I'm giving some thought recently to designing earrings, since they are my favorite jewelry item. 
I've been perusing my collection and the on-line image plethora, to see which elements captivate me. I've decided that I like the following:
- dangles, hands down
- hoops next
- posts a distant third
- an interesting shape, whether two or three dimensional
- captivating texture
- a flash of color
- movement and even tinkle
- length
- occasional asymmetry (unmatched)
I sat down one afternoon in October with a stack of index cards and a pair of sharp scissors to explore shapes. When I had a stack of templates, I quickly textured some silver clay and cut a pair or two of each.
Fired and tumbled, they've been sitting on my work table for months, with a bit of dabbling occasionally into assembling them. Out came the Argentium silver wire, to be beaded into earwires and connectors. Out came the boxloads of beads, glass, metal and stone, sorted by color, to find just the right accent. Out came the hammer and anvil to harden and shape. No wonder my bench is a mess!
Today, as I try to get back into the flow of making, interspersed with cleaning up the mess, which is what I do when I'm not sure where to start, I thought perhaps I should finish at least one pair, patiently waiting for patina, polish and photography. Now I'm at least perusing the beads again and moving toward something concrete to make some progress without a lot of time investment. That's always the best start back: something finished!
This is a shape I've used before, but now I'm working on those new shapes as well. Maybe I need to follow the Ring-A-Day crowd's lead, but work on my own fetish, earrings!
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