Serious Sparkle, Part 2 - The Earrings

So if you're wearing a fancy evening gown, you need some fancy earrings, right? Of course!

As I wrote about yesterday, we recently had a big formal fundraising event at my job, so may of my colleagues were looking for jewelry to complement their evening wear. You've already seen some of the necklaces and bracelets that I made especially for them to choose from, so as promised, here are a few of the earrings.

Freshwater pearls with some vintage rhinestone and pearl components

Who can resist blue crystal disco balls swinging from their earlobes?

Shoulder dusters

In case your formal tastes run more to the gemstone, these are lapis, forest jasper and freshwater pearl.

These big, bold beauties are vintage marcasite pieces from an old necklace that I found in an antique store.
I took the necklace apart, and used the various component parts in lots of different new creations.
Here, I added just a few crystals at the top and as dangles.

Stretching Those Creative Muscles

Here comes a confession.  I am terrible about exercising.  Not just a little bad, but pure, downright pathetic.  I'll get on an exercise regimen and be very good about it for a while, and then something (injury, illness, I want to sleep a little later one morning) happens and the discipline is out the window.  Then four or five years later, I'll start up again, whether I need to or not.

However, I do love to flex my creative muscles on a regular basis.  And let's be frank, moving the beading needle back and forth between the piles of beads and whatever I'm working on HAS to burn some calories along the way, right?  Right?

A lovely lady in town sometimes presents me with a different kind of creative exercise -- taking vintage pieces she has inherited and repurpose them into something she can wear on a regular basis.

This is FUN.  And a little daunting, especialy since the most recent project is to create a necklace for her to wear at her son's wedding.

Here are the starting pieces:

I do think I'll remove the jewelry box lint. 
It does add a little extra something, but not for a wedding!

This is a bracelet, not an enormous necklace as it looks beside the other photo. 
It, too, will lose the jewelry box fluff.
Maybe I can make a second piece just from fluff and lint...

Because this is such an important and personal piece, she and I spent a lot of time discussing and trying different ideas before I grabbed the tools and started the revamping.  Luckily, we had similar visions.

I can't wait to get started on the new creation.  Perhaps I should put on my workout clothes first?

Ruby Red Upcycling

So a while back, I went to an antique mall and found some fabulous sterling silver clip-on earrings. From the size and the look of them, I figured they were from the 60's or 70's. I blogged about them, and the other treasures I found that day back in February of last year (my, how time flies!).

They were also pretty hefty in size. Flip one over and you could almost serve cocktails from it. These belonged to a bold woman back in the day. Not really in style anymore.

But to me they screamed "focal piece."

And then they lived on my bead table for a couple of months.

This photo shows what I did with one of them -- paired it with luscious faceted ruby red crystals, vintage clear crystals, and Bali silver.

I'd have taken a better picture of it, but it went to a gallery soon after it was made, so I only have this shot taken with my phone.

Yippee! Reduce, reuse, recycle, preferably with ruby red crystals!

No to go figure out what to do with that other earring....

The sparkle never dims

A lovely customer of mine has been cleaning out her mom's basement, discovering some beautiful vintage jewelry and clothing that belonged to her aunt and other family members. She passed along a number of the pieces to me, saying, "Have fun and see what you can make out of these for me."

Seriously. Can you believe the luck?

It's like the Bead Fairy opened up her sack and said, "would you like some free goodies to play with?"

Um, yes, please.

Among the goodies was a set of star-shaped buttons from an old cardigan, and a rhinestone necklace that was beautifully retro but not her taste. Here's what I had to work with:

and

She requested a bracelet from the buttons, and gave me free reign to make anything I could figure out from the necklace. The buttons turned out to be a real challenge, since they were slightly domed with a concave back, and were quite heavy for their size. The trick became finding other beads that would snug up to the shank of the button, while allowing for the curvature of the button's body and supporting the weight enough to prevent the buttons from flopping around.

After a few (okay, five or six) false starts with other designs, I finally settled on some black faceted Czech glass beads in a multi-strand weave. I left the construction of the clasp ends of the bracelet flexible enough to allow me to adjust the finished piece to the customer's wrist. Here's the final product:


The necklace had so many fun components to use. I used the bow as an asymmetrical bit of sparkle in a necklace of faceted, rutilated quartz beads. And forgot to take a picture of it (FAIL). But here is a pair of clip-on earrings from other part of the necklace:

They have the same faceted Czech glass as the button bracelet, so she can wear them with the bracelet or the necklace if she wants.

Big, big, sparkly fun! Next time I'll have some jewelry with more than just silver and black, I promise.

And I've encouraged my customer to go treasure hunting in that basement again soon!

Treasure Hunting and Upcycling

One of my favorite recently-heard terms in the beading world is "upcycling" -- that is, recycling and reusing old jewelry bits and other fabulous stuff that can have a new life in wearable art. I really love the implication that you're not only giving something new life, but raising it to a new level. It's something I've dabbled a bit with in the past, but was itching to jump in on the action again.

So yesterday when I found myself with a little free time (okay, I should have done a few loads of laundry, but you understand) I went to a local antique mall and treasure hunted. There was some truly fabulous eye candy there, including several cases chock full of beautiful old rhinestone jewelry just screaming my name. I tried not to embarass myself by giggling like a kid in a candy shop, drooling excessively over the gorgeousness, or smacking my head into the glass trying to get a closer look. If only I had unlimited funds to answer the call....

But I did find some fun things that I can't wait to work into new pieces --

-- great leaf-shaped earrings with rhinestones and faux pearls, some rocking huge pierced silver earrings (nearly 2" in diameter and 3/4" high. Seriously, the woman who wore these originally must have been able to pick up radio signals from space with these babies!), and a lovely Victorian style silver, marcasite and black crystal necklace that was a steal at only $10. (I know! I was amazed, too!)

They'll probably have to live with me a while until they tell me exactly what they want to be in their next life, but rest assured that they'll show up here after their upcycling!

Obsession Results

As promised, here are quick photos of the results of the weekend's earring blowout. This actually isn't all of the earrings I made in that one night, but it does include some beadwoven earrings (along the top row in the picture below) that I had finished a while back, and finally added the ear wires to. They're not all terribly intricate, but they did fit the goal of the evening, which was to find some instant gratification and put together some pieces that will be bread and butter in my next show.

Earring overload!

Last night, I was pursuing instant gratification -- so I sat down to make some earrings. Quick, easy, satisfying.

And twenty-seven pairs later...

Apparently, I had a little pent-up need to play in the bead room. But I'm a little afraid that my picture will be the illustration of the definition of "obsessed" in the next edition of the dictionary.

Pictures (of the earrings) are forthcoming, I promise.