A Glutton for Punishment Part I

I'm not sure if I'm just a glutton for punishment or just plain crazy ! I tend to underestimate my future projects and start out thinking they will be small and manageable however they always end up becoming big, complicated and time consuming.
Several posts back ( Trouble Getting From Dream to Reality )I gave you a glimpse of a vision that I had of a black and white piece. It was a vision that danced in my head like those proverbial sugar plums in the poem "Twas the Night Before Christmas".   But what a challenge it has been, seems I never had just the right things that I needed such as strong enough jumprings, ones that wouldn't come open as soon as the necklace was picked up. So I'd order parts, wait for them to arrive, then sit down and with anticipation of completing the project dive back into putting it together. Part way through it would dawn on me that something was wrong and guess what ? ... I needed something else that wasn't in my vast supplies of beads, findings, wires and parts. SHOOT !!! DRAT !!!  And Double Dang-it !!!
So have to go look around,  find what I think will do the trick, place an order and wait some more.

Photo above..Lovely black and white Venetian glass oval bead will be the center focal point.  Only as the more I worked on it I realized that 1 - the center focal point was being buried beneath the disc bead dangle and 2 - my handmade jumprings,  made from 20 gauge silver plated copper wire, kept coming apart. 

Finally I did manage to put together the center area of the necklace and it has turned out far more complex than I had ever imagined. The heavy weight 18 gauge jumprings from Jewelry Supply that I ended up purchasing are performing well and I haven't had any open up on me yet. Yay!  Unfortunately I've just about used them all in this project and decided to order some more from a different vendor ... the new jumprings are not nearly as nice nor as strong so it's true that sometimes you get what you pay for.

Photo above ... Been busy as a bee wire wrapping black and white disc beads to use as dangles. I decided to add a larger solid back bead for the Venetian bead to hang from as the black and white oval bead needed to be longer. Yes, it's filling in nicely but still needs something.

Photo below... How about some of these Czech pressed glass leaf beads with a silver finish ?  Might add the tiny black hearts as dangles just below the leaves ?

Photo below ... As you can see I added a large black bead at the focal center to make the Venetican oval bead hang lower, it was being hidden by all the black and white disc bead dangles.  Hmm and those lovely little jet black glass hearts that have one side with an aurora borealis finish ?  Well they didn't look so hot as dangles hanging WITH the leaves so I may add them as dangles on their own ... not sure at this stage.  Besides I now need some type of large, fancy link to attach at the side of the necklace. 

Photo below ... As you can see I've attached a few of the silver leaves but it still has a lot of fill work left to be done and there's still the problem of what to add to the loops that I created beneath the silver leaves ... the loops I made to hang the sweet little black glass hearts from.

Stay tuned for Part II as things may change ... oh undoubtedly they will change!

From The Rubble A Vision Arises

Photo above...New project made from a past "failed" project.  A pair of classic black & white earrings.

Not long ago I was struggling with a project, just couldn't seem to get things to come together, well more like couldn't get them to "stay" together. 

Photo above...The Mess !!  My pile of inspiration and a dream that wouldn't go from vision to reality.

The project was supposed to be a necklace and I was using some handcrafted jumprings that I fabricated from copper filled, silver coated wire however the rings kept opening up.  Twenty gauge wire should have been strong enough but I overlooked the fact that it was a copper core wire, which takes a bit more effort to harden.  Pounding the wire with a hammer worked but it also created a flat jumpring, not the look I was going for.

Anyway, following the advice of a number of my blogging friends, I decided to put the project on hiatus...but!  Yes there's always that "but" isn't there?  But I found myself drawn to those black and white drops that had already been crafted and I hated to bury them in my "to get back to at a later date" drawer.  I have projects in that drawer that date back to 1999 !!!

Photo above...Black and white Czech glass disc beads that I had made wire wrapped bails for.

Sooo I used those drops along with some new, hardier 18 gauge, ready-made jumprings and fashioned a pair of swinging earrings with them.  The earring hooks are 20 gauge sterling silver and are handmade by me. I like to craft my own ear wires as I can embellish them to suit the design.  Here I've added a small 4mm black glass bead to each wire.

Photos above and below...Finished earrings.  I call them "Day & Night".  They salvaged those neat little disc beads that I had spent so much time crafting bails for and make me feel like that time and effort  was not totally lost.

These have a lot of movement to them and even though there seems to be a number of beads and wire on the earring, they are not at all heavy.