Hello everyone!
I'm slowly accepting that my beloved wintertime is over and it's time for spring now. I do appreciate spring; I love the cool mornings and nights and the blossoming trees in my neighborhood, and having the window open and hearing the birds sing, but the darker side of springtime is that it means that dreaded summer will be upon us soon and, as I've said before, summer and I don't mix. I live in the mid-atlantic region, and summers here are sluggish, sopping-wet humid, and entirely suffocating. Summer is not for playing outside. Summer is for icy drinks enjoyed with the A/C on full blast.
But, it
isn't summer yet, and I keep trying to remind myself of that. It's only spring, and spring is nice! Let's focus on that. I had the perfect opportunity to celebrate spring with my latest pair of earrings.
Back in January I stumbled upon the Etsy shop
yummytreasures. I found a bunch of excellent vintage glass cabochons and bought a number of them. I made my Emeress necklace with one of them-
That cab had such flash and glow! I loved how it looked with the white wire and ribbon. Gladly, it's now owned by a close friend :) I also bought some white cabs with gold flash, a translucent green scarab cab, and two little mint green cabochons for earrings.
Well, not long after they arrived, I misplaced the little mint green cabs. I was annoyed with myself but was happy to discover where they'd been hiding a few days ago, and decided I'd better make something with them quick before I lost them again!
After playing some with the idea of a netted bezel in bronze for them, I decided I wanted to do a different kind of bezel. I may have mentioned before, but the traditional method of wire wrapping a cabochon just... doesn't appeal to me. It can be done beautifully and I'm not disparaging anyone who likes to wrap their stones that way, it's just not for me. So, I had to come up with something different.
I started with a zig-zag of wire. I used the width of my flat-nose pliers to keep things even.
Then, I wrapped it around a cab, and lucked the hell out that the bends ended up in a good arrangement!
Satisfied with that, I made a loop to hold the cab in from the backside.
I began wrapping around the loop with the cab in place, attaching to the points of the zig-zag when I got to them.
When I got to the bottom I decided 'Hey, let's add a loop for a dangle'.
When I got to the end, I finished off the back loop with, er, loops.
From there I used the remainder of the thin wire to bind the other loop and the two wires sticking straight up together as neatly as possible, which had the effect of tightening the back loop such that the cab wouldn't just fall out of it.
Added a wrapped loop and a dangle in a coordinating color, made another earring, put earwires on them, and voila-
My Mint Julep earrings! Nice and fresh for spring with just a little playful movement. The bezel may not look it but the cabs are quite secure. It's hard to tell in the photo, but the zig-zags angle in and over the cabs to keep them in place.
These are smaller than they seem, and are quite ladylike if I say so myself.
They are available in my shop now! :) Hope you like them!
'Til Next Time!
