It’s very easy to fall into the “it’s too late” trap. Whether we feel we’re too old to change jobs or husbands or we’ve invested too much time and money on that house or that school to start over. Well, let me tell you, I pride myself in my “now you see it, now you don’t” approach to just about everything. Sometimes you just have to start over. About a hundred years ago, my very dear friend, Annette commissioned a piece depicting the masks of Comedy and Tragedy. This was the first incarnation:

Ooh. Aah. How interesting! Now what? It was huge. It was flimsy, and I couldn’t figure out where to go from here. So you know what I did? Nothing. I put it away for a year or so and got a stomach ache every time I realized my first customer was patiently waiting for her work of art. About 6 months ago, I was playing with this piece if silver, (see “Hiding in Plain Sight” from Feb 25) and I came up with the idea to do the masks in a smaller scale and mount them on the silver. I put a bail on it and this was the result:

Beautiful! I loved it! Annette loved it! I thought it might still be a little big, so I sent her a pic of me wearing it:

I look like Snoop Dog.
Annette’s reaction? “Maybe it’s a little big…”
Back to the drawing board. So, I cut my beautiful piece of silver in half, took the masks down in size, again and attached a pin back to it. And we finally have this:

I think I like it. Annette seems to like it. One thing I know for sure, it is the last incarnation of this piece. While I firmly believe it’s never to late to start over, Sometimes you just have to let it be.