For Auld Lang Syne

                                                        Our last post of  2017!


As I write, I'm humming 'Auld Lang Syne' - a poem by Scotsman Robert Burns, set to the tune of  a traditional folk song and sung all over the world to bid farewell to the old year at the stroke of midnight on 31st December. For old times sake....so you might be expecting me to reprise some of my favourite earring pairs from 2017.

Nah.......never look back is my motto. Life's too short. Let's look forward to 2018 and think about         

                                                                   COLOUR!                    
                                                                                      
How much notice do you take of colour predictions when designing? PANTONE have declared 2018 the year of Ultraviolet. 'Dramatically provocative and thoughtful, communicating originality, ingenuity, and visionary thinking'.  With a business named after my granddaughter Violet I can't help but be excited. The fashion magazines are already full of it and I know from experience it's one of my customers' favourite colours - it never stays long in my shop. Here are a couple of pairs I made recently with leaves from Helen Backhouse and lampwork by Juliette Mullett of Avette Glass. 

 

 

 

 

 

And this pair, I made for Hallowe'en with vintaj black arte metal and Rejetta's witchy hearts.

 

 

The top pair has been repinned from my Pinterest page almost 700 times in two weeks - so I guess we can't ignore Ultraviolet. Here I've kept it fairly subdued, with silver, bright blue or black. But it looks vibrant with lime green, moody with mustard, soft with pink; flamboyant with red.  Cool with silver, warm with gold. The possibilities are endless. Is it for you, and what other colours or metals will you use it with? 

 

 

It just remains for me to thank you all for joining us for another year; and to hope we continue to enthuse you through 2018!

 

 

Lindsay x

 

My Etsy shop

 

My Facebook page 

 

 

 

 

FaeryLights

Hi, everyone!  💗

Lately I've been making a lot of chainmaille jewelry, which I really love.  It's precise, sleek, and meditative and also beautiful, intricate, and versatile.  But after so much time working ring-by-ring, I was ready for festive, vibrant color...and glass.

FaeryLights can be purchased here.

Pati Walton, one of my favorite glass designers, made all the lampwork glass beads in these brightly beautiful earrings.  And, oh, the COLORS--fuchsia, yellow, orange, blue, purple, and green "painted" in ribbons across Pati's glass head pins and added as bubbles on the little lampwork beads.  Even the  little Czech glass rondelles and Swarovski crystal bicones I added to the mix are rich and vibrant. 

I love the way the light filters through the colored glass and crystal, turning the beads into their own kind of light. 

Color is nourishment for our creative hearts, I think.  And I'm so glad I made these little FaeryLights at this magical time of year.

Thank you so much for reading!  I wish you all a wonderful (and heart-nourishing) New Year, and I'll see you all again in 2018!

xoxo

Meridy

My shop

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The Big Day

Were you good this year? Did Santa bring you lots of beautiful beads?

Jetta here with holiday greetings for Christmas Day! I have a design I have been wanting to try out for a while. I wanted this design to have the feel of a classic Christmas but be able to wear it for any season.















But the twist was to take them from being earrings to becoming a bracelet. I dove right in with these amazing red lampwork rings from A Beaded Gift. Then I added my own polymer clay bittersweet round beads. The brass filigree pieces are Vintaj and elegant copper ear wires from Faerystone.

The tiny lobster clasps can be detached from the ear wires and then clasp them to the jump rings on the bottom of each earring. I am very happy with how they turned out.

Who knows what beads and jewelry design adventures are in our future. I hope your holiday time is filled with love, fun, and togetherness...

Happy Holidays,

Jetta

Season's greetings

to all.  I hope you have a fantastic Christmas/holiday/New Year.  I will end this year showcasing my husband's (Martin's) work, who discovered painting recently.   He is now well and truly hooked and is at my painting station every chance he gets.  I'm not complaining as he is coming up with really clever designs.  

For this pair I wire wrapped some big hoops with seeds and flowers.  I kept the colours understated so the bright purple cats would stand out and the wrapped hoops would act as the frames.  I added brass feathers to the bottom (any excuse to make them longer) and finished with Czech glass rondelles on top. 

