New Earring Monday: Weeks 47 & 48

Happy December everyone!  I hope you all had a happy and blessed Thanksgiving... I certainly did.  As the holidays approach, it seems like it's harder for me to feel motivated to create new jewelry when there are so many other things going on.  Despite a bit of a creative slump, I'm not going to fail in my earring challenge at this point in the year!

I decided to do a little more "project cleanup" for this week's installment of New Earring Monday.  During the Art Wander studio tour back in September, I had my Sizzix BIGkick machine out to show my guests how I make some of my embossed and etched metal pieces with it.  Folks were super excited to learn and to get to press out some designs themselves.  (Want to know what I'm talking about?  Check out my blog post on using the BIGkick and paints HERE.)  

I was actually planning ahead when I chose the designs that I had people experiment with and I had them use the brass circle blanks that I most often use for earrings.  But, as so often happens in my world, after the show I moved onto other projects and my stack of embossed brass circles got lost in the chaos of my bead table for a while.  After two months of languishing, buried under piles of beads and findings, some of these little guys have finally become finished jewelry!

I've got two variations on a theme this week both with embossed brass circles that I sanded to highlight the raised areas and then hammered into a domed shape.  I punched extra holes into the pieces so that I could dangle little Czech glass beads from the bottom.  Voila!