Industrial Decline

This week I was looking back on some old Instagram posts from a visit to Liverpool, where we stayed at the Titanic Hotel, beautifully and evocatively converted from an old rum warehouse.  Back in the 18th and early 19th century, Liverpool  Docklands were once a hub for the import of rum, tobacco, and slaves, and an exit point for emigrants crossing the Atlantic to the New World. Many of the huge old warehouses now lie dormant, rusted and overgrown, but are slowly being brought back into use as hotels and apartments, part of Liverpool's economic and cultural revival.

I was inspired to make a few pairs of earrings to reflect the architecture and colours; lots of old chain, rusty metal, algae, decay, decline. I saved this pair for the blog. 

 

 

 

The focals are Kim Rogers lampwork paizools, rusty and crusty. Tears, for a dying shipping industry. Tears, for those forced into slavery, to whom Liverpool has dedicated a Museum.  There's a nice ginger/rusty patina on the copper washers and earwires by  Lucy Haslam.

 

Those top beads are wonderfully marked leopardskin jasper. An evocative pair of earrings.

Hope you are having  a lovely summer - are you going anywhere nice for your holidays? I'm away to Greece next week hoping for some inspiration!
                                                                See you in a couple of  weeks
                                                                             Lindsay x

                                                               
                                                                        My Etsy shop
                                                                      My Facebook page

Sunshine, Showers and The Tempest

 

It's been an odd sort of week, weatherwise. At the beginning of last week we were out on our bikes in warm sunshine; by weekend, it was back to rain, sleet and hailstones. Tonight we have a mini storm, and there will be some fences down by morning - hopefully, not ours as we had to replace them all at a similar time a couple of years ago. So this weeks earrings represent the weather - sunshine yellow, rainy blue and stormy soldered silver.    

 

 

 

The beads are, of course, Basha Beads; nothing quite like them for magical depth of colour, with gold, blue, and aqua all vying for attention. The headpins are Lucy Haslam's 'punkies'; copper, soldered with bits of recycled silver - here I bent them sideways, to form an interesting shape, and from them dangle vintage oxidised silver chain and swarowski crystals.

 

So there you have it - this weeks weather, condensed into a pair of earrings! In my Etsy shop now.

 See you in a couple of weeks, by which time, we will have hit Spring. Hope all is well in your world!

                                                                          Lindsay x

                                                                     My Etsy shop

                                                                My Facebook page

A Question of Balance.

Asymmetry. Not always easy, is it? To some it comes quite naturally, to others not so much. My head veers to the matching pair and I have to force myself to deviate. And how to achieve a sense of balance when your components/sizes/colours are different? This pair was a case in point.

 

 

These great neutral tribal patterned stoneware beads and charms are of course by the one and only Jana Bliznakova, but one is different in shape and considerably shorter than the other. The answer came in the form of this one off crusty soldered headpin that Lucy Haslam made for me. Fits perfectly with the design and balances the length. In the centre we have black crusty lampwork criffles by Kimberly Rogers - Kim and her husband Dave are about to set off from Alaska  to come over to the UK and we are hoping to meet up again (not least because she has a huge stash of stuff for me!) Criffles just make any design dance; like little ballet tutus. Joyous.

                                   Hope you all have a good week - see you again soon. 

                                                                 Lindsay x

                                                             My Etsy shop

                                                        My Facebook page

Colorful

Hello lovelies,

How are you today? I am back in the Netherlands for work and I miss the Greek sun already. Here the skies are gray, with sometimes a bit of rain. This weather calls for colorful earrings. And what better way than create some with those wonderfully colorful, funky, bright earring charms made by the uber talented  Helena Benkoczka from Areto. I combined them with bits and pieces and handmade ear wires of Lucy Haslam from Faerystones. Lightweight, colorful and fun.

These will be available in my first show of this year in the facebook group The Earrings Show on October 1st. Hope to see you all there to join in the fun.

Wishing you all a wonderful day full of laughter, flowers and butterflies.

See you next month. 

Thanks for looking and you know I love to read your comments so don't be shy and leave some words. 

