Turquoise Trio

A Facebook friend asked me to make some turquoise earrings for her niece. She said they should be under 1.5 inches long and be made with Sterling silver. Other than those two guidelines, she said I should make whatever I wanted to. Since I'd never met either her or her niece, it was impossible to know what style of earring the young woman would want. So I ended up making three pairs and letting my Facebook friend choose the pair that she thought would be best suited for her niece. Here's what I came up with.

This is the pair of earrings which were chosen. The disc shaped beads are Peruvian opals. Such a lovely milky turquoise! I placed Bali silver spacers beneath the opals and between the opals and the lampwork beads by Paradise Beads. I then topped the earrings with sterling silver beads. Unfortunately this is the only photo I took, before sending the earrings to their new home.

The other two pairs of earrings are in my shop now. I like all three pairs of earrings, but I think this pair is my favorite. They feature lovely hammered Sterling silver hoops with dangles of turquoise "cathedral" beads that are coated in silver on the tops and bottoms. I placed small embossed Thai Hills Tribe beads beneath the cathedral beads.

The last pair of earrings features the most wonderful, shimmery turquoise beads by Sue Beads. I can't stop admiring these lampwork beads. A photograph really can't do them justice. I used the same Sterling beads at the bottom of these earrings, as I used on top of the first pair. Then I topped them with some beautiful Sterling bead caps and more of the embossed Thai Hill Tribes beads.

So there you have it - a Turquoise Trio.  Which pair would you choose?

Linda Landig Jewelry

Caribbean Sunset

My husband and I will be celebrating our 45th anniversary this coming July and we've been discussing some ways we might celebrate.  Our favorite idea, at the moment, is a return trip to a very remote beach in Costa Rica, that we have visited twice before.  

This is our secret piece of tropical paradise!  We stay in a rustic, thatched roof cabin, swim, read in the hammocks and eat fresh fish and tropical fruits while listening to Caribbean music in an outdoor bar. Pura Vida!

So I was thinking about this getaway when I was designing these Caribbean Sunset Earrings.

The colors make me think of evenings in an open-air, beach-side bar.  Picture it:  The sun is going down and setting the sky ablaze!  Its warm, with a light breeze.  You've got a fruity adult beverage in your hand and these happy earrings dangle from your ears.  The colors reflect all the intense hues of the tropics: turquoise, blue, purple and orange. Lovely!

The small, orange lampwork glass beads are by Paradise Beads and the larger, multicolor lampwork beads are by Out West Designs. The earrings are available in my shop.

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Linda Landig Jewelry

Winter Solstice

I found a beautiful leaf during on of my recent walks and realized it's been some time since I've used natural leaf textures in my components so I decided it was time to make more. This is the first pair I made and I decided I need to throw some paint on them and see how it looks.

As soon as I put the first 2 colors on them, I immediately thought of these beautiful Lampwork Beads I had in my stash and they turned out to be a perfect match. I've added some faceted Labradorite rondelles and Druzy like beads on top and wrapped lots of messy Copper Wire around wherever I could. 

Even though there is lots of color in these they have a very wintry quality so I had to give them a wintry name.

Winter Solstice!

Lampwork Beads by Paradise Beads.

These earrings are available HERE to purchase.

Thanks so much for joining us here at Earrings Everyday,

we are always grateful you visit us here!

And Happy New Year!

Kristi

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Vintage Green Bloom Earrings

In my last post I wrote about making beaded wire hoops above the earring dangles.  I'm still playing with that idea, as you can see in today's earrings.

The green flower drops are very unusual,  I've never seen anything like them before.  I bought them from a vintage bead vendor at Bead Fest last year.  They are flat on the back and have a little tab at the top, with a side to side hole through it.  The were quite expensive, but I'm pretty much hopeless when it comes to resisting really unique beads.

I topped the earrings with pretty pink lampwork beads from Paradise Beads.

While I'm not much of a pink color fan, I've always loved deep pink and bright green because it reminds me of camellias and their green leaves.

Camellia in our backyard.

The Camellia Earrings can be found in my shop.

Linda Landig Jewelry

Avoiding A Girly Look With Rose Quartz Pink

According to the color experts at Pantone, the two big colors for Spring and Summer of 2016 are Rose Quartz Pink and Serenity Blue.  For all the world, those two look like traditional nursery room colors to me.  Gah!  I really dislike the stereotyping that starts right at birth or even earlier, when the gender is known.  Women of my age (uh-hum) worked really hard to break down the narrow definitions of what women (and men) can or should do.  I used to know a very nice bead shop owner, who always referred to her staff as "My girls".  I had the same knee jerk reaction to that as to the baby colors.  OK, I know that lots of people will disagree with me and I also know that many people  don't feel as strongly as I do about calling women, girls or using baby pink.  I'm just speaking for me and I wanted to give you the back-story for today's earrings.

I decided to challenge myself to create something in Rose Quartz Pink that I would be comfortable wearing!

 Copper has a pink tinge to it, so I started with that.  These copper charms were made by Melinda Orr of ORRTEC.  I topped Melinda's copper with some speckled pink Czech glass from my stash.  The speckled effect helps tone a color down a bit.

Then I added some twisted wire jump rings and topped them off with matte purple lampwork glass beads from Paradise Beads.  I added a couple of loops of antiqued brass wire work to up the rustic look.  And for a final touch I added some hand dyed lace trim.  The dye is purposely spotty with patches of creamy white and hints of orange, mixed in with the pink.  It is not old lace, but it appears vintage.

So do you think I pulled this off?  Pink with out the cutesy, baby stuff?  What colors do you dislike?  Have you ever challenged yourself to use them despite your feelings?

These earrings are available here:  Pink Lace Earrings

 

Linda Landig

Snakeskin Swivel

This is not the first pair of "Swivel" earrings I've made and in fact these took a long time to come together. I've had the copper pieces on my work table for some time and nothing I put together worked for me. 

But I sat down today and spied some of my all time favorite Lampwork Beads by Karin Hruza of Beadfairy and Fireworks went off in my brain. I put them with more Lampwork Beads on top by Paradise Beads that match Karin's beads perfectly and a couple of complimenting Czech Glass Beads and these worked!

These babies are mechanical, they swivel all over the place, so much so that I had to make a little video to show you exactly how they move.

My little girl Shasta is telling you all about it in the background!

These Earrings have been sold.

Kristi

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