For the second pair I kept things cleaner with plain brass tubes and brass feathers.  I have made them slightly asymmetrical to add some interest. 

That is it for this year, I hope you like them.  I will be back in the new year with new designs.  

Suhana <3

My Etsy shop: Buttoned Up Beads

Spirit Of Christmas Past

"Christmas children live in a Christmas daydream Waiting for the magic to unfold Wondrous things to eat Every Christmas treat Rich or not the Christmas pot of gold Hypnotizes children young and old."

Leslie Bricusse

Above, beautiful ceramic Santa charms by Kiyoi Design and amazing silver tipped urchin spacers by Tom Gronwall of The Jewel Weaver.  These stunners mimic vintage mercury glass and when I saw the old fashioned father Christmas I knew they would make a wonderful match! I've had them in my bead box for a while waiting for the right time.

Below, again, ceramic charms by Kiyoi Design.  The wonderful holly accent beads are by Susan Kennedy of SueBeads. The shape, size and pattern were exactly what was needed!  Whimsical, but sophisticated.

♡

Thinking of Christmases past, I'm a total puddle of mush this time of year.  I miss my grandparents so much that my eyes well up with tears at the very thought of the wonderful memories they have given me.  What I wouldn't give for just one more...

John and Charlotte 1938

Wishing you all the magic of the season!

Loralee xo

Loralee Kolton ~ Artful in beads

Ideas and experiments

Due to my illness MS I suffer from something called fatigue. It is a common thing for many chronic illnessess. One way of describing it could be brain-tiredness. Sometimes I just collapse and must sleep. At other times I am awake, but lack the capability of doing anything useful at all. At these times I must come up with things to do of a more simple or automatic nature. Like for instance over the last couple of weeks I've been using some of that kind of 'spare time' for sorting my digital photo library of my own made jewelry. For me this is a kind of meditative work, with the extra benefit that things will end up being much more organized.

Due to reasons I have had storage on a few different units and libraries which have caused in many doubles, triples and in some cases even six or seven copies of the same image. Basically it's been a messy area. The goal is of course one single library with a clear and obvious system. Hopefully I am soon there :-).

Anyway, in this process of sorting I have also come over snapshots or photos that are not of finished jewelry. Most of the time I do not take photos of my ideas or experiments before I discard them. But sometimes I do. So today I thought I'd share some of those ideas with you. More or less good looking. And I think we can all undertand why they never became a finished piece of earrings. Still there are often particular elements of the design that could be inspiring in some way. I hope you enjoy :-)




I used that square chain in another pair of earrings which I have shown here on Earrings Everyday. With pink gemstone nuggets hanging from the bottom. They sold quickly.


Oh my lord how hidious!!!


Some kind of knotting idea. I want to explore this more at some time.


This could perhaps become something nice. I think I haven't used those large wooden squares for anything else yet. I might look into it again.




Nice Golem long stripey charms. They are still waiting to be used.



Lampwork Wing Dings. I love those art beads by Genea. Think they might have ended up in something else. I also love them golden filigree beads. Doesn't show here but they are really nice quality.


Like I said in the beginning, some of the ideas are less nice looking, some more ...
I think I should take photos of my ideas more often. From now on I will. In fact that will be my new years resolution. And I challenge you to do the same :-)

All my best,
Malin

We Three Kings

Hello! This will be my last post before Christmas. Now, if any of you have read any of my December posts, you'll know i don't really do seasonal earrings. But i was rather inspired by these gorgeous bone china, silver and enamel droppers by Petra Carpreau. I love the slightly grungy, rustic feel to them, but i think they are also rather regal (hence the topical title of this blogpost!)

Now, I recently ordered lots of spacers and bead caps, and thought I'd keep these designs simple and let Petra's beautiful work take centre stage.

This first pair (let's call them Casper) have some rather pretty vintage brass bead caps. Love the dash of sky blue and navy blue enamel pools.

I teamed these silver and green beauties with green ceramic washers and textured silver plated spacers. So, these will have to be called Balthazar (obviously).

