Dragonflies and Faux Australian Koroit Opals

One thing about suffering from a chronic illness, I end up spending a lot of time (sadly) laying down, thinking and designing things in my head. One of things I do is work through various creative ideas in my brain, and try to work out all the kinks so that when I feel well enough, then I can actually implement things quickly. Kind of like hitting the ground running.

So, among the many ideas swirling around in my coconut, the idea of making some 'faux' Australian Koroit Opals had been swimming in there for quite some time. I figured it was time to try it out, and see what happens! Yay!!

So this is what I ended up with. I made several oval-shaped faux opals (some smaller, and these slightly larger ones), and picked a pair to use in these dragonfly earrings:

Faux Koroit Boulder Opals Sterling Silver Dragonfly Earrings by Nathalie Lesage

I'm also fond of charm necklaces, but wanted to make some 'charm earrings' since we're all about earrings here. Extremely lightweight (gotta love Polymer clay for reducing the weight on our earlobes!) these cuties are ready to play and explore the world with you! These measure 2.5" tall x 1" wide.

I used some 20g Sterling Silver wire to make the hoops, added a bit of textures while cold-forging, and decided to go with a pair of fun twisted sterling silver jump rings to suspend my faux opals. I kept the rest simple (truth: I made these quickly before running out of light to take pictures and write this post..... haven't been well at all lately)... so fun little Sterling dragonflies, and a few sparkling Czech glass beads became part of this little party.

I'm happy on how these turned out, but I want to try again and go a bit finer on the chunks of host-rock (the brown areas) I think. It's definitely fun, and I'll keep at it. Practice makes perfect!

I have a showcase planned on FB for October 1st. I'll be selling some faux opals and other polymer clay handmade jewelry components (Search for the Handmade Beads and Findings FB group to discover lots of great handmade jewelry components makers!).

In the meantime, these earrings can be found in my Etsy shop HERE, along with other jewelry supplies. I've started to list some of my personal gemstones collection on Etsy too. I'm just too unwell to make much jewelry, and I need to part with some of my stash.

Have a wonderful weekend! I can't believe September is almost done already...

Cheers,
Nathalie
Visit my Etsy shops:
My Garden Of Love
The Crafty Tribe
Nat Lesage Designs

Garden Friends

We've had so much rain this Spring, that it seems now, we have much more little creepy crawlies and all sorts of 'friends' popping over in the garden... One of my favorite garden friends are beautiful  dragonflies!

I wanted to make some jewelry components that featured these cuties, and so I've created a handful of handmade dragonflies earring drops, and decided to use a pair to make these fun lightweight earrings:

The great part about making my own polymer clay colors is that I can pretty much 'match' any other component that I plan on using. In this case, I had this gorgeous green hemp cord that I wanted to use in some fun summery designs. It was perfect to use with the design I wanted to create:

A pair of my handmade green/blue dragonfly earring drops, Greek ceramic beads in dark blue, tiny seed beads in blue, and small TierraCast gold-tone rustic spacer beads, on fabulous green hemp cord.

The light flurry of beads/cords at the bottom represents that flutter effect that I feel/see when they fly around in the garden, like a light trail of happiness that they spread around.

Oh happy happy Summer Days....

What are your favorite garden critters?

You can find these earrings and more of my jewelry components HERE in my Etsy shop.

Thank you for stopping by! Enjoy the weekend!
Cheers,
Nathalie Lesage

Visit my Handmade Jewelry & Components shop here: My Garden Of Love
Visit my Digi shop here: The Crafty Tribe

We're All Ears :: March Reveal

When I first spotted these pictures I was captivated by the bubbles of dew. So mesmerizing how they magnify everything. And I love the way they cling to these minute insects looking like they are adorned with crystal jewels! Do you think that the insects are bothered by this? I wonder if it affects their vision. I think it makes them look even more fascinating!

Beads from Kristen Stevens, Marsha Neal, Marcie Abney, Meital Plotnik and mystery glass

I just knew that glass beads would be the way to go for this challenge. So I sorted through my stash and came up with these lovelies. But I also found some beaded beads that really captured my imagination as they reminded me of the eyes filled with dew.

