Amethysts All the Way Down

Recently I've been fortunate to have collected a number of pairs of delicately beautiful enameled earring components by Raida Disbrow of Havana Beads.  My newest earrings, below, are made from one of her gorgeous pairs: luscious florals in purples and deep purply blues, with droplets of pink and baby blue.  

It's been a long time since I've made much rosary chain, but I enjoyed putting together the little chains of small faceted amethysts.  And I'm not dreading this whole briolette-wrapping thing so much anymore either, probably because I'm getting a little better at it despite myself.  That's what happens when you keep working on it, right? I can hear my mother asking me now from the other side.  (Of course, she's right.) 😉🌷

Recipe for Amethysts All the Way Down

(2) Enameled earring components

(12) Small faceted amethyst rounds

(6) Small anodized niobium rings, purple

(2) Faceted 10mm amethyst briolettes

(2) Anodized niobium ear wires, purple

24 ga copper wire, darkened

26 ga copper wire

These pretties can be found
  here at Two Trees Studio.

Thanks so much for reading.  I'll see you next time! 💗
xoxo
Meridy

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Reading between the Lines.

Last weekend was my biannual visit to the Rock and Gem show at Harrogate - to stock upon my favourite gems and see what's new. It fit nicely with my plan for this weeks blog post - I took with me these polymer clay spikes from Jon Burgess to get some ideas of what to put with them.

Here's a selection of my top gemstone picks; ancient looking African turquoise, rough cut chrysocolla, labradorite, lapis chrysocolla, lapis cubes, leopardskin jasper, porcelain jasper, obsidian discs, shoushan, ocean jasper, and rainbow jasper. Lots of lovely colour and different shapes.

I'll be having some fun with these. For my first  pair with the pop of yellow, I used the black obsidian discs sandwiching yellow Picasso Czech glass. I like the bold mix, and vertical and horizontal lines.

The next pair uses some of Lucy Haslam's beaten copper washers and the marvellous rough cut chrysocolla - again, those horizontal strata lines in the stones really pick up the verticals in the spikes, as well as the soft green at their top end.  A much less strident pair. Simple blackened copper circular earwires (also Lucy's) finish them off nicely.

Clean and simple lines with pops of colour. Hope you like them - both are available in my  Etsy        shop.

                                                       See you again in two weeks!
                                                                  Lindsay x

                                                                 My Etsy shop
                                                            
                                                              My Facebook page

Land of the rising Sun

I was scrambling at the last minute for ideas to make some earrings. I always have a hard time deciding which colors to go with. I think I need to start writing colors onto pieces of paper and just draw a main color at random and go from there lol

So instead, I went on my FB page and asked my friends what colors I should go with. Orange and Fall colors were some of the suggestions (among many other fun ideas), and since I had a pair of handmade polymer clay components that had some nice orangey shades to it, I pulled out some Carnelians and went to town:

I'm a sucker for Copper, especially when it comes to coupling them with rich Fall jewel tones. I wanted to use some kind of bead cap for the chunky faceted carnelian briolettes, but I didn't have anything suitable on hand. I pulled out some of my handmade slightly domed copper beadcaps and bent them to make a bit of an Asian style cover for the top, as I wanted to add a bit of width to the bottom part.

A few more copper accents and carnelian beads, and voila!

I wish the "rising sun" would make its appearance here. We've been drowning in rain for the past couple of weeks now. I had just a wee bit of a break to go plant my seed garlic in the garden (after the blizzard we had, I thought I had missed the window to plant garlic). It's been very wet and dreary here... these sunny Carnelians were a very welcome sunny sight on my bench!

I need to take better pictures before I list them, although it looks like they might be spoken for already :)

Happy Thanksgiving to all our friends in the US!

Cheers,
Nathalie
Visit my shops:
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Welcome Heidi Ahren Williams!

Opal Perfection ~ Australian Opal Doublet Hand-Fabricated Earrings

Hello and thank you all so much for the opportunity to write an article for Earrings Everyday! How fun is this?! Let me quickly introduce myself, and then I'll go into a bit of the process of creating these Opal beauties, from finding the gemstones, to following the Muse and her winding, twisting, adventurous path to perfection!