And look at the gorgeous blue in this final pair -Melchior (stay with me on this). Just added some large holed roller beads with these, and some deep blue seed beads.

So, there we are. All available on etsy. Just remains for me to say happy holidays to you, and a peaceful. creative 2018

We're All Ears :: 3rd Annual Leftovers Challenge Reveal

First off, I have to apologize and correct the record...2017 is the 3rd annual Use Your Leftovers Challenge. I mistakenly thought it was the 2nd! 

Next, I have to explain the situation....as I am wont to do, I left this challenge until the last possible minute. I had to work a late shift at our local art gallery until 8pm on Thursday. But I can get very energized with a quick time frame, so I knew that I could do this. When I got home and finally into the studio it was closer to 9pm and I noticed that my phone was hot and stuck on the boot screen. At first I just thought I was low on power and got the charger. About 20 minutes later I noticed that it was not actually charging but stuck on that boot screen. Uh-oh. I have since found out that my phone is likely toast. Apparently, this particular phone (LG G4) has a known hardware problem. Most people found this out back in 2015. So of course, this doesn't look good (especially when the YouTube videos to fix this involve dismantling the entire phone and using an IRON on it). I decided that I would push ahead and start making some earrings, knowing that I would have nothing to show you. I just hope that my contacts, data and any photos or videos can be recovered (but from the reviews it doesn't seem likely). While it might be nice to get a new phone, I had totally paid this up front and it is probably out of warranty at this point. Wah-wah.

{Insert your favorite sad emoji here.}

First, take a picture of the craftermath from your bead feast. Earlier in the week I had actually took a picture of the current state of the craftastrophe. Here is a side by side comparison of the same exact corner from 2015 to prove that nothing ever changes. All I can assert is that I may have purchased more stuff...allegedly. Oh, the shame! {Please tell me you can relate...}

Next, find a divided box, bin, baggies or small bowls and go through the stash on your festive table picking out coordinated sets that you can use to create earrings.  Since my studio is teetering on the brink of the abyss, all I could do was just pull the bead pairs out on the 3" square space I had to work in. But the good news is that from this strata of raw material there is no end to the amount of things I can create. 

Now, kick your creating into high gear! I have become addicted to some podcasts, so I put on my favorite (Pod Save America) and listened to two episodes that I missed this week. You will have to take my word for it that I did create some earrings. If I can find a way to take pictures of what I made in the next week, I promise I will update this space. {Still in a funk about my phone's untimely demise.}

In the spirit of this season of giving, I will offer a giveaway of an Emergency Earring Making kit - with beads and findings from my obvious prodigious stash for you to use to make multiple pairs of earrings - valued at over $40. But in order to be chosen, you have to participate in the blog hop starting on December 15th! Winner will be chosen at random from all eligible entries on December 25th (that will give you more than one full week to make your Leftover Transformation magic happen!). I'll even leave the LinkyTools party open until December 25th so you have lots of time to play!

Let's get this leftover party started...tell your friends to join in the fun, too!

So now it is time for you to share what you made by adding your link to the Linky Tools party right here. Right now.

Red Creek Goddess

You know how you sometimes get ideas for a design from things that are tangentially related?   :) 

A while back I made a pair of sterling silver earrings using an ancient Japanese chainmaille weave...

...and just recently I began making a copper bracelet using the same weave.  Here it is in progress: 

It occurred to me that the first segment of both the earrings and the bracelet (the large ring + the two small doubled joined rings + the larger ring) resemble a goddess figure (do you see it?).  So I thought it might be fun to create a pair of goddess earrings that could be offered to customers with a number of variations.  

I decided to make my first version in copper antiqued to a gleaming, warm brown, with sterling silver highlights (the ear wires and the rings that connect them) and 4-mm Red Creek jasper and Swarovski crystal beads dangling from the bottom ring.  

These earrings can be made in sterling silver, bronze, or colored anodized niobium rings, and with just about any semiprecious stones, pearls, or whatever else you can imagine.  They're only about 2 inches long and very lightweight, so they're a good everyday earring too--pretty but not fussy.  

