Challenge earrings -- or, seeing an old bead in a new light

I'm still editing my reveal post for the Challenge of Music so I thought I'd take a break from that and show these earrings instead, which is sort of a fusion between yesterday's challenge in FusionBeads' 30 Day Challenge and this week's bead soup challenge in Heather Powers' Jewelry Making Mojo Challenge. It's not much of a bead soup, just four beads, but I'll try to explain why it still sort of is in my mind. But let's start from the beginning.

These four beads come from a bag of mixed leaf beads I've amassed over the years. It contains leftover beads as well as beads I just bought one or two of (often just to see the shape or colour IRL with no project in mind). As there's so few of them, I rarely find a project for them. Especially since I don't actually do earrings (as explain in an earlier post, I don't wear earrings and don't have pierced ears), but lately I was inspired by the blog Earrings Everyday to get my little stash of clip-ons and screwbacks out.

The focal point of this design is the milky red beads. Originally, I bought them for an autumn design with matching flower beads. They're autumnal maple leaves and I never saw them as anything but. Until... Thinking about the bead soup and earring challenges, I picked out the leaf bead bag and started to think. Turning the red leaves around, they do look like some sort of exotic flower or a floral motif from old indian, persian or other asian designs. Suddenly, I had budding flower beads instead of leaf beads in the bead soup ziplock bag!

After that it was only a matter of deciding on the design.

In the end, I when with my first choice as I liked the inverted drop shape.

And that's it, the first pair of earrings I've made in over a year.