COLOURFUL STICKMEN EARRINGS

its nice to give yourself a brief to guide your creative process. the brief is also informed by my needs, what i need to get out of the process. 

brief - create earrings that are:

1. colourful

2. light and dangly

3. fun to make

see i wanted an excuse the visit the bead shop again, my guilty pleasure, so making colourful beads a part of this project was very clever. i always wait for a bunch of reasons to pile up before i go, consolidating my trips you see. i also wanted glass lenses for a new "locket" im working on and thread for macramé bracelets, a side project that i am exploring (watch this space). I chose turquoise, burnt orange and kobalt blue crystal beads to play with.

#1 be colourful check

then i went about bending up the perfect ear-wire for this. i wanted to settle on a design for an ear-wire that can quite happily take any form of design bit dangling from the drop. you may think this seems simple but quite a lot of decisions go into this, the length of sections, where to bend, how big is the loop etc. and it needs to be perfectly reproducible - and remember each one will be bent up by hand. I do these tests in copper because it is so quick and easy, but also to explore different colour combinations. this would be lovely in rose gold.

after some trial and error i have my ear-wire. #2 check

then i had to decide how  i could attach the beads to the ear-wire. very often your quick little tests lead to the most beautiful results. i tried quickly threading onto binding wire* with a simple twist, only to discover that the little wire legs add to this design in a beautiful, quirky way. you may have seen my nods to binding wire on my instagram in the past, my binding wire men that i find it too hard  to discard once they've served their purpose. im so happy have found a way to incorporate them into a design. #3 fun to make - check, i can do this 'till the cows come home

now i will proceed into silver . . .

* the steel wire used in jewellery making to bind pieces of metal togther, holding     it in place while soldering