Earrings in April

ha ha ha!  This picture made me laugh!  They look like sunglasses-wearing dancing teeth.

But they are actually cool skull beads given by a friend.  And they've been sitting on my beading table waiting for inspiration to strike.  Being such unique beads in and of themselves, i wanted to both highlight that and come up with a design that, with luck, would complement their uniqueness.

woooooo.  lofty, no?  But, really, that's kinda what we do every time we make a piece of jewelry.  There's usually a "most" important element along with supporting elements.  "What's your conversation?" A customer said that to us quite some time ago, and we often pass it along as a bit of designing advice.


So my conversation was these two cooly wacky and wackily cool skulls that are also an unusual color.  What you see in the photo is actually the pair of earrings; that's just a bad picture.  I did take a better one.

Supplies:
(2) cool resin skull beads
(2) 10mm copper rounds
some copper wire
(6) links of chain with rings left on
no ear wires..the kidney ear wires don't look good and i didn't have any other copper ones..so no.  no ear wires for you.

I wrapped the loops extra large and made sure that they faced front at the bottom of the bead.  Crystal rounds instead of the copper rounds would have looked mystically cool but...i didn't have any crystal so copper they are.  And i could have dangled something from the bottom of the links but i just liked the rings as the finial pieces. 

Well?  Did i hit the right design note?  Did the skulls remain the focal beads amongst complementary and supporting components?

Who cares?  They made me laugh out loud!  I love 'em!

Earrings...again!

Back in the saddle.  The earring saddle, that is, and ima ready to rustle up a sweet pair of earrings just for the hay of it.

We got some large hole pearls in the shop the other day.  Customers have been asking for them and when one of our favorite vendors stopped by with a small supply, i grabbed them up.  Most pearls are drilled with teeny tiny holes.  Why is that, i wondered, so i Googled it, and the general consensus seems to be that fine pearls are sold at wholesale by weight so a small hole makes for a heavier pearl. 

Back at the ranch...the first thing i did with these new beads was to string some on leather.  Yeehaw!  Leather and pearls!  You gotta love the contradictory nature of that pairing.  And when the 2mm leather didn't go through, i used 1.5mm instead 'cause we have it on hand.  Looks good!  So tonight when all i had available was 2mm leather, i had to do a little prep work.

So these pearls have a hole that is just shy of 2mm but using that handy dandy little hand file that i stole - uh - borrowed indefinitely from Terry, i reamed the holes on a couple of them in order to accommodate the 2mm leather.  Once the pearls were on the leather, the next hurdle was how was i going to crimp the leather and attach it to the ear wire.  No leather crimps on hand.  No cord crimps on hand that would accommodate 2mm leather which when doubled equals 4mm and that's pretty thick.  Dang it.  Okay.  Get out some wire and just wrap the ends and make a loop and call it good.  So that's what i did.

Supplies

(2) large holed pearls
(2) lengths of 2mm leather, each about 4-5 inches long
wire of some kind
ear wires

The wire wrap ain't too purty but i might re-do them....some day.  You could surely do a better job!