Rustic ceramic, African flowers, Leather

Hi, everyone!  💗

Lately I've been experimenting to see what different types of earrings I could make pairing beads I've had on hand with Czech glass, chain, fiber.  I've also been making beaded leather necklaces recently, which got me to thinking, why not use thin leather cord to tie some earrings together?  (Not that this is anything new--in fact, I've made a few earrings knotted together with leather in the past--but somehow this felt different.)

I had the beads I wanted to use:  carved African flower beads and rustic, red-and-black ceramic triangles by Sarah Kandell-Gritzmaker of Slate Studios Supply.  I picked some tiny black lampwork glass rondelles by Beeboo to use as well. 

I kept the design simple, using only the three components.  I fastened the 0.5-mm leather to the charms with lark's head knots, and then fed the two ends of the leather cord through the rondelles (a tight fit) and the flower beads (just right).  At the top of each flower bead I made a loop and tied a small barrel knot in each of the leather pieces, cutting away the extra cord, and adding tiny drops here and there of good ol' GS Hypo cement to make sure the knots stay just where they are! 

And then they were finished.  😊

Thanks so much for reading, as always!  I will see you all in two weeks.  💗

 xoxo
Meridy
My Shop

And now for something completely different...

After making so many ruffly, floral, super-girly earrings for my last post a couple of weeks ago, I was ready for something different:  (1) tribal style and (2) crows. 💗

Thanks to the dynamic duo of Vincent and Nooma Cav of Inviciti, I was able to combine these two favorite things in one pair of earrings.

Why crows/corvids?  They're extraordinary birds.  Crows remember faces; they remember the people who feed them and who are kind to them--and they remember the people who hurt them too.  They tell each other who to watch out for and whom to look after.  They have a kind of magic. 

I love Inviciti's rustic bird charms, and they called out to be made into a pair of simple tribal earrings.  I'd had the carved-wood African beads and the beautiful dark red lampwork spacers by Julie Wong Sontag in my bead collection for a while, and I didn't need much else, just a couple of gunmetal spacers and some black niobium ear wires.  They came together easily...and I so enjoyed making them!

   
The earrings, called "Tribe of Crow," can be found in my shop, here. 

Thanks so much for reading--I'll see you all in a couple of weeks!  💗

xoxo
Meridy

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