Autumn Glow

As summer days start to fade a bit, I'm looking ahead toward autumn jewelry designs. Although I'm sad that summer will end soon; I really love fall colors! Our early autumns are usually quite sunny and pleasant  here. I love the glow of the sun as seen through a canopy of autumn colored leaves.

I made today's earrings with this image in mind. I started with some small lampwork glass beads by Beads and Botanicals. Brass bead caps fancy them up a bit. Three really cool, fluted vintage beads in yellow and orange dangle from each earring. The vintage beads are acrylic and weigh next to nothing, so although they have a definite presence, they are very comfortable to wear. I wire wrapped the brass around the tops of the vintage beads for an extra decorative touch. I would wear these year round, but especially late summer through November.

What's on your autumn bucket list? We'll be crunching through leaves, taking photography trips and celebrating our granddaughter's first birthday. The Autumn Glow earrings are available in my shop now.  I'll see you again in two weeks.

Linda Landig Jewelry

Dark hearts

Blimey...where does the time go! I know it's the beginning of March and I should be making earrings inspired by Spring. Unfortunately, I've never been terribly good at doing "seasonal"...

So these gorgeous ceramic ball and heart drops are by Petra Carpreau and they are clearly much better suited to a February post and Valentine's Day...Sorry!

The hearts have a gorgeous deep red glaze, and grungy feel to them. I thought I'd dress up the connecting bits of wire with some pretty silver seed beads to match the silver ceramic ball.

 And, of course -there have to be hoops. Beautiful dark oxidised brass hoops to frame the ceramic pretties and add some extra swing.

So there we have it! Dark hearts. Nothing to do with Spring, but I hope you like them anyway. There'll be in my showcase at the end of this month, over on The Earrings Show.. 

See you in a couple of weeks :-)

Sue x

Violet Dream

Sometimes I struggle to put together a pleasing combination of beads and other times I know right away what to do. These earrings fell into the latter category.  I had fun making these floral ceramic earrings charms a month or so ago.Then last week I received some beautiful lampwork glass spacers by Susan Spurling of Flame Madein. Right away I could see that they belonged with my violet ceramic charms.

I had some small lampwork glass beads, by Beads And Botanicals, in my stash which matched perfectly. I brought everything together with Sterling silver wire, which I crisscrossed across the front of the top beads. I love the result.  They are perfectly dreamy! 

Linda Landig Jewelry

Anticipation

Carly Simon's song, Anticipation, keeps running through my mind these days because our daughter and her husband are expecting a baby daughter any day now. This grandma is very excited. Every time the phone rings, I'm anticipating it will be them, announcing the start of labor. ( Nothing has happened so far.)

Simon's song was in my head when I made these earrings too. Each season brings with it the anticipation of the changes ahead.  Some of my Facebook friends are already posting photos of snow.  Here, in the Pacific Northwest, we still have colorful leaves clinging to some trees, while others are already bare.  Its a time of transition, of anticipation of cozy nights ahead, spent near a fire, reading a good book.

The gorgeous lampwork leaves, the green beads and enameled bead caps are all made by Sue Kennedy of Sue Beads.  The fancy wrapped ear wires were made by Joan Moritz-Langmo of  Handmade by JGL.   The Anticipation Earrings are available in my shop now.

Linda Landig Jewelry

One Two Three

Hello. I hope all of you in the US were able to enjoy a four-day weekend, and had a good time whatever you did or chose not to do. 😊

One Two Three! meant I was going to make a very cool "quick" pair of earrings with three components: ancient Roman glass, silver chain, and a really wonderful pair of ancient appearing "pods" by Lorna of Balela Ceramics. 

Earrings Available Here

Rather than go into all of the details of the difficulties I ended up having in making these, I'll just say, it didn't go One Two Three! It took about six hours, maybe more, when all was said and done, that's just making time. It's funny, how something that appears to simple can trip me up. 

I'm pleased with them. They match the vision I had, for the most part. 

The ancient glass is from a strand I purchased from Kim Rogers of Numinosity Beads. She is on vacation but I believe she has strands left. I hope to grab one, also.  

I used one piece of glass in blue and one in green on each earring. 

Earrings listed in SheFliesAgain

Thank you so much for stopping by! I'll be back in two weeks.

May you have Happy Days, each and every one of them!

Norbel

SheFliesAgain on Etsy

You can visit me on FB and Instagram, too

Welcome Sue - Utterly Lovely Stuff!

Hello! I’m Sue Robinson from Utterly Lovely Stuff and I’m utterly (sorry!) delighted to have been invited to do a little guest spot on Earrings Everyday! What a thrill! Especially as some of my very favourite jewellery artists contribute here.

So…I was told to create a pair of earrings especially for the blog, and tell you a little about them. This was no hardship, let me tell you as making earrings is one of my favourite things to do. 

This pair features components from one of my absolute favourite artists (whose beautiful pieces feature regularly here on EE) Petra Carpreau of Scorched Earth. I love her rustic, natural style, and think the coppery glaze on these ceramic drops is just beautiful. 

I popped these drops on some copper hoops, loosely wrapped with some pretty, coppery seed beads to pick up the orange hue in the glaze and added another favourite component - recycled glass chunks. I have a friend who goes to South Africa and picks up these recycled glass chunky beads for me from a local bead shop, so I have a plentiful supply of them! A good job as I seem to use them in lots of designs at the moment. I finished these off with some pretty enamelled headpins, made by a clever jewellery friend, Charlotte Rosser of Wild Strawberry Designs. (Link not available.)

