Life is Change

"HEY. That thar's a piece o' wood hangin from yer ear..."

Why yes, yes it is. It's a twig of black walnut, to be exact. Cut into small segments, rounded at the ends, drilled through with a hole, and sealed with wax to help preserve the wood. 

Sometimes I wonder if I've taken my "back to roots" routine a little bit too far. In this example:

1. I love wood beads. 
2. Let's take it back a step to old ratty vintage wood beads. 
3. Oh, but wait, what if we went back even further to part of the tree branch itself and just made that into a mini log-bead? 

Lunacy? Inspiration? The line between the two is far thinner than we like to think.

For this long, swingy pair, I picked out a particularly luscious pair of lampwork glass headpins from dear friend Kim of NuminosityBeads. The swirled moss, sage, delft, and cloudy hues work perfectly to provide a habitat for the natural wood beads. Plump rounded blobs of blackened silver solder cap off the wood, while wee rusty metal bead caps crown each headpin. These are earthy, subtle stunners.

 
I ended up titling this pair "Life is Change". Because I'm sure this black walnut tree could have never dreamt, even in its wildest imagination, that it would one day end up adorning someone's ears.

Happy Wednesday!
Nikki
LoveRoot on Etsy

Shady Sinner

I seem to be in the minority when I say that I really don't prefer jewelry/beads/components that include words. Which is an odd thing for me to say, being a self avowed word nerd, bookaholic, and walking dictionary. There's something about the bluntness (?) of it that doesn't appeal to me. It's hard to describe, other than you will 99.9% of the time never see these in my work. The same goes for beads and charms that feature humans or body parts. But that's another story.


HOWEVER. 

 
When my latest order of ceramic beads from the insanely talented and lovely Claire of somethingtodobeads arrived, she included a generous pair of freebies: grungy twirled smooshed ceramic beads stamped with two simple, devious, wicked words---SHADY and SINNER. 

Now, when I laid eyes on this pair, my first thought was oh, now that's cheeky. And my next thought was wait, those actually kinda go together. Followed quickly by a grin and an oh yes, challenge accepted. 

 
And, thusly, today's pair of earrings was born. I torched my own fat-bottomed copper headpins, strung each ceramic bead on, and then topped them with graduated stacks of rusty, crusty, patina-riddled bead caps---no two the same. I dotted the top loop of each with some silver solder, gave each earring a good oxidation bath, and then hung each from one of my long curvy copper ear wires. Swingy, potbellied little devils.

Happy Wednesday!
Nikki
LoveRoot on Etsy

Take It Eeeeeeasy

Ever feel like you're taking a cop-out easy route with one of your designs? But you really don't care because the end result turns out so perfectly that you wouldn't change a thing? 
 
I had some of that guilt when I made this pair a couple weeks ago featuring some more of Kimberly Rogers' deliciously mismatched lampwork glass headpins. The glass itself is a very soothing, neutral, streaky birch color---I've been gravitating more and more toward neutrals and earth tones over the past year. I wanted to highlight the fact that Kim deliberately made one headpin twirled like a horn and left the other drippy. What better way to do that than to make one of my soldered caps twirled and the other smooth? And the "I feel so clever" moment: I switched up the swirls. Oooooo, gettin' tricky!


Ok, so it's not a complex design. I could have hung these headpins beneath stacks of grungy precious bits, like I'm wont to do. I could have hung them from gnarly hoops or used them as focals in a chandelier-style pair. But lately I've been craving stated simplicity. 

To be honest, it's almost more difficult to reign yourself in when designing. At least for me, anyways. Plus, I always try to be sensitive to the wearability of pieces. It's one thing to create a masterpiece for a gallery or a competition, but it's another thing to make pieces that people are able to wear and love every day of their lives. That's the miraculous thing about creating art---every artist has unique goals for their work. There's never a wrong or a right answer. It just is. And that's a beautiful thing. 

Happy Wednesday!
Nikki
LoveRoot on Etsy

Lively Up Yourself

vintage industrial hoops, red river jasper

Isn't it funny (for those of us here in the Midwest, at least), how we were concerned and complaining about how warm it was on Christmas (+60F degrees!)? And now that the holidays are all over, a cold snap has set in and it's 20F degrees and we all feel like we're dying? I guess you could call that funny. Or perhaps nature's form of karma. 