My name is Heidi Williams, and I'm sure I know many of you from Facebook and Instagram - I stay pretty active in a lot of those groups, and on social media in general.  I live in Wyoming, near the Snowy Range and Medicine Bow Peak. We love to hike, camp, and motorbike in the mountains, enjoying the beauty of the untamed wilderness. Every time I return from the mountains, I feel rejuvenated and freshly inspired to create!

Back from one of these wonderfully relaxing mountain adventures, I began creating these Opal earrings - they are sweetly petite, with tiny little teardrop opal doublets, (which were a challenge to fabricate bezels for) and elegantly organic with a sleek, lightweight design. I love keeping such beautiful gemstones as the star of the show, while adding my own touch of hand-fabricated metalwork to create a One-Of-A-Kind design.

Finding gemstones that are of high quality, and yet unique can be a challenge at times, although social media and the popularity of Instagram and Facebook sales makes this much easier...I am always on the lookout for fabulous gemstones, especially in matching (or semi matching) pairs for future earring designs! I collect these gemstones and then when so inspired I will design around the stone - I rarely purchase a stone with a specific design in mind.

Having settled on these teeny tiny opal doublets from Australia, I began fabricating the smooth silver bezels - choosing the correct height of bezel wire is so important, and something I still mess up on occasionally, but I am happy with these! After soldering the bezels to silver back plates on which I remembered to stamp my little signature heart, and popping them in the pickle pot, I begin work on the upper portion of the earrings.

I select narrow bits of silver sheet 
hand cut and hammered, 16-gauge wire for the front which will be what the opals attach to, and 20-gauge wire for the ear wires. For this portion I use medium paste solder, placing all of my silver bits together in their places on my soldering board. I begin soldering by heating up the 16-gauge wire first - making the end of the wire ball up to create a nice drop for the loop that the opal will hang from. After the 16-gauge wire is balled up sufficiently, I begin heating and soldering the rest of the earring upper. 

Once soldered, I let cool before removing from my soldering board,  as Argentium (935) Silver is brittle when hot - I've shattered one too many designs because I was impatient and tried moving the piece before it was cooled enough! 

These upper earring parts are now popped into the pickle pot, and out comes the tear drop bezels! I trim off the excess silver, file and sand edges, and solder jump rings to the top of each. 

After all of these pieces are sufficiently pickled, I file, sand, and polish. Then out comes the LOS gel (which I LOVE), giving them a nice black patina. (Black Max is also a great blackening agent for silver!) After tumbling, I again polish the bits up, taking off enough of the LOS to highlight the texture. Setting the stones is the next to last step - and a tedious process to keep the bezel smooth and wrinkle-free, especially at the corners. Sometimes I like that wrinkly rustic look, but for this pair of earrings, I wanted a smooth setting.

 I always begin at the corners, smoothing them down first, and move around the setting gradually working the bezel down a bit more with every rotation. Slow and gentle will have your bezel looking amazing in the end! A bit of filing, sanding, and polishing to top it off (avoiding the stone of course), and we are ready to attach the opals to their upper earring parts. These earrings were so much fun to make, and best yet, a success!

Some product information for the curious:
Have you ever wondered what an opal doublet was? Well, quite simply Opal Doublet as the name suggests, is a thin layer of precious Opal cemented onto a backing, usually a piece of common Black Opal or Ironstone. They were originally created from Opal that was perhaps too thin to produce a solid stone.

Wondering about Argentium Silver? Let me tell you! Argentium Silver is .935 pure silver, with germanium as its alloy instead of nickle. It is hypoallergenic, nickle free, and perfect for those who are allergic to traditional Sterling Silver!

Thank you so much for having me! I hope this little article inspires your muse a little!

Be Inspired, Stay Creative~
Heidi

Azteca Designs Boutique
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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

 

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These Earrings Had to Have Chain

Lately in some of my earring designs I've been searching out different elements and colors than I usually favor, mostly as a way to push myself out of my comfort zone a little, which in turn seems to help to keep my creativity sparking.  