Hope you like them! There’ll be over in my Etsy shop Utterly Lovely Stuff.

Thanks for having me!

Sue Robinson

Utterly Lovely Stuff

You can visit me on Facebook as well

When simple might be best.

Hello! How are you all? Feels like a good while since I've been here.

I hope you enjoyed Jetta Sellers' post yesterday. She is a sweetheart, and her work is great. Loved the Lettuce Leaves!

So simple. . . . the word simple really means something like having only one element, not compound. So the word itself may be improperly used here, but by simple I mean not complex, not complicated. So although that is not the definition of simple, in the context we use it, I think it's still the right word. When you look for an antonym of complicated, you get simple! lol

I am the least likely person in this group to talk about simple. That's a good enough reason, I guess, to talk about it! It's likely come up before. Sometimes I lose sight of what I'm actually creating, get carried away, and a pair of earrings could be put together and become a necklace! So I do like to try to focus on simple sometimes.

But about 4:00 yesterday afternoon, I still had nothing made for this post, let alone wrote the post, so when I sat down at my worktable I decided I was going to do simple. . . . really simple. So that's definitely one time simple is best.

For me, it's the artisan beads. So many of them, ceramic, lampwork glass, metal, polymer clay, are so perfect as they are, that they often sit in my collection for a long time, maybe forever, because they're beautiful works of art to me. They are the art form I collect. And so many times, the thought of adding something to them seems really wrong. It's very difficult to enhance something that I see as perfect. You wouldn't dream of taking one of Monet's Lilies series and add to it, to "enhance" it. Yeah, that's an extreme example, but to me it's the same thing. The only difference is that the artist that creates them, makes them specifically for the purpose of us adding to them. So of course, it's what we do. So here are my earrings for today:

These earrings are available for purchase in my Etsy Shop here

The beautiful ceramic components in the earrings, by Petra Carpreau of ScorchedEarthOnEtsy, I've had for a good while now. I have worked with them on a number of occasions and nothing ever felt right. They are just too cool on their own. Knowing that this is a huge decision for me, I decided to simply add one dangle to the bottom connector AND NOTHING ELSE. Nothing! :) I might have done that another time, but would certainly have worked on the top, also. But I stopped. And I love them. Really love them. That was a great lesson for me. What I added were three pieces on each, two silver metal beads and one rustic, natural Turquoise disk nugget.

Previously when working with them I was picking up on both the periwinkle color that you see on the earring on the right -- it's  minimal but it's there -- and they both have a bit of turquoise around the edge of the bronze clay that Petra uses in much of her work.

So being in a crunch is certainly one time simple is good. But it does have other benefits if one is able to make simple. I say"able to make" because using only a few pieces and making a fabulous pair of earrings takes great talent. It's not easy, not for me. So it's an exercise I should take up more often.

The other benefits include keeping the weight down, which for me has become an issue. I can't wear heavier earrings any longer. They hurt and pull down my lobes. Another benefit is price. Less materials, less time, equals lower price. That provides more women the opportunity to purchase handcrafted artisan earrings, often made with artisan beads, at a lower price point.

That's it for me today. I hope you are all heading into a fun-filled summer.

As always, we thank you for stopping in and spending a few minutes with us.

Happy Days to everyone. 

All the best, 'til next time!
Norbel

SheFliesAgain

For Earrings Everyday subscribers

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will provide a 10% discount in my Etsy shop.

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Welcome Jetta Bug Jewelry!

Exploring Different Styles

                Hi All! I am so excited to have been invited to be a guest on Earrings Everyday. My name is Rejetta. I have been playing with beads and jewelry for over 10 years. Some of you might know me better as Jetta Bug Jewelry.

                Along with making jewelry as the muse takes me, I have done pieces for magazines. Stringing Magazine, in particular, always had tight reins on what themes, materials, and colors they wanted for each issue. This stretched my comfort zone on more than one occasion. My style is more whimsical/ floral/ vintage with lots of artisan beads.

                Now I am addicted to trying new styles of jewelry making on a regular basis. It really allows me to expand my bead buying binges in all new ways!!

                Right now I am creating mostly in the Goth and Vintage Assemblage genre. The first pair has yummy, grungy black ceramic hearts headpins dipped in a shiny blood-red glaze from Bo Hulley Beads. I had some large black rings from Metamorph Supplies I wanted to attach the hearts to but felt they weren’t size compatible. So I whipped out my annealed steel wire and used my ring mandrel to form rings a bit smaller. Now I see a web with my wire rings for the little black widow hearts to rest.

Available at JettaBugJewelry

                The second pair of earrings started with these great, gray ruffly leaves and a stash of mica shift heishis that I had to have but never could figure out how to use. The two together looked so perfect but a bit feminine. I guess the ruffles on the leaves reminded me of ladies petticoats. So I started digging in my box that is mostly bling and vintage assemblage pieces and added some square rhinestone spacers. Then some long horse eye blackened bronze ear wires and I am in love…

Available at JettaBugJewelry

I hope you enjoyed my ‘Black Widow’ and ‘Lettuce Leaf’ earrings. And thanks for allowing me to be a guest and play with more earring ideas.

                Remember, touching beads everyday is good for the soul J

Jetta
My Shop on Etsy - JettaBugJewelry
Jetta Bug Jewelry Facebook Page