I wanted to not only use the colors and the dew drops as my inspiration but also the beauty of the dragonfly. To mimic the segmented body, I used these ceramic spike head pins by Marsha Neal in a soft lavender color. I quite like that each one is a little bit different, hand of the maker and all. I tried putting other art beads with them, but they competed too much. So I went with a funky spiky spacer and some bling-y rhinestone rondelle beads, topped off with a shimmering crystal. I call these "Graceful Flight" for the beautiful movements of dragonflies.

Did you know that a dragonfly's eyes have over 30,000 faceted lenses in them? Each one of those units or facets is called Ommatidium. Each facet forms a picture, sort of like a giant jigsaw puzzle, that allows the dragonfly to process the scene in front of it. I thought that these beaded beads from Kristen Stevens was like those 30,000 facets. They are reading very brown in this photo, but they have this beautiful purpley iridescent shimmer. I paired them with some Swarovski crystals in an opal star shine shade. Did you notice the cutest little headpins I found in my stash? Teeny, tiny sterling silver dragonflies! What luck! I call these "Ommatidia" to honor the incredible vision of these insects.

That dew! They are what drew me to those pictures. The dew drops covering their iridescent orbs looked like crystal encrusted chandeliers. I have a LOT of lampwork glass beads, but I really couldn't find what I was looking for in my stash (how can that be!?). And then I remembered that not long ago I bid on some pretty lampwork glass on a Facebook page that posts auctions (Lampwork Beads for Sale?! I can't recall!). I thought the beads were so pretty and I may have been the only one that bid on them. Meital Plotnik is the artist and she is from Israel. They took a little bit to get here, but they were worth it! There is a soft swirling green and blue underlying all the raised dots in peach, tangerine, rose and mint. I paired them with some crystals and bead caps and these pretty pearl head pins from my stash (I really have more than I know what to do with!). I call these "A Drop of Dew" as those beads remind me of the image of the dew on the eyes of the dragonflies.

I feel really bad that I don't know the name of the artist who created these glass beauties. They look like tiny galaxies swirling inside! I pulled out the jade green color with some palace green opal Swarovski crystals. I happened to have these tiny brass open links sitting there. I thought they reminded me of the translucent wings of the dragonflies. These wings are filled with a polymer substance called chitin (KY-tin) and veins. They are incredibly strong and if the species lacks any color in them, they appear to be glassy, as if they are invisible windows. Did you know that the dragonfly's wings can work independently of one another? They look so fragile but yet are so very strong and versatile despite being "Invisible Wings."

So, that is it for me. Whew! That was a lot for me! You may have noticed that there was one bead (the beaded links from Marcie Abney) that I failed to use. I simply ran out of time. So I will tuck these away for another day...

I am looking forward to seeing what you will share with this inspiration!

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We're All Ears :: March Inspiration

If you've been with me long enough, you know I love macro photography.

There is something really special about seeing the tiniest things blown up to mammoth proportions that so intrigues me. There is an endlessly fascinating array of things that can be magnified by the macro lens and those that take such photos have my utmost admiration. I do have a macro lens on my regular camera (that hasn't seen much use in the past year or so), as well as a Photojojo macro lens that snaps onto my iPhone. But the best macro shots I managed to take were ones with a set of progressive filters that just screwed onto the regular lens of my big-ass camera (the one that doesn't see much action... after I dropped it on said lens...). I really need to get a different regular lens and break those out. I miss them.

So I was really thrilled to just do a random search to see what I could find and something that would help me get in the mind frame of the coming spring (it is coming, right?). 

I discovered these marvelous macro photos by Martin Amm who is a German nature photographer. Each of these is an extreme close up of dragonflies or damselflies covered in morning dew. I couldn't decide on just one so I grabbed a few to hopefully capture your interest from different angles.

Positively effervescent, don't you think?
And I just realized that the very first We're All Ears challenge in February 2014 was a pair of damselflies...sort of like coming full circle!

What intrigues you most about this up close and personal photography?

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Friday, March 20th.

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