As always, thank you so very much for reading!  I will be back in two weeks' time.  :) 

xoxo

Meridy

My shop

My Facebook page

Let it Snow

This weekend we had the first snow of the winter up here in the north of England. We don't have it often, and it wasn't that deep compared to some areas, but still the kids were out on sledges and snowballs were flying. The roof of my conservatory-cum-studio was covered in beautiful ice patterns and I was contemplating the different patterns in the snowflakes. No two snowflakes are alike - each one is formed from a single ice crystal which falls through the atmosphere as snow. I was moved to dig out my stash of snowflake charms for this week's earrings - my last post before Christmas.

 

And who better to start with than our own Jetta ? These lovely blue and white snowflakes are incredibly detailed. With wooden 'branches' and swarowski pearl snowballs, they have a little winter woolly fibre scarf !














Here we have some vintage BoHulley pure white porcelain charms, with tiny pearls, bright red lampwork, and gingham connectors from Anna Pierson wired in red enamelled copper to Faerystone fancy earwires. 







Next up a bit of sheer glamour. Sparkly glossy Petra snowflakes with magnificent swirly silver lampwork beads from Juliette Mullett of Avette Glass.

And the final pair, below - the uniqueness of snowflakes - mismatched stoneware by BoHulley with spotty beads (have I told you Ultraviolet is Pantone Colour of the Year for 2018 - I'm so excited!) with Anna Pierson carved bone birdy nests and Faerystones violet earwires.







So, here we are....Merry Christmas to you all, have a lovely time and see you on the other side!
                                                        
                                                                     Lindsay

                                                                My Etsy shop
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Sweet and short

Greetings from Greece.
Today's post is going to be short and sweet, as are my earrings I like to share with you today.

These earrings are relatively short (9 cm) and very lightweight.
The ingredients:

- handmade etched glass headpins in a darker pink (Earthshinebeads)
- ceramic bead caps in pastel pink
- rhinestone spacers
- Czech glass in a darker pink with a hint of gold
- Tiny lighter pink seedbeads with a hint of gold
- Copper earwire

This lovely pair is available in my shop.

Thank you so much for looking and your support for Earrings Everyday this year.
I wish you all a Merry Christmas/happy holidays and I hope they are filled with lots of fun, joy, laughter and chocolate cake. See you in a couple of weeks.

Wishing you a wonderful day,
Janine
Esfera Jewelry

My etsy shop
My website/blog
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Bright Colored Packages

Hi everyone....Jetta here. The holidays are on their way with lots of shopping, cooking,  bake sales, and visiting friends and family. I can't seem to think of making any jewelry that isn't winter or Holiday in theme.

I am always drawn to red, gold, green, and gingerbread. This first pair is a classic maroon with snowflakes I call 'Sleigh Ride'. I wanted to really capture the snowflakes in the tin charms from Star Spirit studio So I choose little vintage rhinestone charms to dangle below flower beadcaps and raspberry ceramic rounds.

I made three pairs of holiday earrings and they are all very different from each other.  But I can see wearing all of them during the holiday season. This pair I named 'Haul out the Holly'. Yep, I have Johnny Mathis' voice singing merrily in my head for these earring. Just simple patina Greek swirl leaf charms with red seed pods hanging in clusters. Add copper ear wires from the talented Lucy Haslam of Faerystone and there is holly cheer.

Lastly, are my two 'Turtle Doves' in scrummy gingerbread and crème brulee colored ceramic bird charms by Gaea. I dressed these fluffy birds up with vintage shimmery golden Lucite beads, vintage gold painted basket weave Lucite beads, and gold-filled daisy spacers. Then I topped with cute gold-filled ear wires.

I hope your days are filled with joy and holiday fun. I will see you again in two weeks...which will be on Christmas Day!!

Jetta

Revisiting

As the title suggests I ran out of ideas and decided to go back old designs.  This has been a very busy week in my house.  Christmas concerts, discos, my little lady's (Zybella's) 1st birthday and recycling of the winter lurgy among all 5 of us- so ideas for new designs weren't happening AT ALL. 

