The Most Humble of Finds

Never trust a person who doesn't appreciate a good walk, hike, or meander through the woods.

My day job involves working from home, which is a huge blessing, but it can also mean that I work up a hell of a case of cabin fever every now and then. Not being a hugely social person, at these moments I tend to flee the house in search of parks instead of humans. And what does a girl like me do when she's taking these hikes? Well, she collects bits, of course. Sometimes it's just one or two things, sometimes it's a couple handfuls wrapped in the front of my shirt and weighing it down like a sagging potbelly. I'll come home with any number of natural wonders: hawk feathers, flaming red maple leaves, shards of bone, a squirrel-gnawed walnut, a rusted-out nail, or--if I'm really lucky--a trilobite fossil. 

Here in southwest Ohio we are rife with fossils from the Ordovician period---that's 450-500 millions years old! Whole cliffsides are just stratified with them. Erosion and time ensure that our creeks are always teeming with brachiopods, bryozoans, crinoids, gastropods, and horn coral. Talk about treasures!

Several weeks ago I was taking a hike at French Park, one of my favorite local parks. Being autumn, the leaves were turning and falling and the tree nuts were doing the same. I came across a grove of massive oak trees and the forest floor was littered with--you guessed it--acorns. I'm sure no one will argue that an acorn cap is quite possibly Mother Nature's perfect bead cap. Now, I've always seen jewelry makers dabble with cast metal or ceramic or polymer clay acorn caps. But what about using actual acorn caps in designs? I picked up a handful, inspected, checked for hardness and durability, and then decided to take some home to play around with. 

Back in the studio, I drilled a hole in each top and gave them a healthy coat of wax to help preserve and waterproof. It seems so elementary and so obvious, but it feels so...right. Here's the first pair I came up with, featuring a pair of deliciously grungy sawdust fired ceramic beads made by our own Claire Lockwood of somethingtodobeads. I strung everything on a couple of my fat pitted copper headpins and topped them off with wee black filigree bead caps and a dot of blackened silver solder. 


Just goes to show, art can be found in and created with just about anything, even the most humble of finds. 

Happy Wednesday!
Nikki
LoveRoot on Etsy

Stop to Hear the Frogs Sing

For those who have known me since childhood, it will come as no surprise to hear me say that I'm a fan of frogs and toads. I don't know what it is, but they have always made me squeal and immediately squat down to try and catch them. Mind you, not to hold them captive or torture or scare them, but to give their little heads a tap and whisper some cute equivalent of "who's a good boy". 

Even today as an adult I have the same reaction, much to the chagrin (and embarrassment) of my husband. I don't care if a grown-ass woman shouldn't be chasing frogs in a creek, I'm gonna do it. Because I do what I want. 

 
Ground zero for this favorite pastime was my grandparents' farm in central Ohio. They had several acres on which they grew various crops, most importantly strawberries. Locally famous for their pick-your-own berries, their farm was a haven for my brother and I growing up. And especially when it came to the small pond sitting at the back of their land. You wouldn't believe the frogs, fish, turtles, snakes, insects, and fowl that would flock to this watering hole. In the spring you could see velvety soft tadpoles teeming around the shallow edges. As the year progressed, they morphed into wee frogs the size of a quarter and would sun themselves on the embankments. We tried to quietly creep up on them but their keen froggy senses warned them every single time, sending them plopping back into the water with a chorus of "eeeeps". If they were lucky enough to survive adolescence, they would grow into one of the many grandaddy bullfrogs that would serenade us with deep, throaty "moos" while we were picking strawberries in the fields. To this day, if you want me to tear up, just put me in a wide open field on a hot, sunny, breezy day and let me listen to the frogs.

My earrings for today feature small smooth stone bullets of limey green serpentine. The mottled colors and patterns on these stones remind me of the amphibians I adore so much. I have hung them beneath stacks of precious bits, as I am wont to do: grungy antique clear glass "dogon" beads from Africa, two-tone tiger kamagong ebony wood beads from the Philippines, vintage brass saucers, and wee star-shaped metal bead caps. I added in some decorative blackened silver soldering, as I am also wont to do, and hung everything from my extra long curvy copper ear wires.

For all of the nostalgia and anecdotes that I share on this blog, I suppose I do have a loose theme that ties them all together, and today's post is no different. Please don't ever become so jaded that you lose your wonder for the world and its tiny miracles. Even if it's as simple as stopping to hear the frogs sing. 

Happy Wednesday!
Nikki
LoveRoot on Etsy

(Please) Forget to Wash Your Hands

I'm sure we all heard this at least once during our childhood: "don't forget to wash your hands". As a tomboy and serial creek-hopper, I probably heard that at least once a day. My grubby little paws were always busy and exploring---catching crawdads for the boys who were afraid of getting pinched (come on, guys!), playing on the swingset, picking bouquets of flowers for mom, netting butterflies in the garden, romping through the woods behind our house. 

We assume that dirt and the accumulation of "stuff" is a bad thing. Now, to be fair, in many cases, it is. Germs are not fun. Smelly stuff is not fun. Grody stuff is not fun. However, when it comes to dirty beads with a history, I'm all for it. 