Janine

Paper Flowers

It's been unbelievably hot up here in the north of England this week - 31 degrees here today. Probably not too bad for those of you who are used to a hot summer, but we aren't, so we aren't equipped with aircon in our homes. Impossible to work in my conservatory cum studio so I've been outside under a large garden umbrella!

Right in my view is this lovely Clematis Viticella. I think it is 'Valour' but don't quote me - I'm erratic at keeping garden records! It's scrambling up the brick wall with its beautiful deep cerise papery flowers set off by green foliage.  The inspiration for this weeks earrings.

 

 

 

The textured and patinaed bronze connectors are new from Helen backhouse and perfectly coloured. I've wired them in bronze and added faceted emeralds, then through the beaten oxidised copper washers from Faerystones I've popped beautiful sari silk in a rich cerise, leaving the edges papery to  to echo the flowers.  The fancy earwires - also by Faerystones, are as near as I could get to the trellis behind.

 

 

Pretty summer wear to flutter round your ears! They're over in my Etsy shop now, and as I'm joining in Etsys 13th birthday sale, they have 10% off until the end of the month. And then - July, and school holidays with four grandkids beckon! See you then.

 

Lindsay x

 

My Facebook page

 

After the Show is over

It's been a long week. Birthdays, funeral, too much going on in life. And I'd booked an on-line  show with my three friends Helen Backhouse, Lucy Haslam and Jeni Houser Alasad. We had big ideas, a theme going - so the show must go on. Not a long one from me then, this week - I'm just going to share a few of my favourite pairs from the show.

Our theme was Mother Earth, morphing on the second day into Middle Earth and snippets from Tolkien's Lord of the Rings trilogy. Helen and I both live very near Stonyhurst, where Tolkien was a schoolmaster during WW2 and wrote a great deal of his trilogy; the landscape around there is believed to have been his inspiration for Middle Earth. Close to home then.

The first pair represent the Leaves of Lorien, given by the Elven queen Galadriel to the Company of Adventurers to safeguard them on their journey to the Lonely Mountain. The leaves are of course by Helen  and I added sterling connectors and silver earwires by Lucy.

Next we have the Dark Tower of Mordor - ceramics by Mari Carmen Rodriguez Martinez with mooakite chunks, black lampwork and Lucy's copper earwires.

And last - from the Mother Earth - these fabulous faces from Jeni with Laura Souder raku discs, lampwork by Juliette Mullett and brass chain. Queen of the Night - the moon, tied in orbit to the Earth.  Speaking of which, I'm off to bed after two very late nights. If you caught our show, I hope you enjoyed it, I know we did.

                    Have a lovely Easter time, however you celebrate. See you in two weeks!

                                                                              Lindsay x

                                                                          My Etsy shop

                                                                      My Facebook page

Labradorite

Hello there.

Hopefully spring has arrived where you live. Currently I am in the Netherlands for my day-time job and oh boy, it is cold. Very, very cold. What a difference with Greece. 

Remember these? 

I love labradorite, it’s one of my favorite stones. I made this design a while back and got a bit bored by it. So, time for a make-over.

I think the new design had just that bit extra. What do you think?
Labradorite, amazonite, yellow ceramic bead caps, crown bead caps, tiny Swarovski crystals in fuchsia and my favorite ear wires made by my friend LucyHaslam of Faerystones.

Now available in my shop.

Thank you for looking and till next month. And you know it by now, I love to read your comments, so don’t be shy. Let me know what you think of the new design. 

Janine

Esfera Jewelry

My etsy shop

My website/blog

My facebook page

New year greetings

Hello peeps,

How are you all doing? I hope you had a wonderful festive season and started the New Year happy and with a smile.

Reading Jetta's post from yesterday I can only nod my head in total agreement. This week I received my order of gorgeous new beads from Petra from Scorched Earth on Etsy, but sadly wasn't able to make any new pair of earrings. So we have to do with a pair I made a while back (2014) with her wonderful charms, a variety of Czech glass beads and earring wires from Lucy Haslam of Faerystone.

Wishing you all a wonderful day, full of joy, laughter and singing birds.

See you next month.

Janine

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
                                                            My Facebook page

Metal Guru.

