Gloomy skies and earrings

This Monday was Labor Day. 

It's now Thursday, and I still haven't blogged!

I feel recharged after the extra day off, and the weekend is already around the corner.

I went to the craft stores on Monday.

There are several fires burning, so the sky was gloomy and the sun was red.

Yesterday, Wednesday, it even more smoky.

I haven't gone outside today, but it seems to be more of the same.

Here's a picture taken in mid-afternoon:

I'd like to visit the beach, since it's getting toward the end of tourist season.

The smoke makes really nice sunsets.

But I work every weekday evening, and weekends at the beach are still too crowded.

At least the somewhat cooler weather is more inspiring.

I saw these earrings on Pinterest and I really wanted to make them:

I don't know who the original designer is.

They have an Art Deco kind of look. I thought they would look better in black.

Here's a picture of how I started:

Re-constructing the earrings, from the photo, was very engrossing.

It appears to be all one wire at first, but I guessed, and used multiple pieces of wire.

I discovered that as I attached the secondary wires, it seemed to hold the piece together.

At the end, I seemed to have misjudged the length of the straight middle piece:

It came out bent because the center wire wasn't long enough.

I started over, drawing a blueprint:

It came out better, but I was tired by this point, and only made one earring.

I also tried to recreate these earrings, also from Pinterest:

Here is a picture of the metal elements as I was making them:

It looked simple enough, but it was frustrating. 

First I couldn't find the right bead. This design would not work with any other shape of bead. It had to be perfectly round like a marble. This was a problem because my beads are mostly sorted by color and not shape.

Then I figured out the two wires would not intersect, AFTER I attached the round bead, so I had to take them apart and start over.

The result is a bead that appears to float:

It still wasn't completely symmetrical. Well, one earring is more symmetrical.

I followed the Pinterest link to the original maker, Aniko Sander and it seems they also had that issue.

I'm going to have to re-do them, because after manipulating them so much the wire became a little bit dilapidated. 

I was surprised I did not have more beads of this shape, so I'll have to go buy a few...

But I'm happy, because I haven't tried such complicated projects in awhile.