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

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