Hello folks! Hope I find you all well. It's been a  busy week so far with three out of my four grandchildren succumbing to a sicky bug that's had me running around with not much time to make. So if you think your eyesight is a little blurry - no - I left it  a bit too late to take my pictures today and the light was disappearing fast, so it's the pictures, not you!

This week I thought I'd introduce you to a new venture for my friend Helen Backhouse. She's begun to work with metal clay - silver, bronze and copper - and the results are beautiful. She's using the same moulds as she does for her polymer clay work - all individually hand made from natural found objects, not proprietary. The first pair today is copper, in a bark effect. I've given them the special treatment, with my new delivery of Basha Beads - magical colours that look like the beads have tiny flames inside.

The shells are some of my favourite shapes and they cry out for sea treasures - coral sticks and keishi pearls, all copper wrapped.

And finally- the silver. Oxidised heavily and polished back so the relief in these teasel heads really stands out. I've kept these simple with black pearls and Lucy Haslam's oxidised silver twisted sisters connectors. Gothic glamour.

 

 

So those are this week's earrings; all available in my Etsy shop. I'll see you in two weeks, hopefully bug-free! And by then, there will be only two weeks to Christmas - can you believe it?

 

Lindsay x 

 

My Etsy shop

                                                                  My Facebook page

A Bit of Northern Soul.

Last Sunday but one Helen Backhouse and I popped over to Manchester to the Great Northern Contemporary Craft Fair. It's a week long shindig funded by The Arts Council and is a veritable hotbed for new talent. Although we have seen some of the exhibitors before, there are always lots of new Arts graduates fresh out of university, bringing their ground breaking ideas with them! Some of them are a bit whacky for my taste - but always worth a look.

Helen always heads for the ceramics (she's mad on pots and bowls) and the jewellery, of course, grabs our attention. Lots of it - and I mean lots. Seemed like every other exhibitor was a silversmith this year. Some very unusual work too - modern and edgy.  Lots of black. But I head for the textiles. They always spark my imagination and I like translating the colours and textures I see into jewellery.
I also bought some hand made buttons from one of the mixed media artists, Shirley Vauvelle.
My first pair of earrings this week uses Shirley's buttons; the inspiration was the colours from a piece of textile work by Sara Tommins.  Sarah is one of this years graduates. Always collect the business cards!

 

I really liked the effect of the grey shell layered over the links of elongated black chain with the ebony spikes, so while I was on a roll a couple more pairs took shape. Again, Shirley's buttons but this time in aqua. 

 

The third pair have baby enamels by Kimberly Rogers in yellow, with a tiny hint of pink. The lampwork is by Patricia Ritchie, with pink enamel earwires by Lucy Haslam. Normally, I hate pink and yellow together but with the black these work really well!

 

 

See how one business card sparks the flame? Next time you  are in a creative slump, bypass Pinterest (am I the only person who saves hundreds of pins only to never look at any of them ever again?) and look around you - buttons, cushions, woollies, fabric of all kinds can provide the spark you need. 

 

 

See you in two weeks time

 

Lindsay x

 

My Etsy shop

 

My facebook page

 

Fun with Fungus

Fungus. Mushrooms. Toadstools. How often do you really look at them, and see how complex a structure they are? Shapes and patterns. Especially on the underside.

It's been warm and wet over here and fungi are springing up all over the place. Don't they have just that little element of magic about them? Home for fairies and elves. Often at the base of an old,  possibly magic, tree. I've been instagramming them like mad as I walk round our village.

During one of her shows, my eye was caught by these translucent polymer clay pieces by Jeni Houser Alasad . They looked to me like the underside of a toadstool, and I loved those rich garnet brown colours on the edges.  Anyway, I missed them with my slow broadband but Jeni made me a special pair.
How to do them justice? They're extremely unusual.  And quite large. I've given them a few coats of looking at (as my gran would often say) and here we are.

I've tied them up; bound with copper wire and irish waxed linen cord, to Lucy Haslam's twisted sisters, her hand made chain and beaten copper circular earwires. The fab ceramic drops in metallic garnet are, of course, Petra's.  Loads of texture, just like the real thing.

 

                    Hope you like them. And don't forget to look around for your own earthly treasure  
                                                    - you never know what you may find!

