Peacock feather, Earrings, & Tiny ornaments

After the cardinal, I had planned to do a peacock, tail down, Roman style. You can find peacocks all over frescos in Pompeii, often near household shrines. So I thought, yes, a peacock, that's next. And then I thought about the impossibility of recreating it effectively in a 2 inch square. Thus I settled on maybe just doing an "eye" from the tale feather. 

​I needed to cut some glass, which I enjoy doing, and I think I'm getting better at consistency. 

I have an aquamarine blue, which I thought would be green enough (it wasn't but oh well), which I first cut into centimeter strips, then snipped into centimeter squares, then cut in half, and cut in half again to make little .5 centimeter squares. Then I cut some of those in half too.

 sI decided I needed to cut more of the other colors too, plus I like how pretty the cut glass looks just sitting on a mirror. But I digress. 

Even though I had drawn the peacock eye on the mirror, it ended up off center (too far up), plus the aquamarine wasn't very green. I really looked more like just some weird pattern. So while I was waiting for the glue to dry (and to avoid my disappointment), I turned my attention to this little one inch circles I had. I thought that perhaps I could make some tiny little ornaments for my own small Christmas tree. 

I decided to because these are so small that I would not try to fill in the little mirrors completely but just do the edges and some sort of design in the middle. But then I had this idea about making earrings... I had found this little blanks at Michael's (bottom of the picture) and thought I could glue tesserae to them. ​

I had also splurged on a jewelry kit with earring loops that I could attach.  Because the little rectangular blanks are so small, I could only think of a couple of patterns. I haven't used the square ones yet; waiting for inspiration. It will come. 

So I went back to the tiny ornaments, trying out various designs. I thought these would be quick and easy to make, but because they are so small they are a little fiddly. Also, you have to have a lot of glass cut to make sure you have the right shapes/sizes available. But here are the first dozen. I'm sure I will make more, but  I have an idea for a wren in the 2X 2 inch size which I want to tackle next....