This week's earrings feature a pair of Nicola Morse's brass paint effect-and-resin charms:

The charms themselves are Different Element One:  I rarely use gold or gold-tone metal.  Even so, they're so beautiful that I couldn't resist them!  I decided to pair them with lampwork glass--glossy blue discs by Helen Chalmers and small streaky mango-colored rondelles by Beth Mellor. 

Different Element Two was kind of randomly imposed: I'd decided that these earrings had to have chain, something I've almost never used in my earrings.  Somehow the delicate gold-filled chain I found finishes these earrings perfectly.  I used gold-filled head pins to wire-wrap 2-mm round turquoise beads and 11/0 gold-plated seed beads to each segment of the chain and hung them all from gold-filled jump rings. Hey, once I decided to go gold, I went all out!   😉

They're long, lightweight, and swingy.  They'll be in my shop soon.  

Thanks so much for reading about my adventures in golden charms and chains.  I'll be back in a few weeks!  💗

xoxo

Meridy

My Etsy shop

My Facebook page 

  

  

Bon Apatite!

Over the past six months or so I've been feeling creatively restless--not necessarily dissatisfaction with what I'm doing, but more the feeling that there are new things coming to add to it.   Lately I've been attracted to jewelry techniques and styles that have never really "called to me" before, and I've been learning new techniques and trying new ideas.    

Anyway, that kind of brings me to these earrings...  :)

I don't often use gemstones in my work, even though I love them, and I don't do a lot of wire-wrapping these days either, though I also enjoy doing that as well.  So these earrings use techniques I haven't made use of in a while.

My starting point was Cathleen Zaring's beautiful white-and-blue enameled copper crescents, a shape I love.  To suspend components like these, I often knot tiny beads into thread instead of wrapping beads on metal.  But a week or so ago I'd been digging around in my little trove of gemstones looking for some garnets and found a small bag of tiny, GORGEOUS blue neon apatite beads--and they looked great with the crescents.  I also had a feeling that these rustic-cut little beads would look best wire-wrapped onto metal.

So I made four copper connectors, darkened them with liver of sulfur, and then tumbled them for hours to give them a gorgeous gleaming chestnut brown color.  Before I put all the parts together, I wrapped the apatite beads to the connectors with raw 26-gauge copper, and then attached the crescents to the connectors and to copper jump rings (which had also received the liver of sulfur and tumbling treatment).  The teal blue niobium ear wires were the perfect final touch.

"Bon Apatite" can be found in my shop, Two Trees Studio.

I really enjoyed making these blue beauties and sharing them with you.  I also wonder how many of us might be feeling that pull of restlessness that I identify as the urge to grow and expand on a creative path.  My love and best wishes go out to you all as we share our paths together!

xoxo
Meridy

My Etsy shop

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The Zone, part 2

Last Monday I told you a bit about that very special space of time, when designs create themselves and the rest of the world doesn’t exist: The Zone.

Currently I’m reworking designs, which were not made in that special happy space. 
Here is the design before the redesign.  Lovely, but it was missing something.

And this is what I turned the Picasso jasper into. I think the colours grey, purple, silver and blue work very beautiful together. The ear wires are handmade by my wonderful friend Lucy Haslam of Faerystones. Now available in my shop.








Thank you for stopping by. I wish you a wonderful day.

Janine

Esfera Jewelry

My etsy shop

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One Last Summer Fling

One thing leads to another...
This set was born of a happy accident as are many of my designs. I intend to do one thing and something else happens... and it's all good!

We are somewhere between summer and fall here in WA. And If I had to choose I'd say these earrings are summer. Shiny silver, bright green Peridot and royal blue Iolite stones say "Farewell to summer" with one last summer fling. 

Available at Art & Soul Jewelry.
peace & blessings,

Strength in nature

"Let’s take our hearts for a walk in the woods,

and listen to the magic whispers of old trees." 

~Author Unknown

Trees are healing, nurturing and comforting,

not only to us, humans, but to animals and our entire planet.

 I was inspired to create this week's pair of earrings

by my latest watercolor painting called Strength...

