More Earrings (and a dash of complaint)

First, the complaint. Is anyone else hating the new Blogger interface as much as I am? What a cruel and unusual form of punishment this is. There I was, cruising along perfectly happy with my old familiar comfortable interface (which, I might add, took me many years of painful learning to figure out all the kinks and peculiarities) and POOF! Along comes this new crap which, besides giving me a headache from too much white space on the screen, seems hellbent on turning all my pictures sideways AND wants to force me to use Google Chrome. No, I say. Just NO! Fight the power!

Stupid Google. (oh, and if you have any doubt about the power of Google, the first time I typed the above complaint, the entire thing disappeared from the screen and I had to re-type it from memory. The Google is diabolical)

Anyway, on to the earrings (before they disappear, too.)

The muse seems hellbent on earrings and earrings only for right now. Much like Google, she is diabolical. I tried making a bracelet over the weekend and wow...is it ever FUGLY. It's already occupying center stage in the re-do area, but it will have to wait. I can already tell that any attempt to re-do it at this point will only result in more wasted time, material and tears.

In the meantime, I got earrings. I'm still working my way through these banded, heat-treated agate teardrops. This pair has swirls of brown and cream and even some pale blue. I added faceted smoky quartz for some sparkle and to play off the brown tones and then found a strand of Czech glass melon beads that had the same color scheme (although they have a touch of green, too, in the right light) and added a couple of those. I'm running through the tail end of my stash of Bali vermeil quickly, but the gold just looks so rich with this color scheme, I couldn't resist using it. Most of my vermeil was bought years and years ago when I first started designing and it was much more affordable. I don't know if I'll be able to replace it when it's gone what with prices being so high now.

I went a little crazy on Etsy buying up so many of Kristi Bowman's awesome copper designs. Now, I'm thrilled to start pairing them up with some of my lampwork stash for some great finished pieces. These etched beads from Outwest have such great colors in them - purples, greens, etc. and they really pick up the play of color in the copper, too.

Purples and lavenders seem to pair especially well with the copper so I grabbed this pair of swirly beads from Bee Boo. I added some Chinese crystals for extra sparkle because the swirls on the lampwork have some sparkly goldstone in them.

These hoop components called for something extra special so I grabbed these beautiful glowing kyanite tubes and some Chinese crystals for extra sparkle.

Last, but not least, some more of the agate teardrops. I used blue/brown ceramic flower components from Karen Totten and, once again, smoky quartz and vermeil. Now, let's see if the new interface will actually let me post this without eating it or turning it sideways. KJ