Moongazing.

A couple of weeks ago I was meeting my sister in town and had an hour or so to spare, so I dropped into our city museum for a coffee. They had an exhibition on entitled Museum of the Moon. There was a replica of the moon hanging from the high, domed ceiling which could be viewed from three levels - this was the central one. The exhibits included a scaled down Apollo rocket, a spacesuit circa 1968 and lots of artefacts detailing the significance of the moon to ancient civilisations. I was so fired up by all this I have been instagramming it like mad. I felt a tribute in jewellery was warranted!

 

I had several copper pieces by Helen Backhouse at home with the same sort of surface pattern - some from a wormcast rock I brought her from Greece last year, and some  from a piece of rose quartz she used as a mould.  In the end, I made a necklace, bracelet and earrings - and here are the earrings. 

 

 

With the textured copper pieces I have used glorious, galaxy-like lampwork bicones by Angelika Schott and wrapped them with copper wire and little satellite swarowski crystals.

Here's the view from below - while I was having a latte and a toasted teacake for breakfast! Life doesn't get much better. If you are in the UK, this exhibition is touring the country so do try and catch it if you can. You won't be sorry.  

 

 

 

Hope the weather is being kind to you - its unseasonably warm here and the plants are shooting up fast. See you in two weeks.

 

Lindsay x 

 

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Teal Tassels

I have a small hoard collection of enameled cones from Sue Beads and thought I'd use a pair for today's earrings.

The cones are enameled in teal, with hints of green and maybe even a little golden yellow. I paired them with mint green and light turquoise crystals. They turned out quite elegantly, with their sparkling crystals and silver lined teal seed beads.

The Teal Tassel earrings are available at Linda Landig Jewelry.

See you in two weeks. 

bubbles and butterflies

Hello friends,

Hopefully Spring has arrived at your place. We are still in the Netherlands and we have had some beautiful days of spring with sunshine and 15 to 18 degrees Celsius. Winter seems to have gone.

Some of you may have seen these earrings on Facebook already. They are made with gorgeous lampwork beads made by Juliette Mullett from Avettebeads in wonderful shades of blue/gray and black. Combined with butterfly charms, hematite in a blue shade and my own ear wires, embellished with farfalle seed beads.

Thank you so much for looking and your support for Earrings Everyday :)
And you know I love to read your comments, so don't be shy and leave some words.
See you in two weeks.Wishing you all a wonderful day, full of joy, spring flowers and butterflies,
Janine
Esfera Jewelry

Taking A Moment

This is a little tribute to my friend and glass artist, Amanda Craigmyle, whose beads were the first I fell in love with and fueled my passion for designing jewelry from the very start. Amanda just recently passed away after a long battle with cancer.  She's been on my mind constantly and as I was flipping through photos of our collaborations over the past 12 years I thought I'd share some.

A special bond is formed when one artist passes their work to another, this is common to jewelry designers which is unlike most art.

       

Rest in peace, my sweet friend ~ your art and spirit live on...

Loralee xo

loraleekolton.etsy.com

50 shades of .....Green !!!

Hello lovely ones how are you all ?
I bet you wondered what on earth this title was going to be about lol.
Sorry to disappoint but it's about moss and all it's different colours.....yeah it's really exciting !!!
I live in wild and wonderful Wales right next to a lovely river and surrounded by trees ,so of course we get lots of different mosses and lichen.
Their colours are amazing and range from the deepest Forrest green to the palest of grey/greens. Long straggly almost ethereal misty grey fronds float from my cherry tree and chartreuse lush carpets surround my pond.
So when I found these beautiful lampwork beads from Crystal Adcock I just though ....moss !

These beautiful little works of art have a sort of faceted surface of a mossy green with golden veins running through them.

placing them above this gorgeous picture jasper,and wire wrapping oodles of tiny faceted labradorite beads brought out the glow from within ,simple copper circles earwires by me and I think they have a subtle organic soft feel .
Well I do hope you like my ramblings on moss lol
Love and hugs Lucy xx

Dreamy ceramics

Hello earring people! I've been having a bit of a break from jewellery of late. I made so many new pieces for a showcase a couple of weeks ago, I was spent! I was happy to take out my tools and look through some recent purchases of components for today's blog.