Strength Watercolor Painting by Nathalie Lesage

Strength Trees Of Life Sterling Silver Hoop Earrings with Gemstones by Nathalie Lesage

I pulled the colors for the gemstones from my painting, and painstakingly created two fairly similar Trees Of Life using 26g Sterling Silver wire. It takes patience to work with the delicate wire, and try to make the small 1" trees come out as similar as possible.

The gemstones that I used are all AAA... Purple Garnet (amazing purple color),

Green Tourmaline, Neon Aqua Apatite from Brazil, and Carnelian.

You can find these Tree Of Life Earrings listed HERE on my site.

As a special gift, the person that will purchase this pair of earrings, will also receive

a 5" x 5" limited edition print of my painting as well in their package :)

Have a wonderful week!

Nathalie

http://www.NathalieLesageJewelry.com

http://www.TheCraftyTribe.com

Winter White Frost

Hoarfrost in Northern Canada by Nathalie Lesage

A couple of weeks ago, as my husband and I ventured out to Alberta to run errands in a larger city center before Christmas, I was delighted to see Hoarfrost or White Frost in the trees lining the road.

It was a little bit eery and magical at the same time, and I took lots of pictures for inspiration :)

And these are the Winter White Frost Earrings I've designed...

White Frost has such a cool look, with its white needles and lines, I wanted to recreate that texture and feel in the Sterling Silver sheet metal that I've cut and used in this design.

Using a couple of different hammers, I've manually created this texture which reminds me of the frost, and I've used an antique finish to bring out the details.

These earrings feature a gorgeous chunky pair  of faceted "blue flash" Rainbow Moonstones, which capture the eery bluish light of the frost in the early morning light... it's a bit difficult to capture on camera, but you can see some of that blue flash in this image:

These are a really gorgeous pair of Moonstones, loaded with beautiful feminine positive energy...

I have not yet listed these on my website, as I'm taking a bit of time off for the holidays, but you will soon be able to purchase them on my website: Nathalie Lesage Jewelry.

Wishing you all a very Happy New Year... 

May all your wishes come true in 2015!!

Nathalie

NIP in the air already!!!!

I am still wondering what happened to summer. I know we had a very strange one here on Long Island. There were no endless hot days. The garden this year was disappointing, to say the least. But we still had our time at the beach, which for us runs from early spring until late fall.

Speaking of which, is now almost upon us. And back to the nippy air. I love fall and all the great things there are to wear!

These earrings are from my new Tribal Wire Artisan Components and focals line. The links that I am designing can be used as an accent or focal piece in your bracelets, necklaces and earrings.

I have paired these rustic, primitive earrings with cozy scarves. And visions of big sweaters, blue jeans and boots are already dancing in my head.

I have an intense passion for natural stones and other natural elements. And I am the crazy wire lady. If I run out of wire, I am paralyzed. You would think I have nothing else in my studio to work with.

These gorgeous stones are forest agate, they go great with the dark wood tube beads and detailed wire work. I love dark earthy colors for fall.

These colorful stones are Mexican red crazylace agate. I love this stone. It works so well in all fall designs and will quickly become a favorite in your jewelry wardrobe. The stones are each a small work of art ,with their varied colors and  patterns. The design possibilities are endless. I am pleased with the way that the agate and dark wood work with my wire work and tiny copper beads.

So as visions of chilly evening, sitting around the fire pit and making s'mores dance through your head. Make yourself a treat, a pair of gorgeous stone and wire earrings!

The Tribal Wire Collection was my first collection published in Belle Amoire Jewelry magazine.

You can find me:
Mojowoman Jewelry on Etsy
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Spotted Earrings

Sometimes there is nothing more inspiring than a Semi-Precious gemstone! Just look at these spotted Jasper beads!The deep browns and grey/purple tones had me at Hello!

When working with a gorgeous stone such as this, crafting earrings that showcases the stone is easy. I just wire wrapped these tear drop shaped beads on silver headpins and and added them to nice curvy silver earwires.

I can see someone donning these earrings with a gorgeous chocolate brown pant suit, and a nice up- do to show them off.

Check out my daily blog and shop my etsy store for more great earring designs.
-lorelei eurto