Happy New Year

Hello lovely earring friends,

First of all I wish you all:

I hope you all have enjoyed a wonderful Christmas and New Year's Eve.
We were in Greece, going for some hikes in the mountains. The weather was perfect, sunshine and 20 degrees Celsius (in the sun, without wind).
And I finally had time to make jewelry, in preparation of my shows in February. Yep, I need to prepare that much time ahead, as January is always a very busy month in my daytime job, with all kinds of deadlines. And I will have an exam in February and an assignment I need to finish end of January.

 

So, I made a couple of earrings with these beautiful polymer clay charms I have been hoarding for some years.They are made by Alison Page Studios. She now mainly focuses on enamel, copper and wood.

Here I combined them with lampwork glass beads made by Mermaids Glass. I am very pleased how these turned out.

In the next pair I combined them with lampwork glass beads made by 4 Wandering Gypsies. I am not sure if they make beads anymore.









 

That's it for my this month.  
Thank you so much for looking and your support for Earrings Everyday :)  Share the love, don't be shy and leave some words. And do check out the other posts of my friends here. 
See you next month. Wishing you all a wonderful day, full of laughter, joy and lots of love. 
Janine
Esfera Jewelry

Summer Swing!

Hello!

Some very summery earrings for you today. The little polymer clay charms (so sorry to not remember the artist) started off life as part of another pair of earrings. But  I was never quite sure of them, so they sat in my box of half finished things (it's a big box). But something drew me to them again. Probably the colours. And the fact that I had some very pretty purple beaded beads by Sarah of Beadecked by Beads. They were a perfect match!

 And both components have beautiful textures as well as colours.
The little beaded beads sit on some simple copper headpins and the earrings have a certain amount of swing to them.

They'll be available in my showcase over on The Earrings Show in Facebook Land on 23rd August.

See you in a couple of weeks and thanks for visiting :-)

Sue x
Utterly Lovely Stuff

craving for color

Hello friends, how are you all doing?

I don't know about you, but after winter I always crave for color. I recently bought 2 pairs of very, and I mean very, colorful shoes. My colleagues look at my shoes, look at me, look back at my shoes with a bewildered look on their faces. But then they see my tote bag (yep, very colorful), my chaotic hairstyle with curls everywhere, and sigh. Colorful shoes belong to me. As are colorful earrings. And nobody does colorful earring components better than Helena Benkoczka, with whom I had an interview in March. She is such an interesting lady and talented artist.
Her earring components always make me happy. I made these 3 pairs of earrings:

I combined the polymer charms with lampwork glass beads made by Lesley McIver, Czech glass and other bits and pieces.

And you can win this last pair :) Isn't that great. If you go to the interview you can see what you need to do to win this pair or win a pair of earrings made by Helena.

Thank you so much for looking and your support for Earrings Everyday :)
And you know I love to read your comments, so don't be shy and leave some words. 

See you in two weeks.Wishing you all a wonderful day, full of joy, an abundance of color and singing birds,
Janine
Esfera Jewelry

African safari

Hello friends, how are you doing? Hopefully Spring arrive very soon if you are living in the areas where Winter doesn't want to seem to leave.

During our travels we never managed to visit Africa. We concentrated mostly on Asia and the Middle East. So, hopefully, someday we experience an African Safari and see the magnificent wild life.

This weekend I made beads instead of jewelry: paper, Tyvek and polymer clay beads. I had great fun and I love how they all turned out. The polymer clay beads have a wonderful African feel to them.

I combined the earring charms with old Padre beads, Agate and old copper trade beads.

 

These will be available in my show beginning of april :)
Thank you so much for looking and your support for Earrings Everyday :)
And you know I love to read your comments, so don't be shy and leave some words.
See you in two weeks.Wishing you all a wonderful day, full of joy, warm weather and sunshine,
Janine
Esfera Jewelry

In Praise of Color! 💗

I enjoy designing and making jewelry for a lot of reasons.  I love following the spark of a creative idea and enjoy learning and using techniques that allow me to make new kinds of things.  I enjoy the feel of wire-wrapping and, even more, the back-and-forth rhythm of a knotting project.  I also love scrolling through my favorite haunts on the net for new art beads and components (well, who doesn't?).

But, even though it's sometimes hard to point to exactly what inspires me to design something, it's almost always color or a colorway that grabs me first.  Color is powerful:  It energizes us, soothes us, nourishes the part of our being that knows and responds to beauty.  

