Erin Prais-Hintz, one of the contributors to the Earrings Everyday blog, had a fabulous idea for her monthly challenge, We’re All Ears, this December. Usually she shares a visual inspiration, and participants make one or more pairs of earrings based on that and share on the third Friday of the month. For this month, Erin challenged us to use leftovers hanging out on our work tables (go on, you know you’ve got some) to make earrings. That sounded really good to me because I’ve had creative block for a while about making earrings. Erin laid out the challenge like this:
- Take a picture of the craftermath of your bead fest. I’m not scared to show my mess. I’ve done it before. I live in my truth (and my mess). So here it is.
At least I’ve managed to scrape off the front so I have a little work space. Next step:
2. Quickly organize sets of coordinated (or not) materials to work with.
I didn’t agonize. I just picked up things I thought would work well and put them in the sections of this box. (I think it was originally a tea caddy. But once you start beading, everything starts to look like bead storage.)
3. CREATE! Erin suggested putting on some music (which I did) and making it fun. That sounds a bit obvious, but sometimes I go into my studio and just sort of stress myself out. That’s no good! So I just let it be fun. I made three pairs of earrings during the first session. I started to get antsy after that, so I thought I’d better let that be it. I had a good time. I only took apart one earring and redesigned because it wasn’t working. Pretty good. I’m happy with this first session.
Later the same day, I was writing this post and reviewing Erin’s suggestions. She said set your own pace – set a timer or make one pair a day – whatever works. So I figured I’m always good for one pair. I went back to the studio and made one more.
As an additional nicety of this process, I cleaned up a little. In addition to using up some of the bits of my craftermath, as I dug around my bead table to supplement what I had put in the box, if I found finished pieces of jewelry, or whole, identifiable bunches of beads or art beads, I labeled them as necessary and put them away. Yay!
Then I started to think, well, I could make one pair each day. How hard is that? So here is the next day…and the next.
And then I made a few more on the weekend.
I got the hankering to really work on cleaning up my space, so I started to focus on that rather than making earrings, but while I was doing it, of course, I made one more pair with things I unearthed. All together, I made 12 pairs of earrings; I don’t think I’ve made that many in the past year, and here I’ve done it in less than a week.
I am so happy to be making earrings again. I also loved using up some leftovers which often just languish. Thank you, Erin and Earrings Everyday! I will donate most of these to Ears To You and save a couple to drop for art abandonment.
Go visit the We’re All Ears December reveal on Earrings Everyday and see what others made.
What fun!! So nicely told with more and more earrings emerging!! They are all wonderful but I love that last pair the very best!! Such a burst of energy and surprise!!
Wow! You made some really beautiful earrings. It was amazing to see the piles of beads and what they were transformed into. Well done!
Loved your post—especially the part where everything starts looking like bead storage! The earrings you made are beautiful. Your post has been an inspiration for me to get busy! Thanks for an funny and inspirational post!
See? What fun! I think this is going to become an annual event! I am blown away by how productive you are… I really should have taken my own advice and done one pair a day… I left it for really late on Thursday but challenged myself to one pair for every 2 songs (or so…) and it worked! I will do this again for other deadlines. So nice of you to share your bounty with the Ears to You. Great idea! Enjoy the day, Miss Ann and thanks for joining in the fun with me! See you in the new year with new inspiration! Erin
Awesome! Great idea to do one pair a day! You accomplished so much too doing it that way. I was sick so I did a last minute Marathion almost did participate but I pulled it together at the last minute. I did “ears to you” before …great reminder…I should do it again thanks for the link!
What great tips on how to be both productive and creative! “One pair a day” seems very doable.
You are inspiring! And, what wonderful creations!
This process turned out fabulous for you! I like what you made for sure. I had hoped to play along, but most of my crafting was paper-related lately. I figured just seeing the finished projects from this ‘challenge’ would inspire me anyway, and I was right! You’ve totally inspired me 🙂
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