Heart & Soul

                   I enjoy using symbolism in my work; I love when an idea hits you indirectly.

The eye connectors by Inviciti  were absolutely perfect for this design!  Some say eyes are the gateway to the soul and I think they're right.

To me, the large textured jump rings with the deep grooves symbolize radiance.

I almost lost my mind when I found these rare vintage sacred heart charms on the bottom!  I tried over and over to capture their detail and amazing color but it wasn't easy.   

I've never really been into"wordy" type beads per se. However, I do use them as a sort of contradiction.  For example, a "Lucky" word bead might be used with a black cat or something that normally evokes a darker meaning. 🙃

Thank you for checking out my worktable today!  Hope you found a little inspiration! See you next time! 

                                                 Loralee xo

www.loraleekolton.etsy.com

https://www.facebook.com/loraleekolton.jewelry/

A bit of gold 'n silver

Hello!

I turned to Inviciti for inspiration for this week's blog. Vincent 'n Nooma make gorgeous pewter charms and I had a little delivery from them recently. These charms had a series of holes, just perfect for threading seed beads through. I chose the accompanying bead first. After trying out various lampwork beads, I settled on these rustic African brass beads -I like the mix of metals and tones -mixing the gold/brass with the silvery tones of the pewter charms.

I wanted to add some texture and so added these twisted silver toned jumprings and silver spacer beads. Tiny brass coloured seed beads threaded through in the charms complete these pretties.  

Hope you like them! I'll pop them in the shop 

See you next time :-)

Sue x

Jewel Tones (with Caramel)

Hey, everyone! It's good to be here.  I'm still alive...still coughing, but feeling almost normal.  My husband (who caught bronchitis when I did, the lucky man) and I have been babysitting our almost-3-year-old grandson this week, but even so I managed to get a pair of earrings made.  YAY!  ❤

I've been wanting to use these wonderful textury pewter components by Vincent and Nooma Cav of Inviciti for a while, and once I got my hands on these beautifully color-dappled lampwork beads by Terry Turner of Silverfish Designs I knew exactly what I wanted to do with them.

I hadn't made bead-wrapped earrings like these in a long time (and none exactly like these), so choosing the tiny beads was a treat.  I had the tops of the earrings finished, with just the wrapping of the beads around the pewter triangles to go (using the cords left from wrapping the top part of the earrings together).

I picked out a couple of seed bead colorways and tried them out; one wasn't quite right, so I slid the beads off the cords and put them to one side.  The other set was almost right, but again, not quite.  I ended up combining parts of each seed bead group to get the colorway I finally used:  15/0 3-cuts in Rusty Orange Gold Luster, 15/0 Transparent Dark Lilac, 15/0 3-Cut Cranberry Gold Luster, 15/0 Magenta-Lined Gray, and 15/0 Transparent Dark Magenta AB.

The rondelles in the little silver caps at the tops of the lampwork beads are rosy-gold Czech glass, and the tiny rondelles at the neck of the charms are 4mm Swarovski crystals in Crystal Copper.

I really love the richness of all the colors in Terry's lampwork beads and the tiny glass beads

that echo the colors.  I hope you enjoyed them all too. ❤

Thank you so much for reading--I'd love to hear what you think!  

I'll be back on June 14.  

xoxo

Meridy

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