Vacation Earrings

Vacation was awesome. Even though it's taken me most of a week to get caught up, I'm so glad we went. I needed the break so badly. Now, I'm tan and relaxed (well, okay, the relaxation has kinda worn off after being back at work for most of a week). We spent so much time at the pool and doing other fun things that I got no jewelry made at all (despite toting two big bags of projects/beads with me), but I did make some stuff over the weekend after we got back so I'm still counting that as "vacation beading."





And, yeah, okay, this is kind of cheating since these are a re-do of a previous pair. Remember when I said I wasn't happy with them? I think they are much better now.





Oh yeah, problem solved.





This was not a design I had planned, but at the time I was working, these beads just happened to be laying out on my work surface and I was kinda on a roll...so they got grabbed and "earring-ized" before they knew what hit them.





They have a sort of Oriental vibe to me now...although it wasn't necessarily intentional. I love when a design takes on a life of its own and you end up getting more than you bargained for when it's finished.





In prepping my giant bags o' beads to take on the trip, I randomly grabbed a lot of semi-recent purchases that were still sitting in their shopping bags (me not having had time to bead, much less put stuff away in the studio, for MONTHS). I had two strands of these delicious, heat-treated, banded agate teardrops that I came across while packing up and they were definitely one of the items I was most excited to try to do something with.





I went outside my comfort zone by being willing to make earrings where the two stones were close, but not an EXACT match to each other. It was oh-so-hard for me to do and I still have to keep reminding myself that it's OKAY that way. The tops are vintage German glass flower beads.





I made as many "almost-matched" pairs of teardrops out of the two strands that I could. Some of them are more lavender, some have bright, almost neon pink and some are in the blue and teal tones. I haven't gotten to those yet, but with this pair, I thought some lovely enamel brass filigree pieces from Sue Beads would make great tops.





I added some Chinese crystals for extra sparkle as I wanted a more dramatic, evening look for this pair.

Can't wait to make up more new designs with these teardrops - they're all so different and really fun to play with.

And that's what I did AFTER my vacation :-)

KJ