I actually prefer a cold winter, myself. It just feels more natural that way. If we didn't have the biting cold in the dark months, we would not as deeply appreciate the pleasure of a sunny 80F degree day. 

I tell myself that, at least.

lampwork glass by Kimberly Rogers, brass hoops

So as I sit here typing, I'm bundled in an insanely poofy knit sweater with a bunchy turtleneck that is a mile high. I'm surrounded by at least two of our three cats. I have on my embarrassing hot pink fleecy socks that I loathe but, dammit, they get the job done. I'm doing my best to keep warm. 

I suppose that desire also crept into my jewelry last week as I created several sets of earrings using red, a color that I have grown to appreciate more in recent years. Hot-blooded, tempestuous, uncontrollable red...

ceramic red lilies by Claire Armstrong, wood beads

Hope your holidays ended up on a high note and hope your new year is a deliciously creative one!

Happy Wednesday,
Nikki
LoveRoot on Etsy

Mirror / Mirror

As you may well be aware of by now, our own Claire Lockwood happens to make some of the most deliciously unique ceramic beads, in addition to her inspired jewelry. I've missed out on quite a few new sets because they tend to sell so quickly---wonderful for Claire and maddening for me! 

However, on her latest batch update, I was able to snag some beautiful "naked" fluted porcelain rounds. Claire carves the grooves into each bead before firing once, and then used oxide to color them in a second firing, giving them that smoky velvety texture with slight minty green overtones. 

I'm just crazy about these beads! So crazy that I knew as soon as I took them out of the package that I was going to make something for myself using them. No equivocating here, no sharing, just MINE!

I'm a big fan of mirroring shapes, textures, and colors of the various component in my assemblage pieces. And I'm also a big fan of old wood beads. So when I saw the fluted grooves of Claire's beads, my mind immediately jumped to a pair of wood "pumpkin" beads that I've been saving up for a special occasion. The textures of the two sets play beautifully off of each other, but they still manage to maintain their own individual flavor and flair. 

I tend to wear simpler styles, myself, so I kept these earrings minimal using wee crusty metal bead caps and some decorative blackened soldering for effect. The result makes me squeal every time I wear them---earthy, swingy, dark little baubles.

Thank you, Claire, for sharing your beads with us!

Happy Wednesday :) 
Nikki 
LoveRoot on Etsy

A Healthy Dose of Inner Peace and Sunshine

In an (ongoing) effort to combat my "jeweler's ass", I bought a bike last week. Because let's admit it, sitting for extended periods of time at my jeweler's bench isn't the best form of exercise. 

As a kid, we practically grew up outside---sloshing through creeks, trekking through woods, catching butterflies in fields---exploring, experiencing, growing. A big part of this involved riding our bikes. At a time when we were still too young to drive cars and unable to own horses, having a bike was a great alternative. You could just hop on and pedal away---leaving your worries behind, if only temporarily---powered by just YOU and your sense of direction. It's an empowering thing, when you think about it. 

Flash forward 15 or so years. My parents had recently been cleaning out their garage and doling out childhood items back to my brother and I. It had been years since I had ridden a bike - this was going to be great! The initial excitement about having my old Huffy soon faded when I realized the tires were both flat, the gears rusted, and the brakes dried out and cracked. Old friend, you gave me much happiness, but that chapter has ended. 

So I stewed. And stewed. And then decided to get a new bike.  Not a cheap Walmart bike, but a real grown-up bike that will last me for years. It's sleek, efficient, and just what I need to explore trails. 

I knew that I had missed biking, but I didn't realize HOW much I had missed it until I hit that first downhill coast. You know that feeling you get at the top of a roller coaster when you crest and know that you're about to head down? That delicious anticipation and excitement? And then you're speeding downhill and the wind is whipping your hair and the scenery is blurring past and you're grinning like the biggest idiot alive. THAT. I've missed that.

So instead of slaving away at the stinky claustrophobic gym like a robot this past week, I've been enjoying a healthy dose of inner peace and sunshine. Hell, I even have a little bit of a tan on my lily-white arms. Now this changes everything...

These earrings feature two incredible slabs of chrysocolla stone---the marriage of warm sandy brown to the deep teal veins struck me immediately. I like to let stones like this speak for themselves, so I very simply capped them off using silver solder, oxidized, and left it at that. Long, slender, and serene.

Wising you much peace and much sunshine this week!

Nikki
LoveRoot on Etsy