidentally, "junk" also encompasses "I took this apart at one point but never bothered to put the beads away".

Now, I'm not saying all of this so I can boast that I finally sorted through the entire junk box, because I haven't. It's still sitting on the table, its contents mocking me. Only now, the contents are somewhat more sparse.

I can finally see the bottom of the box. Which, in my world, is another little bit of progress.

Labels: art, design, jewelry, organization