Tasselmania

If you were kind enough to check out my blog over the weekend, you saw my post for the Challenge of Music blog hop and the designs I created as a result of being inspired by Duran Duran's "Hungry Like the Wolf."

In an attempt to capture the idea of wolf "fur", I came up with tassel earrings made of bead cones and fibers.  I posted the two that were the most "wolfy" for the challenge, but I did a lot of practice to get there and tried various color combos and methods of making the tassels on the way to the final versions.

Frankly, I got a bit obsessed with the idea and couldn't stop making these so here are the rest of the experiments:

 

 

This is the first pair I made using some deep wine fiber with gold running through it.  I'm not sure why it looks so red in the photos - it's really not that color at all. 

I added some small, olive green Swarovski bicones to the top for a little bit of extra sparkle.

 

 

These...were probably a mistake.  I was fully engulfed in the obsession and wanted to try every fiber in my collection to see how it would turn out LOL.  This is sort of an Easter Egg assortment of pastel colors that run throughout the same skein of fiber...pale blue, green, pink and yellow.  It's very soft and fluffy, but what I didn't realize is that it would curl up at the bottom so much after it was cut.

 



 And then in this photo the other colors almost disappear and it goes really pink.  Also, I'm not crazy about those cones...that aren't really "cone" shaped at all.  This technique works MUCH better with the long, skinny, traditional cone shape.  Oh well, this is all part of my quest to learn not to care when an experiment doesn't work out so well.

 

 

This fiber has amazing texture and colors all in the same skein.  I was happy with this one, but didn't think the color scheme went with the "wolf" idea...it's heading more towards the wine imagery in the song, but since I chose fuchsia Swaro crystals for the top it went a little more to pink than wine.

 

It's funny how just changing the background of the photo makes the colors in the fiber look different...in this picture, I see the browns and rusts more.

 This...was an idea that ALMOST worked.  I love the fiber colors, the cones are interesting and the green garnet stones work well.  Then, of course, I had to try to get all creative and put a thin section of chain in the center of the tassel to hang a small crystal oval dangle from...I was trying to go for the idea of wolf eyes gleaming in the darkness.

 

 

And you can't even see them when the earrings are hanging.  Well, okay, you can kind of see them a teeny bit at the bottom, but I'm pretty sure I'm going to remove them.

 



Yeah...they need to go.

KJ