MONKEY in the MIDDLE!

In trying to figure out what I wanted to design for today’s post, I came across these simply adorable copper enamel monkey charms from Anne Gael that I had completely forgotten about. I just love the colors and how the daisies ⚘⚘ cover the monkey🐵 faces – they make me laugh every time I look at them!

I wanted to keep these earrings as lightweight as possible, and as I went through my bead stash, I just wasn’t having that “aha” moment. And then I remembered these fun, hand-formed polymer clay flowers I made a few years ago…just maybe they would work. Since the flowers are really meant to hang horizontal (what was I thinking?), it took some engineering to attach them so they would be visible from the front.

By keeping the second “arm” of my wrapped loop long, I was able to feed it through the center of the flower and attach it to the wire above and behind it before snipping it off. Then I just worked the first “arm” as usual – walla! To keep a carefree and whimsical vibe to the design, I added a collection of copper seed beads and Czech glass on waxed linen cording to hang from beneath the flowers – super cute and fresh as a daisy!

    

I would love to hear your thoughts, and ideas for future designs!

These earrings will appear later today in my etsy shop, TwinklingOfAnEye

You can find other earrings on my fb page.

Thanks for spending a part of your day with me 🌻. See you in a few weeks, and a very HAPPY MOTHER's DAY to all the moms and special women in your lives! 

TOAD-ily SPRING!

It’s finally S*P*R*I*N*G – traditionally, the season for chirping birds, budding blossoms and new life! And hopefully, it’s time for at least a bit of a return to some of the things we’ve all missed over the past 12 months. I don’t have much of a green thumb so there aren’t many budding blossoms in my yard. And the branches on our tall oak trees begin far too high to hear birds chirping in them very often. However, one sign of spring that we do see in the yard pretty regularly are the 🐸frogs and toads🐸 that emerge and begin to spawn following hibernation.

Although I made these absolutely silly copper enamel frogs at the beginning of the year, I didn’t have a plan as what to do with them. But what better time to create a froggy design than the onset of Spring? Initially I was going to play up the sunflower🌻 idea and add bright yellow lampwork. But while I was looking for just the right beads, I stumbled on these chunky black and white striped tubes that complemented the stripes on the frog’s front legs perfectly.

I wanted to incorporate an Artisan component and thought the polka dots on the rear legs was the perfect inspiration. It didn’t take very long to decide on fun lampwork saucers by Ann Spirek-Wierbinski ….almost done. Just a few Czech glass spacers, and some crazy daisy spacers and wallah! Super crazy, one-of-a-kind sunflower frogs – TOAD-ily SPRING!

I would love to know your thoughts – too crazy? Too big?

These earrings will appear later today in my etsy shop, TwinklingOfAnEye

You can find other earrings on my fb page.

Thanks for spending a part of your day with me.🌻See you in a few weeks!

JUST DUCKY!

Thank goodness March has finally arrived because I am more than ready for Spring! In deciding what to feature in today’s post, I thought I would start with one of the pairs of colorful copper enamel charms that I’ve been making for an upcoming components show. Although Spring means pretty flowers, puppies, bunnies, and chicks, I wanted to do something just a bit different while still keeping with my theme. I thought of my daughter’s HUGE rubber duck collection and found that to be the perfect inspiration!

I started with these unique, copper enameled black rubber duckies, covered in brightly colored POLKA DOTS (LOVE me some polka dots). The next step was to go through my ever-growing bead stash to decide which of the polka dot colors to choose for the matching beads. I was leaning toward a pair of bright orange hollow beads over a pair of sparkly lime green donut beads, when I spotted another pair on my bead table that I knew would be the winner- a totally fun pair from Petra Marikova – a black base, completely covered in tiny colorful bumps – like falling in a bucket of candy sprinkles!

The only thing left to do was add a few colorful wavy spacers, some Vintaj black metal caps, copper caps, and a pair of fancy copper ear wires…WAY TOO FUN! What do you think? Too many polka dots? (said no one, EVER!)

 

These earrings will appear later today in my etsy shop, TwinklingOfAnEye.

You can find other earrings in my fb group.

Thanks for spending a part of your day with me - see you in a few weeks! :-) 

Fan Girl

 These fan shaped earrings are nothing but fun! How could you not feel happy when wearing these?

The fan of threads contains so many delightful colors and when I found the stripy red beads I knew they were made for each other! I love these new earrings and hope you do too. 

