Fly W.I.P.s

I took down one of my new listings yesterday because it was bothering me. It was this one: 

I'm still struggling with it, something about it is off. I should put it away. Can't force it, you know. The blue and red thing seems really forced. And it was.

Anywhatsits, here's an itty-bitty pair of earrings. I shot it with the penny so you'd see how tiny they are.

Here's something coming along.

Something's off with my camera. I think it's on the wrong setting. My camera's embarrassed to have taken such sucky pictures.

Got the bone thing going on. On my 'fly WIPs'. 

[If you're not from the good ol' US of A, do you know what I'm referring to? How the rappers are always talking about their fly whips? I dunno when folks started calling cars whips- for a while, I thought they'd all gotten into S&M big time....]

This one is maybe done-ish? One of those that just came together, totally unforced. 

By the way, struggling, taking down a post, reworking things- that's all thanks to my inner critic. I hear lots of dissing of inner critics. People saying you have to shut it/him/her down. That you have to create freely and joyfully like a child does. But notice a child soon looses interest in making, as s/he grows. Maybe the child is not so delighted with what it makes? Also notice few young children making a living off their art.  And I have to say, my inner critic makes me work harder to raise my standards and make better things. In the end, having those higher standards makes me go 'eeeeeeeeee' with joy when I see what I've made.

 So there.

 My inner critic doesn't know if it likes these. Here's a tidbit: I flipped one of those 'eye' findings backwards to add a little variety. Well, that was before I had the netting over it.

Oh I'm 'eeeee'ing over these. Know what? I bought these copper ear wires on line and hammered and oxidized them myself, to complete the 'artisan finding' look. 

Did I mention these pictures suck ass?

Oh here's a spicy little number (hu?). I had that door knob backplate with the faceted ab bead under resin for forever, wanting to put it on a leather belt piece as a cuff. When I finally jerry-rigged up a connection, the damn piece obviously needed to have been hammered into an arc, it was stiff and didn't fall on the wrist naturally at all. So there goes that. But suddenly this little guy came together just like that. Well, it helps to have heaps of interesting supplies.

Since my double-wrap necklaces worked out pretty well, I made a double-wrap bracelet with some thin and pretty chain... Ok, you can't see it., just the extender chain. But there's a chain made of double-ended ball head pins made by missficklemedia. I'll take decent pics tomorrow... or the next day.... or the next. Promise.

I still need to oxidize these ear wires. They're steel. Is there any rule against steel? Cuz I never hear about people using steel ear wires. But steel is strong and, you know, cheap. So. I used it. These were made out of a little plate I cut, filed and hammered.

I continued to use glue to put this one together. E6000. It's staying set beautifully, and without any stiff glue areas on the reverse. Did I mention the base is an old award ribbon? In fact it was a long-ago abandoned bracelet project that I recently re-found.

I'm trying to work on a balance between masculine/rustic and feminine/vintage.
My most recent merging of opposing elements was my development of victorian tribal. But I realized that before that, I was working on merging 'jewelry' supplies with functional things not intended for jewelry. Like so:

I focused on that the way I recently had to consciously focus on victorian tribal. After a while it becomes second nature-ish. Next dichotomy is masculine vs. pretty. Cuz everyone's going crazy for the pieces mixing scruffy old leather and rhinestones. So. I gotta figure out a way to do that without, you know, going the way of the this kind of thing: