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Beading Blog - thebroadroom.net: Rambles...
Rambles...
posted by Colleen Shirazi,
August 19, 2007
at 7:24 PM (Pacific)
Made some earrings today to go with this:
It's funny, it's an entirely different experience for me since I stopped making jewelry for a few months.
For one thing...I read somewhere on the Ganoksin site that you should have a separate space, if not a separate room, to do your work in. i.e., you should not try to do it in the bedroom, living room, kitchen, or other "regular" room. You should have a dedicated space for only your work. At first I thought it a bit decadent, particularly since I'm not selling my jewelry. But there is something to it.
It is better having a dedicated work area, even if it's smaller than a non-dedicated area. You need not pack away all of your stuff each time. More importantly, once you're there, it's not as if you're "doing" a hundred other things at the same time. You can take your time and do your work.
In fact it struck me, doing the earrings today, how long it takes to make what would appear to be a simple pair of earrings. I had a tendency before to rush through it, to try to crank out something to wear that day. Ultimately it takes much more time doing it that way, because you end up with stuff you don't wear, stuff that needs to be dismantled and (hopefully) remade into something else...moreover, you end up buying a lot of similarly un-thought-through materials. Overall you end up with more waste, in the material and labor sense.
As I was making these earrings...I was glad for my tiny-cone round-nose pliers. I finally broke down and got some Lindstrom ones. I still have my "starter" round-nose pliers, which are great for stuff like bending a big loop in an earring wire. I think you need two pairs of round-nose even for straightforward loop making. Although I've seen round-nose pliers with long cones, I prefer how the short-cone ones handle.
I started out thinking, what can I do with the headpin to make it look nicer? I've done the teeny squashed bend, and the teeny loop. Plus, I didn't want to use a spacer bead. The only ones I have are those ubiquitous tiny round goldfilled ones. For this, it's all been done...so I made a small wrapped loop for a headpin. Looks nice (don't make the wrap too neat).
Slowly...as I worked, I put the earring on to feel its weight. As much as I love featherweight earrings, I tend to want to make the earring "more." So the idea was to make it as much as possible, without making it too heavy.
It was actually a pleasure doing the work, doing it this way. The only thing I finished today were the earrings, but, so what? They're beautiful earrings. I started working again on a three-strand peridot necklace--I took apart this one:
It's a nice necklace, but I felt I could make it fancier by making it a full three strands rather than three-to-one. It's not necessary to have the faceted teardrop shapes throughout the piece; they show better right in front. The sides and back can be those tiny side-drilled smooth "droplets" of peridot. You're getting three-strand peridot goodness, for a similar outlay to the three-to-one.
I'm planning to redo the entire peridot experience, including the bracelet and earrings:
The crystal ones in the pic came out well, but the peridot ones were too long and too heavy. I'm saving five peridots for each earring, the rest are going into the necklace.
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