I've had a wonderful relationship over the years with the talented jewelry artisan Helena Benkoczka of Areto Beads and Jewellery, who makes gorgeous jewelry and components in multiple media.  But I've particularly loved working with her vibrantly colorful polymer clay earring charms, and I thought for today's blog post I'd introduce my newest pair of earrings made with Helena's components as well as share a few of my earlier earrings made with her colorful earring beads.  It's a Feast of Color for the Eyes!

Blue-Sky Days

                                      

With components as colorful

as Helena's (including these, left), my urge is to really go with it by using beads (lampwork, glass seed beads, and copper), fiber, and even ear wires that play up the colors, in this case, the orange and teal. 

Pink Champagne

These earrings (above) were made with Helena's teardrop components, a shape I grew

to love because they're perfect for adding colored rings and bead dangles 

for movement and even more color.  These are some of my favorites. 💗 

Fruit and Vine

These teardrops (left) are such a blast of color, and the earrings were SO much fun to make.  With seed beads on top and dangling from the purple aluminum rings, Czech Saturn beads, and little lampwork glass slices in a grassy green to match the waxed cord, and green niobium ear wires.

Colored Feathers, Colored Stone

This pair (right), more recent, starts with a vibrant pair of Helena's teardrops that have so many colors that I chose just two colors to use in my earrings:  purple and magenta (magenta and purple lampwork beads, purple Czech rondelles, magenta cord, purple rings, and tiny magenta seed beads).

Summertime Mandalas

The vibrant floral earrings above are brand-new--I couldn't resist the lush colors of Helena's gorgeous mandala components!  I hung lots of little beads from sterling silver rings, including pink agate rounds, tiny faceted pacific blue apatite rounds, silver rondelles, faceted dyed purple jade rounds, and turquoise blue magnesite rounds, finishing each beaded dangle with tiny sterling silver drops.  They have a Summer of Love sort of vibe, I think.  ;) 

Thanks for reading, everyone!  I'll be back again in a couple of weeks.  💗

xo
Meridy

My shop

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Classic Bohemian Girl

I've been on "Standby Service" for the Sacramento Superior Court all this week and have been checking the court's website every evening after 5 p.m. to see if they want me to report to Court the following day.  So far, I haven't been called in, so I've been catching up with projects I haven't finished and have been digging into the serious mess that is my studio.  It's like a treasure hunt when you clean up, and I struck gold when I found a little bag containing these meltingly pretty polymer clay teardrop charms by Helena Benkoczka of Areto Beads and Jewellery.  

So, with an eye to an imminent spring (and then a hot summer), I decided to use Helena's pretty charms to make one of my favorite fiber-wrapped designs, one I've made many times.  I love this design and enjoyed gathering the ingredients:  pretty purple Czech glass Saturn beads, turquoise Czech glass discs, little purple faceted rondelles (also Czech glass), and 8/0 purple-lined seed beads.

I hadn't made a wrapped design in a while, so I especially enjoyed the wrapping part of making these earrings: the tension needed to keep the beads at the top straight and strong, then the precise wrapping at the tops of the charms, adding the tiny 15/0 beads that nestle inside the teal rings, tying the thread off at the back, and covering the thread with matching colored paper and glaze.

Interestingly enough, as I'm finishing my blog post, I find out that I have to report to Court tomorrow morning at 8 a.m.  I guess duty calls!

Thank you so much for reading!  I love you guys, and I'll see you all again in two weeks.  💗

xoxo
Meridy

My shop

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Colored Feathers, Colored Stones

It's so great to finally be over the flu--and it felt so good to finally be able to sit down and make some new earrings (five pairs in all--I did say it felt good to get back to making things, right?).  ;)  It's also wonderful to be back here at EE with all my beady friends.

You can find these earrings here.

These earrings are a variation on one of my favorite styles.  I made them with these pretty little bumpy purple-and-fuchsia lampwork rondelles by Deborah Crow Roesly, paired with vibrantly colorful polymer clay tribal feathers by Helena Benkoczka.

Complete "recipe" for the earrings:  Deborah's rondelles, Helena's feathers, 3-mm fuchsia Swarovski crystals, scalloped copper bead caps, 3x5-mm tanzanite Czech glass rondelles, small copper jump rings, 15/0 dark fuchsia seed beads, dark fuchsia anodized aluminum jump rings, fuchsia waxed linen cording, and dark pink anodized niobium ear wires.  

The earrings are extremely lightweight and easy to wear.  The backs of the feathers are covered with glazed paper to keep the cord ends tidy and out of sight.

Thanks so much for reading!  I'll be back again in a couple of weeks with some new earrings.  :)

xoxo
Meridy

Two Trees Studio

My FB page