Tin Re-Duex - I need a person to tell me when to stop.

Sometimes a piece you make just looks cheesy later on.  I liked the top of this earring but did not like the bottom....not enough weight there.  As an earring it worked okay.  Heavy enough to stay on but light enough not to stretch that ear lobe to your waist.  But to me it lacked a certain panache - a complete design.  It's not that I don't like simple things.  In fact, sometimes that is the best for me since I already wear glasses too much from the arm pits up can make me look like I ought to topple over.  These earrings - well - crap - I got an itch about them and just had to scratch it. 

I cut off what I thought wasn't working.  I added a little flare with a copper piece - a few rivets to hold the new copper and add some interest - and then I thought it needed a finish to balance the fact the top was visually kind of heavy.  In my stash I have the beads I've collected over the years sorted by color.  That makes it easy when you are working with a color segwey to find something fairly quickly. 

What I do sort differently (but by color) are seed beads, crystals (no matter what the size or color) are all in one plastic box, stone chips,  and so on.   Anything that reeks of same size - kind - origin - these are the only things that are separate.  Beyond those all the rest of the sparkly glass, resin, and so on are in the color sort area.  Okay, I'm off track here.

In the stash of blue I found a bag of miscellaneous and very old chevron beads.  The blue went well with the tin color and the theme...but I didn't want to stop there.  I guess I could of and maybe done a little something different on the bottom (no, no, no, stop it - only one re-duex to a pair of earrings).  Anyhoo, the original tin has stars.  And I've been watching entirely to much Merlin, Game of Thrones, and Syfy channel so I decided to go through the crystal stash.  Now we've got a little magic and some history in the chevrons and tin.

Voila' - I'm much happier with the look of these earrings.  But I wasn't happy enough to leave them alone...it didn't take but a day of looking and I decided they were too long and thin - off came the chevron section.  I guess in this case for these earrings I'm making the executive decision that less is more.

Pretty soon I'll have completed enough to reopen my old Etsy site for finished jewelry and start putting the pieces up for sale.

I've been working on other earring designs and will post as they are completed - I've been picking away at my pile of tin stampings.  (Smile).