We're All Ears: December 2016

For the last We're All Ears challenge of the year over on the Earrings Everyday blog, Erin has once again challenged us to bring some order to the chaos of our craftermath!  What is "craftermath" you ask?  It's all the leftovers that get strewn around, buried, or otherwise abandoned after a creative making frenzy.  Thus, this year she's calling our challenge the Leftover Transformation Game!  

Because of the way I tend to work, and the fact that I am forced to clear off at least my beading work table once a month for a social gathering we host, I'm actually moderately good about putting extra or unwanted beads away at the end of each project.  That really cuts down on the true craftermath.  Where I get myself into much more trouble is not putting things away in the first place!  If something doesn't have an easy to locate/clearly defined home, it tends to linger either on one of my beading "landing zones" or, more often, gets shoved into one of my bead hiding places when I have to "clean up."  Don't believe me?  Let me show you the evidence... it's pretty damning...  Warning, the following images depict graphic disorganization and are not intended for an anal retentive audience.

A good deal of what's in my bead hidey holes are more recent purchases (including two brand new shipments that I haven't even opened to check, destash and bargain bundles) but there are things in here that I've had for more than a year... maybe more than two years... and I just haven't used or found a home for them yet.  I've also got a few partially finished class projects and bead kits hidden away.  Super embarrassing, but we all know that creating is WAY more fun than putting things away.

Now I had absolutely no delusions that I'm going to be able to clean up all these hoarded goodies before the We're All Ears reveal (or ever!), but I gave it a good try and at least dug through for some low hanging earring-making fruit.  With two shows in early December, a holiday party at my house, and company in town, I didn't get all that far and I didn't find some of the things I was expecting/hoping to uncover for the challenge.  But this is what I came up with:

I clearly didn't have everything I needed in my little bins, but I pulled extra beads and findings to round out my designs based on the goodies I did unearth from my mess.  Here's what I managed to make... the other items will have to wait for another day to become something.

The first pair that I made started with a pair of beads from an orphan strand that I bought from Firelily Glass and embarrassingly lives in the box they were shipped in inside the bowels of my cabinet.  (Don't judge me... I know exactly where they are!)  I also grabbed a pair of painted bead caps that had been sitting around for a while then added some Czech glass and plated druzy beads to the mix.  These have just the right amount of sparkle for me!

Moving onto another item from the category of "I bought it a million years ago and never put it away," I present you with two pairs featuring some little square pewter charms.  I think what happened is that these were smaller than I had expected (I often struggle with sizing when shopping online) and they just got pushed to the side.  Needing to get things organized, and still not having a great place to store these charms, I had no choice but to make something with them.  I added some glass beads, and voila!  Simple and sweet... yet I think the long ones look kind of fancy!

Other goodies I uncovered in my mess of "to be put away" items were some enameled bird charm pairs by Gardanne that I bought at Bead & Button this summer.  I've used all the other charms I got then, but these have languished for awhile.  These two pairs of earrings are another slight variation on a theme... using the same rhinestone rondelles and chain but different colored beads and charms.  Hopefully these will quickly fly away to new homes!

Thanks for stopping by to see my earring creations.  I certainly didn't get through everything that I pulled out (or make nearly as much as some folks... check that out over on the Earrings Everyday blog HERE) but at least I was able to get a few new things done.  I'm going to keep that little container handy and continue to work through its contents as time allows.  For now, I've got a couple of other challenges and a few Christmas presents to make so I've got to go get busy!