Now, these ceramics are by Spanish artist Mari Carmen Rodrigez Martinez of Majoyoal. If you haven't seen her work before -go take a look. Her glazes are just beautiful. The pair I made for this blog are a beautiful pale green with lemon tones. 

I added some rustic African brass beads to accentuate the ethnic feel to these, and finished with some brass jump rings and spacers to highlight the pretty details on the ceramic charms. I like using jump rings for decoration, rather than just as a way of connecting things together                              

 Below is a pair I made for my last show with gorgeous pieces also by Mari Carmen -this time with beautiful blues and indigo. I used some aqua recycled glass chunks with these, pretty twisted jump rings and silver leaves.

Both pairs are in my shop.

Thanks for popping in! See you in a couple of weeks 

Sue x

We're All Ears :: February Reveal :: Frozen

Friends. I don't have anything new to share today. Some of you know this, but others may not...my mother passed away just two days after the challenge post, on February 3rd. My Muse has not returned with all the things that I have needed to attend to, but she is thawing out a bit, so I am sure that I will be back to creating quite soon.

Photo by Damian McCoig on Unsplash

Instead of something new, I am going to share a few things that I made over the years that I think fit the wintery theme. And of course, I am most looking forward to what you have created because when you step outside your comfort zone and challenge yourself it is a thing of beauty.
  

  

Show me your best tribute to the frosty, frozen, winter chill!

In the Dreamtime

Some designs just seem to turn out dreamy and abstract, and in the case of these earrings, pastel as well.   

A while back I fell in love with these lovely pink coin beads, below (found at Arte Bella Surplus on Etsy), and I wanted to try making earrings with them using my thread-wrapping construction.   

I had a pretty strong feeling it probably wouldn't work, because wrapping beads and components together with thread/cord requires torque upon the components...and there was a natural frailty built in to the stacking of the coin bead, the small Caribbean-green Czech glass rondelle, and the rose-colored glass disc.  What would be stable wired might not be when pulled tight on cord.  

As it turned out, I ended up needing to wire wrap the earrings to give the beads the stability they needed to stay in place.  But in the end I still had fun with some fiber by wrapping pale lavender Irish waxed linen thread around the tops of the beautiful polymer clay components by Jeni Houser Alasad of Auntie Moons.  💗 

As I write this, it's raining gently outside my window, after a day of heavy rains; it's been a busy day, and I'm ready to rest.  When you read this it will be Valentine's Day, and I wish you all love and best wishes!  I'll be back in two weeks with something new.  💕

xoxo
Meridy

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Love, actually.

How could I not? Whether you think it's the most romantic day of the year, or a load of old cheese, you can't ignore St Valentines Day, and it's tomorrow.  Him indoors better shape up - no garage flowers in this house, please!

As is usual, there are varying accounts of the origin of St Valentine's Day but the  most widely accepted is that it is dedicated to St Valentine of Rome, a priest in the 3rd century under Claudius II who was put to death on 14th February for assisting Christian marriages.

Observed as a feast day since 496 AD it gained popularity in Victorian times when the tradition of giving cards, chocolates and trinkets to your loved one really took off. Fat cherubs abounded!

So here are my earrings. A simple design using stoneware hearts and beads by the lovely Jana Bliznakova, with African turquoise and chain dangles, I like the way they hang. Just not quite traditional.  

If you haven't anyone to buy a card or gift for (and I admit to buying all my grandchildren a little something - him indoors wants yet another new bike, so he can wait) then take a bag of goodies to your local food bank and make a family's day special instead, or buy a homeless person a hot drink.

                                                              See you in two weeks

                                                                         Lindsay x
                                                              
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Seeds and Metal

I always try to make 'components' to go with other artists' works.  For today's earrings I antiqued these brass shields and punched a tonne of holes (literally!).  The plan was to add as many lines of seeds as I could fit and this is what happened ↓

I made this pair first matching the seeds to Martin Hart's (The Husband) painted resin charms. I added layered caps topped with a flower just under the ear wire to balance the entire look. 

In this second pair, I did the same as the first......but I wanted to make them look slightly different.  same design but still differfent 🤔 so I added a vertical lines of seeds on either side of the main area of horizontal seed lines.  Enamel connectors are by 2Moiselles.

I have a few more pairs planned in the same design.  I'm going to make them to death before I'm bored (as alwsays)🤣

These will be available in my show on Monday here.

See you soon <3

Suhana <3