When Life Gives You Lemons . . .

I had an idea in my head, and things were going pretty well. Then I screwed it up. Damn. I even asked my husband, who is always supportive of my jewelry efforts, what he thought of it. Good man that he is, he shook his head, cast his eyes down, and mumbled, "Nope."  Too much time and effort had been invested to scrap the whole thing, so I stuck the project in a corner of my studio table and moved on to something else. Then I saw this posted on a friend's FB.

List item #3 applied to my situation. It was time to make lemonade out of the lemon that was taunting me from the corner of my studio table. So here is the culprit . . . 

This annoying little piece of copper that I cut, filed, and then RUINED by texturing and glazing with patina.  Grrrr... so how to rescue these things? (There are two of them. Why I didn't just stop after screwing up the first one is a mystery.)

A while ago, I was faced with a similar dilemma when I embossed a piece of brass. I forgot to flatten the metal first and ended up with a blank section in the middle of the pendant. Looked awful! I solved that problem by riveting a filigree flower over that space. Maybe that would work again on these charms.

So I pulled out rivetable copper things - gears, shell charms, connectors. They needed some color and texture. I could tie them on with waxed linen! Yep, that might work to spruce up my lemons.

The finished earrings - kinda funky, kinda cool, and definitely satisfying lemonade. ;)