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Thursday, May 5, 2016

Red Tulips


As you may know, we recently moved to a new house.  Its been fun to discover which plants lay below the surface in our new gardens.  Much to our delight, red tulips appeared in the early spring.  I've named today's earrings in their honor.
The ceramic discs and beads are from Suburban Girl Studio.  The discs are glazed around the rims and have a hole in the middle. I decided to fill the center hole with flower beads.

Because I was filling the hole with beads, I had to come up with an alternative method of hanging them from the ear wires. This required a little mechanical engineering. Several of my initial tries weren't strong enough and the discs flopped forward.  Here's a view from the back showing what I finally came up with.

I placed the flower on a headpin, and then added a 4mm red fire polish bead.  Although the bead doesn't show, it  fills up the hole and stabilizes the flower. After the fire polish bead, I made a wrapped loop.  Using a heavy gauge headpin, I added two size 8 seed beads, the wrapped loop and four more seed beads. Then I added a spacer and the red ceramic bead.  I wrapped the top loop snugly and wrapped down around the top of the bead, to strength to the construction.

I think the Red Tulips will be fun to wear all summer!

8 comments:

  1. Those tulips are gorgeous and the earrings are adorable!!

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  2. What a very clever way to hang the discs! I agree with Kristi, these earrings are adorable.

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  3. Clever, Linda. I've kept a copy of that photo. ;)Lovely tulips, red, and earrings. :)

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  4. First off, I completely understand what a fun surprise it is to see what's springing up this season. I also just bought a house and had no idea what was planted, there have been lots of surprises.
    Secondly, thank you for showing how you attached the disc & flower to the rest of the necklace. It's like getting to see what's behind the curtain. I love getting that peek.
    The earrings are lovely too!

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