Hey you guys. Finished that artsy piece I told you about. Guess what it is…

Dragons!

Inspired by this post, from (you guessed it) Pintrest!

I saw it and I thought… hmmm…

I have some pretty size 15 Tohos which I’ve been itching to use for scales for something. Here’s my chance!

I used a 18 ga. wire as the base, and bent it and bent it, and peyote around it and after some finagling….

Bam! Earring.

Worn like so.

The basic body is a 6 count peyote around the wire, with some incremental changes for the head (there’s a size 8 round inside the head, and the eyes are also size 8, but Czech glass, not Japanese.)

The wings are actually an augmented herringbone, with wire for the ridges of the wings to keep them stiff and malleable. The wings are the only place I used size 11 Aikos from Toho, because they were the only thing that would fit on the wire and also let me get the needle through to attach the herringbone work from the wings. I also really like the change in texture that they provide.

I used herringbone on the wings because I needed them to look like they’re folded, without actually making an entire wing of 15’s. (that’d be a mess- there’d be waaay too much “material” to fold anywhere near accurately) The herringbone allows me to pull the lines of stitchwork forward and back with thread, creating the illusion of folds without actually needing to create folds. I’m actually quite proud of how the wings turned out.

This is a picture of him with the flash on- I just really liked what happened to the colors of the beads with the strong light.

I was very proud of him, once I was done, but I wasn’t quite ready to be done with the dragon “format”. Sometimes I need to make a few of something to get tired of it.

Plus, where would my green dragon be without a buddy?

Enter, blue and orange buddy, stage left.

I needed to do something to balance greenie (Now accepting ideas for names) because he’s so intertwined with my ear, but two would look odd, in my opinion. SO I created a hanging cage (Which my silver and blue guy can easily get out of, as you can tell). I used silver wire, the same 18 ga. I used for their “innards”. I used the egg technique to darken the silver.

Same technique for the body, and the face (side note, doesn’t he look a little like Toothless from How to Train Your Dragon?)

I think so…

Anyway, the biggest difference other than the cage and the fact that silver is more of a traditional earring, is that his wings are bigger. I felt like he should get to spread them a little.

So he got an inside color that was a real contrast, and a whole bunch of mottled work for his scales. I think he’s rather pretty.

I did have some initial concerns about the two being overwhelming when worn together. SO I created little jewel earrings for the other ear.

Here’s greenie with his “treasure” (in case you didn’t catch it earlier)

And silver with his.

Honestly though, after trying them on together, I think my initial instinct was right, and if I ever go to an event at which I can wear really artsy over the top art jewelry, now I have some. Like I didn’t before.