You can find the Fan Girl earrings in my shop now. See you again in about 2 weeks.

Linda Landig Jewelry

A Real HUM-DINGER!

For today’s earrings, I decided to keep my promise to myself and continue to design at least a few earring pairs with my own enamels. Just like the last pair of earrings I shared, these enamels were designed for a recent bird-themed show. Although I typically go for matchy-matchy designs, I do like to mix things up every so often, and these similar-but-different hummingbirds were just begging to be paired together. I was instantly attracted to the soft print and pastel colors, and the copper blanks somehow reminded me of the gilded bird cages I saw hanging all over the souks in the Marrakech medina a few years back on a family vacation.

Knowing I wanted to give the finished earrings a romantic but subtle vibe, I embossed the copper before adding the powdered glass enamel base coats and kept the oxidation intact after applying the iron oxides. Now that the charms were done, the design of the earrings remained.

I remembered coming across some fancy copper connectors from Joan Langmo recently while rummaging through my boxes of treasured components and hoped I could remember where I saw them (if you only saw my “organization”, you would understand why I said I hoped)! I hit the jackpot when I found not only the connectors I was looking for, but also some lovely flat copper flower stampings that I had completely forgotten about. It took just a bit of finagling to get all the pieces to play nicely together (do you ever feel that engineering is the most challenging part of designing? I know I do quite often!) by adding dainty Czech glass flowers on top of the copper stampings. Next, I added the hollow lampwork from Alisha White, sandwiched between pretty copper caps, at the top – just the thing to add a bit of color without distracting from the hummingbird enamels. The last step was to add the dangling Czech flowers on each side of the connectors to balance the earrings and tie everything together.

I just LOVE this subtle mix of colors:

Below you can see how the pair looks when hanging:

I’m still debating whether I “love” these or not – perhaps I’ll feel the urge to change them up a bit. But for now, they will appear this way later today in my etsy shop, TwinklingOfAnEye.

You can find other earrings in my fb group.

Thanks for spending a part of your day with me - see you in a few weeks! :-) 

Empty Nest

For whatever reason (I’ve yet to discover a definitive one), I don’t tend to design earrings with my own enamels. But being a brand new year in the midst of a very strange season, I decided it was time to mix things up a bit and change all that…at least for today!

I recently designed a flurry of bird enamels (or maybe that should be a flock?) for a themed show and tried my hand at some enamels that were more like portraits than my typical outlined “cartoon” style pieces. Much to my surprise, the process of making small translucent strokes, firing, adding another layer of strokes, firing (repeat ad infinitum), was somehow mesmerizing. However, having no painting background, my poor birds, although changing appearance with each layer, were not looking at all like what I had intended after even after a half dozen firings! Perhaps they were better kept for my own designs, where I could take my time figuring out how to bring them to life. Which brings me (finally!) to today’s earrings…

Here’s how my birds started their journey after cutting copper sheet and laying down the first base coats (the poor things would have a quite a journey of color ahead of them before they left the nest):

 

If you are familiar with my earrings, you know that I don’t tend to do anything simple – I guess it’s just not how I am wired. But I wanted beads that would complement the birds without distracting from them (after all, they had already been forced through quite a metamorphosis). I think I found the perfect match in a beautiful etched pair from Regis Teixera, and added some leather flowers (how cool is that?) to keep in line with a more rustic vibe, rich amber-hued Czech glass flowers and rings, and an assortment of brass caps. I really like how these turned out, but I also am aware of just how much I have to learn (I would greatly appreciate any painting tips you might have)! It’s difficult to know just when to stop...

Who knows? Maybe I’ll have a few more pairs of bird earrings to add to the flock by next time. But for now, these will be available in my etsy shop, TwinklingOfAnEye later today

You can regularly find other new earrings in my fb group.

Thanks for spending a part of your day with me. See you in a few weeks! :-)

Exquisite Ellipse Earrings

These beautiful brass, ellipse shaped earring components were really inspiring to work with. They have such a soft, pretty turquoise patina and a silky smooth to the touch finish.

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I used pink Venetian glass cube beads, that are lined with Sterling silver foil, to top off the earrings. Gold spacer beads bring out the gold tone in the brass and turquoise ceramic floral bead caps finish the look.

The Exquisite Ellipse earrings are now available in my shop, Linda Landig Jewelry. I'll see you in two weeks. Stay well and take care.

Linda Landig Jewelry