I want to lift the curtain a bit and show you what goes on behind the scenes on my bench. To be honest, I hate to measure. I bought some tools to help me with measuring but to no avail. When I measure, I feel like I have to get it right and that feels constraining. Even with the tools, I am not very good at getting it right. Trying to get it just right takes up a lot of time. So I decided long ago to just eye it!

When I am in the zone of a design, I like to just go with it. I have found “eyeing it” is much more successful than measuring and a lot more fun. Here is what I mean. In the flower earrings pictured, I have taken many liberties. On the pedals, I used a template for the top of the pedal and added the rest by freehand. In cutting the pedals, I used snips (sturdy scissors for metal) to cut the curves rather than a more precise saw cut. You can see on the design stamping on the back plate that I just went for it in a very organic way rather then measuring equal distance. I actually put the ear wire along a ruler but eyeball where to cut. Each ear wire is made the same way but they come out just a little differently from each other depending on where I start. Of course I could measure where to start but why bother!

I have found that just eyeing it is very freeing and leads to some great designs. Precise isn’t always pretty. Where do you like to “just eye it”?