Happy Accidents…

See these earrings? They were supposed to be a matching pair. Each should have had a tear drop gemstone dangling from the bottom, but as I was finishing the second earring, I twisted the wire that the gemstone was suspended from a bit too much. Drat, the gemstone just crumbled off! I should have known better than to fiddle with the wire, especially with teardrops, which are a bit more fragile because of their narrow tops. Well, I had to come up with an idea to salvage the project. Because the twisted wire was still intact inside the long polymer clay bead, I was able to insert a length of sterling wire through it. I bent the wire and added some small geared beads to the ends, but I needed to introduce some green to match the other earring. Polymer clay came to the rescue! I mixed up a color to match the gemstone and applied a tiny rope along the edge of the bone colored bottom portion of the bead. A bit of added texture and, Voila! I now have an asymmetrical pair of earrings that are inherently more interesting than they would have been had the stone not broken. So…all’s well that ends well! 

~ by BarbaraBriggsDesigns on August 24, 2012.