Here are my efforts so far.........

Gorgeous Petra Carpreau decals adorned with Czech glass flowers, lampwork spacers and blinged up with Swarovski spacers.

Second pair with Frida decals, again by everyone's (including mine) favourite Petra, Czech glass flowers and ceramic rounds by Jana Bliznakova

Now that I've made 2 pairs I think I've got the 'bug' 😂 so I will be making more 

Here's a little collage of some of the older designs. 

Nothing has changed.  I'm a bit disappointed as I tend to change up older designs in their new versions.  Maybe I will do that another time. 

These earrings will be available in my last show of the year here.

Thanks for taking the time to read.  I will be back in a couple of weeks times with my last post of the year.  Take care and have a lovely Christmas/holiday 🎄🎄🎄

Funky Boho

I've been busy making polymer clay components last week for a show I had the past few days. I had lots of fun creating various components in a few different colorways, and the odd time, I come up with a shape I want to try just for fun.

I set these aside to make a pair of earrings for this blog post late in the evening (hence the artificial lighting - sorry!!). I wanted to make a different pair of earrings using a 'chandelier' type of component, but without making a 'chandelier' type design.

So this is what I came up with:

I couldn't resist using my favorite Swarovski crystal drops (in my favorite color to boot) since the color matched so well with the pink I used in my polymer clay design. The hints of coco brown, and the speckles of Gold metal leaf add just enough sparkle to my liking!

I've used some anodized aluminum rings in the colors that pick up the pink and gold, and some Tierra Cast hammer textured components at the top to add a quick touch of rustic sparkle. Small sparkling yellow/pink seed beads are wrapped in using copper wire on brass head pins.

Fun, funky... a little boho, a little different ;)

Have a wonderful day... hoping things aren't too hectic for you!

I'm hoping to have time to update my shop with these earrings and add some new polymer clay components for sale over the next several days.

See you in a couple of weeks!
Nathalie

Visit my Etsy components shop: My Garden Of Love
The Crafty Tribe

Rustic Christmas

Merry, Merry!

Hi, all~ Loralee here!  I'm getting so excited with the changing seasons and thrilled to share these rustic earrings with you today!

The lovely ceramic striped beads were handmade by my sweet friend, Gaea, of Gaea Handmade. I chose these in particular, not only for their rustic pattern and color combination, but also, for their unique free-form, oblong shape. 

The Copper patina charms are made by Jill Stoffegen of Foxpaws!  These  amazing copper charms are the finest I have ever come across. Not only beautiful to look at, but they feel magnificent in your hand!  In her description on Etsy, Jill wrote of their history which makes them all the more special:

"This copper is from our family farm. The Farm was homesteaded in 1850, with a log cabin. In the early 1880's a three story barn was constructed on the farm site. It was the only three floor barn in the state with drive in access on all three floors. This large barn housed the families draft horse breeding farm. This copper was salvaged when the barn was torn down last year. The copper was from a water trough used by the horses and later animals. That puts the aging process on this copper at over 120 years. The patinated surface is extremely durable, nothing seems to damage it. The surface has not been color altered. There are slight variations of color depending upon which salvage sheet they are from and some natural rugged edges were also used. You will be hard pressed to find copper like this with its history!"

♡

I was lucky enough to have a second pair of cooper charms! I'm so crazy for the dappled star pattern!  Again, everything done to a perfectly smooth satin finish.  

I wanted to play-up the dotted pattern so I paired the copper charms this time with lampwork beads by Petra Marikova.  Her work is meticulous and she is just outstanding!  The ivory with hints of brownish tan around the raised dots really make them pronounced.  Ivory looks amazing with the wintery sage green - bold yet subtle.

♡

Both of these earrings have me dreaming of a simpler life without electronics and so much noise.  I think of being in a cabin, under a blanket, next to a fire....hot coco and a big old-fashioned peppermint stick!  Okay, with a beading table in the corner....with a cat, or two...  blissssss  

Loralee xo

Loralee Kolton - artful in beads