What Inspires Me - Part I

I was asked the following by one of the five people who actually read my blog (I prefer to think of them as a small but elite group who, naturally, have excellent taste, but I digress.....)

What inspires me when it comes to creating my jewelry?

Occasionally I might see a certain style of jewelry that I like, but I make it a point to not look too closely. No cutting pictures from catalogs or magazines, no browsing websites or other jewelry shops. I certainly don't want to copy what someone else has done. Instead I simply make a mental note about what struck me. Case in point is this necklace, which I created:

The item that provided the inspiration for this nepherite jade and glass bead tassle was actually a pair of earrings. The earrings had a large faceted black opaque bead, about the diameter of a dime. Suspected from the bead were small black bicone Swarovskri crystals strung on either beading wire, or thread. I thought a tassle might be an interesting idea.

My interpretation is different, however. Rather than string the two-tone green/black Czech glass beads on flexible beading wire or thread, I took the more labor intensive approach of wire-wrapping each bead (using sterling wire to create the chain "links").

It didn't take too long for my fingers to cramp (the beads are pretty small) and to become a little tired of the whole thing. So out with earrings, hello focal point of a necklace.

So in a nutshell, if I come across an ingenious idea, I may mull it over in my mind for a long time (usually long enough to forget the original source of the idea). Once at work, though, it may morph into something completely different than I intended. Inspiration, for me, is continually evolving.