When I'm at a show or am trolling Etsy for new components and I see a strand of beads that have grime, I usually pounce. And once I get them on my bench, the thought of WASHING the beads to remove that beautiful patina of time...well, it never even enters my mind. Some people prefer their beads and jewelry to be new, pristine, shiny, and spotless. That's fine, no problem with that. But there's also something very sterile about it to me.  


Take, for example, the collections of old antique beads found in my earrings for today. Just look at the macro shot on those babies! Pitted, caked with decades and centuries of grime---people rolling the beads around in their hands, wearing them, treasuring them, trading them for goods. Different cultures, different continents, different purposes. In other words, these beads have LIVED. They've outlived generations of humans. And they live on today in their current incarnation as earrings. If that doesn't get your juices flowing as an artist, then I don't know what will.

These earrings feature lime green ancient glass beads, clear "dogon" glass beads, and pale robin's egg blue amazonite stone beads---all from Africa. I added in small vintage wood beads and little bead caps to complete each quintet. The wirework is all hand-wrapped steel, because you know how much I love organic gnarled vining forms. Hooped, lightweight, and fluid.

Happy Wednesday...and have fun getting dirty!

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

Miners daughter wants to party

This post is a big thank you to the rest of the Earrings Everyday team members. All you wonderful, amazingly talented ladies are a great inspiration. With your designs you are pushing me to dare to step outside my very comfy creative box.

These earrings are my first attempt to a bit more of a grungy look. To be a bit more messy and to try to mix more different elements.They started out with the vintage brass links I had for some time now. They were just sitting there and I had just a vague idea what to do with them, but never did. Then my parcel from one of my favorite online bead shops Smitten Beads arrived. With the druzy beads and stick quartz. The perfect addition to the links. 

In my first pair I combined the druzy beads with handmade lampwork beads from 4wanderinggypsies in a lovely wasabi and Swarovski Crystal. With handmade ear wires from my friend and bead artist Lucy Haslam (Faerystones).

In my second pair I combined the stick quartz with handmade lampwork glass beads in white, turquoise and teal (Bulibeads), Swarovski crystal and handmade ear wires from Lucy.

I am very pleased how these turned out and I still have more brass links and stick quartz to play with.
What do you think, successful attempt or not?
Thank you for looking. And thank you so much lovely team members for your inspiration and your support! I am so happy to be part of this team.

Janine

Esfera Jewelry

My etsy shop

My website/blog

My facebook page

Asymmetry and I

As a designer who gravitates toward earrings, I'm always thinking in terms of pairs, especially when it comes to purchasing art beads. It's just one of those things that gets engrained in your brain and becomes second nature---like riding a bike, remembering to turn off the burner when you're done cooking, or making sure you put on deodorant each morning.

So when Kim of NuminosityBeads threw me for a loop and offered just ONE of these crazy glowy ultraviolet etched dichroic lampwork glass beads, well, I was vexed. Panting, starting to break out into a cold sweat, I assured myself that I could incorporate it into a necklace...make it a focal...pair it with other complementary beads. It will be fine, right? RIGHT??!!

Against my better judgement, I was determined to make it work in a pair of earrings. Which could only mean one thing: it was time to get asymmetrical. 

Asymmetry and I are good friends---sometimes we veer way off to the left and sometimes we operate in a more conventional range. What's more important to me in a piece is the balance, not so much the symmetry. 

So I pawed through my bead hoard and came to the last tray in the tower (yes, tower)---the box I reserve for my own polymer clay beads. I keep them at the bottom because I don't make many polymer beads. And the sets I do make tend to get mostly used, leaving one or two left over. Those one or two tend to languish and get forgotten.

This pearly cratered lavender polymer chunk was just the ticket. Its soft frostiness plays a beautifully complementary second-fiddle to the intense ultraviolet flash of Kim's glass. I opted to keep the design simple, pairing each bead with two grungy vintage bone "cruller" beads and capping everything off with some soldering. Sweet, dangly, squeal-er-ific. 

Hope you're having a delicious week!


Nikki
LoveRoot on Etsy

Cubist Roses

It's not often that I use clearly identifiable imagery in my jewelry. I usually prefer to leave things more abstract and open to interpretation - makes things more interesting and guarantees that no two people will have the same experience. 

However, when I saw these burnt graphic ceramic cubist roses from DonnaPerlinplim, SOMETHING inside me clicked. What IS that that thing? Our muse? Our happy place? The voice that keeps talking and doesn't know when to shut up?

 
I took the background golds, silvers, and ivories and pulled them out using my beloved stacked bead approach: old neolithic quartz trade beads from Africa, discs of real ostrich shell (I know!), shards of crusty Roman glass, and some grungy wee metal bead caps. I finished things off with some globby soft soldering on the wire wraps to make things interesting. 

 
The end result is cubist modern meets grungy primitive - now that's not something you see everyday!

Happy Wednesday!
Nikki
LoveRoot on Etsy