October 22, 2007

• Editing Continues....on the nature of the creative process

       Staring at the photograph, I realize that the earring made from the vintage chrysophase glass oval is not yet finished.  I've a marvelous 10x12" bead sample card from Beadcats, all little glass flowers of one shape or another in a myriad of colors (the photograph doesn't do the subtle colorations justice, but for some idea of what I was looking at, click here.  The alternate form of selection involves pouring over charts like this, and you can't snip a bead from your monitor.)  Picking it up, I search for something that might work with the colors of both earrings while echoing the circle form of the rhinestone piece on the other earring.  

      Down in the bottom left corner is a pink bead, a rich, warm color, larger than most of the others.  Doing the forbidden, I pick up my flush cutters and snip the thread holding the flower to the card.  I look for a yellow Swarovski Austrian crystal to use in the middle of the flower and can find only topaz, which works for now but will be replaced before these are finished.  It works!

   But I'm not done.  I look for a tiny glass cupped flower to use at the top of the earring and find another pink one, this one darker and a little muddy, but rich.  On an impulse, I put an amethyst crystal in the middle of the flower.  It works!   and is especially nice when they move with the wearer's motion.  Oh, do I ever love it when it works!

    Now I take another look at the earring with the rhinestone centerpiece.  Quickly, I pick out a tiny flower, transparent green with a blue tinge and a bit of amethyst rippling through it.  It pulls the greens and aquas together.  I add a pale transparent yellow one and a pink one with little flecks of white and make a nosegay below the rhinestones.   Yellow crystal centers await next week's post.

  This addition, of course, changes all the proportions and I realize that when the gold wire arrives and I wire these to their final form, the distances between the nosegay, the round crystal and the long pink navette rhinestone drop will have to be adjusted, lengthened a little.  

  Tomorrow, if the USPS is getting it on, a small envelope with pink, yellow and dark rose Swarovski round crystal beads will arrive and I can arrange the right shapes and colors to replace the make-do crystals hanging from the earring with the glass oval. 

   

  pearlbamboo

  pictures, design, text copyright e.p. hodges

  you will really mess up your karma if you copy my designs.

   

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