Liz Palacios Earrings

My all-time favorite earrings are a pair by Liz Palacios that I've had for at least 20 years. They're black, heart shaped beads in scalloped and engraved silver settings on posts. They have dangles (of course!) about an inch and a half long made of tubular black plastic beads with little round silver spacer-beads. They're festive and light weight. They earrings were made in San Francisco, and I bought them from an airport vendor in Philadelphia when I was flying home to Vermont after visiting my family in Arizona.

One time after I wore them, without thinking, I put them in jewelry cleaner – the liquid stuff in a plastic jar that's made for delicate and porous stuff like pearls and turquoise. As soon as I realized what I'd done, I took them back out, but it was too late. The tubular black plastic beads were frosty white. Not willing to just let a pair of earrings like that go, I got out a fine-tip permanent black market and went to work. It took some time to color all the beads back in. I had to do all the edges without marking on the silver spacers and I had to do it evenly. And guess what! It worked perfectly. In fact they came out blacker and shinier than they had originally been.

Fixing things after you wreck them doesn't very often work out as well as that did. But that was at least 15 years ago, and they still look great. I always clean them with a jewelry-cleaning cloth, just to keep the silver polished and the beads shining. I get lots of compliments on those earrings, still. And every time I wear them I remember sitting on the edge of my bathtub, hunched over those earrings, working away kind of frantically with that permanent black marker.

I've always kept the earrings on the card they came on to keep the dangles from getting bent. That's the only reason I know that the maker is Liz Palacios. I was at the Nordstrom Rack in Washington just recently, and I think I found my second all-time favorite pair of earrings. I didn't realize they were the same brand as the black ones from Liz Palacios until I got them home. They're flower shaped earrings made of turquoise-colored plastic beads with bright pink crystals in the center and little turquoise-colored dangles. I don't know if these are really such great earrings or if they just remind me of my favorite pair, but it doesn't matter. I love wearing them.