                                                                      See you in two weeks

                                                                              Lindsay xx

                                                                            My etsy shop

                                                                       My facebook page

Twisted Sisters

A couple of weeks ago my friend Lucy had an on line show to ease herself back into production of her metal work, after a break while she settled into her new house in wild Wales. A one woman show is quite taxing, and she won't mind me saying she isn't always in the best of health, having had an industrial accident several years ago which left her with a badly damaged back.  Late in the afternoon I knew she was pooped (her words!) so I offered to go on for an hour with some examples of how I use her more unusual findings.

So I posted my 'Twisted Sisters' They use Lucy's 'twisted sisters' connectors - she tells a good tale about how I rang her up one day and said imperiously ' I need something new - make me something different' and she came up with these. Bit of poetic licence, I say...................

These were the pairs I posted. I called these 'Platinum Blonde and 'Blood Meridian.' I overwrap Lucy's connectors with swarowski crystals in colours that blend, or contrast with the ceramic drops - they are fun to make.

It wasn't too long before I started getting comments asking if I was making some more - it's a style I haven't made for well over a year now. But now I'm hooked again. 

So here we are - some lovely new autumn colours. The ceramic drops that I take my colours from are, of course, by the wonderful Petra.  

 

                                   

                



                  A Clockwork Orange

                Fiesta - The Sun also Rises.

The new pairs will be in my Etsy shop this week, and I feel more coming on!

               See you in a couple of weeks

                              Lindsay

                         My Etsy shop
                   My Facebook page

A Grand Day Out

 

Last Sunday but one I took a trip over to Yorkshire, to the Harrogate Rock, Gem and Bead show. It's only a couple of hours drive and it was a lovely sunny day.  The show is twice a year and there is a lady there who doesn't sell on line whose wares are always top quality. 

 

Even though I know he'll be bored  after 10 minutes,  I'm not going to refuse an offer to drive me (then I can gloat over my goodies all the way home!) so along comes him indoors.  Sure enough, after a late lunch in the café and 10  minutes around the show, off he goes to listen to football on the radio outside. I proceed to cram a basket with fantastic gemstones with gay abandon. An hour later, I'm almost ready to go,  and back he trots looking decidedly sheepish. 'Er, don't be mad' he says ' but I fell asleep in the car with the radio on, and there might have been a door open.......anyway, the battery's flat. '

Where are our jump leads? Lent to our son. Cue sitting on the grass outside waiting over an hour for Green Flag to come and start it. Show's closed, café shut. Hmmmm. It's a good job it was worth it.

 

So here are this weeks earrings, with some fabulous slab larimar, the pink picked out with etched rose quartz, and aquamarine above. Those ice blue enamelled copper earwires  are from Lucy Haslam's new range.  

 

 

I also had a little foray into making a pair to echo one of Vogue's predictions for AW 2017; pink and deep green. These are malachite and rose quartz with gold, and Lucy's emerald earwires. Wasn't too sure about them, but they sold instantly from an Instagram pic, so maybe Vogue do know what they are about!  Do you study fashion predictions when designing, or just follow your heart? Or maybe both?

 

 

See you in two weeks

 

Lindsay

 

My Etsy shop

 

My Facebook page

 

Shoreline

Back from 41 celsius near Thessalonika to the cool rain of the north of England! Holidays can't last forever, but photos do - thank goodness.

One of my photos has inspired this week's earrings. I have tried to replicate the colours and textures of the beach here on the Aegean coastline. Clear green/blue waters, creamy sand, and lots and lots of beautiful stones (a few of which may have found their way into my suitcase!). 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I used rustic glowy sea glass, creamy stoneware discs from Earthbutter Studio - Desiree and her team run a fair trade group in South Africa, and sales from the beads support single mums -  and perfect lampwork again from Patricia Ritchie. Look how they mimic the sea/shoreline. Some little stone beads and Mykonos ceramics for the rocks. Those lovely dark copper earwires are of course by Lucy Haslam who is re-opening her Etsy shop at the end of this month. Hurray!

 

Off to do more unpacking and washing. Groan. See you on the other side.

 

 

Lindsay xx

 

My Etsy shop

My Facebook page