Glass and ceramic

Hello earring friends,

Nicola Morse had a de-stash a couple of weeks ago and I was able to BIN these amazing lampwork glass beads before anyone else did. They were made by Michelle Johnston, and are in a wonderful purple and fuchsia. 

I paired them with dark gray ceramic drops which were in my recent order of ceramic gorgeousness from Petra Carpreau, some spacer lampwork glass beads from Lonely Beads, Swarovski crystal and handmade earrings from Lucy Haslam.

Hope you like them.

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 love, sunshine and laughter. And of course a wonderful Pentecost.

Janine
Esfera Jewelry

Birds of a Feather

Sitting in my studio this morning all I could hear was silence...….and birds! The house next door to us is a tall 3 storey affair with a chimney where starlings nest every year. Some years I've counted over 30 baby birds lined up along the rooftop as they have several broods. They're very noisy and very greedy and can go through a couple of fat slabs in our feeder in a day, squabbling all the way. By contrast, the blackbirds that nest in our hedge are quiet and gentle. I saw one this morning picking our viola flowers to line her nest - soft and fragrant. Clever lady.
 

Todays earrings are birdy. Polymer clay birds (mum and baby) by Jana Bliznakova, textured ceramic discs by Nitta of  Corvus Ceramics, czech glass feathers, peanut beads and dark copper metalwork by Lucy Haslam all add to the rustic feel.

So off I go to fill up the bird feeders yet again - see you in a couple of weeks time.

                                                                  Lindsay xx

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Playing with envelopes

Well, that is what these beads were in the first place. Before I went ahead with lots of paint and the heat gun. Making these beads is so much fun and it's like Tyvek is alive when heated. 

This is my first ever batch of Tyvek beads and not as perfect as I wanted them to be. So I made new onces with other colors.

 This is what I made with two soft green/yellow Tyvek beads. I combined them with handmade glass head pins (artist unknown) and handmade ear wires by master basher of metal Lucy Haslam. 

These are now available :)

Thank you so much for looking and your support for Earrings Eveyday :)

And you know I love to know what you think of this design, so don't be shy and leave some words.

See you in two weeks. Wishing you a wonderful day, full of joy, laughter and sunshine.

Janine

Oops

Hi friends. 

Yep, oops, that was what I thought some minutes ago. I completely forgot it was my turn today. But, luckily it is still Thursday...

My earrings today are not new but made for one of my shows on facebook this month. As I am not so into Christmas, they are not very Christmassy. But they have some sparkle :)

These are made with lampwork glass headpins from Jodia Elasia Schiavo, glass beads from Jennifer Powers and handmade ear wires by our own Lucy. 

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, laughter and Christmas pudding,
Janine
Esfera Jewelry

Whirlwind

Hello hello.
Today I am showing you earrings I made last week. You should have seen me, my little bags of tiny colorful beads spread all over the bed, me frantically looking for The Perfect Bead combinations. My  sari silk ribbons haphazardly thrown all over the couch (hubby barely had space left to sit). Yes, making these earrings were kind of a whirlwind process.
For these earrings I wire wrapped the sari silk with a combination of Czech glass, crystals and delica's in a whirlwindy fashion. Hence the name :)

Glass head pins by Linda Newnham Copper ear wires by Lucy Haslam

Glass head pins by Karen Klomparens
Copper ear wires by Lucy Haslam

Glass beads by Grace Ma
Copper ear wires by Lucy Haslam
















These will be available in my Etsy shop shortly.
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, laughter and whirlwinds of positive energy,
Janine
Esfera Jewelry

Super duos

Ahhhh, the tiny little wonders of seed beads.
As you might know already I love to work with tiny seed beads. The colors, the shapes and sizes, they give endless possibilities.  When I find myself without inspiration I return back to bead weaving and bead embroidery. Somehow, working with the little ones relaxes my mind and brings back my mojo.
Here are two examples of earrings I made with beautiful lampwork beads made by Karen Kordan.
I found the basis for this design in this tutorial on youtube by Beadifulnights. I adjusted it a bit and it is really easy to make.

Here the lampwork beads have beautiful purple, blue and green hues. I paired them with iris black magatama's, super duo's in two colors pink, turquoise AB crystals and rose gold delica's. Of course with handmade ear wires by my friend Lucy Haslam.

The lampwork beads in these earrings have orange, yellow and brown hues with silver sparkles. I paired them with black super duo's, Swarovski diamond black AB crystals, topaz Delica's and ear wires by Lucy.

These will be available in my show on Facebook on December 3 :)

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, laughter and tiny little wonders,
Janine
Esfera Jewelry

Stacked earrings

Hello hello hello *waiving like some sort of possessed woman*, how are you all doing? I hope you are enjoying a wonderful day, with sunshine and laughter.

Last Monday I had an earring show on Facebook, which "forced" me to finally sit down and make earrings. Hence the "possessed" woman. Yep, I went on a wild earring creating frenzy.  
No time to eat, no time for grocery shopping, just bead bead bead.  And buy buy buy LOL, Because, hey, I was planning to sell earrings, meaning I could use that money to buy new beads. Upfront of course, as I "needed" them to make the earrings for the show. Hubby mumbled a bit in the corner about the illogical thinking and already having more beads than I could ever use. Well, what does he know. Everybody understands a jewelry designer needs beads. Right? Right? Right! And no, I am NOT a bead hoarder. Really, I am not. One day I am going to use them all. Really.

Well, enough of the rambling, it is time to show you some of my creations. I love stacked earrings and I so admire the work of our own Malin de Koning, the stacked earring queen.

Here are some of the pairs. using most Czech glass beads. Of which one can never have enough. Right? Right!

And here a stacked pair with some beautiful ceramic charms made by Petra Carpreau of Scorched Earth and tiny birdies made by Karen Trezise from Ditsy Blue Beads. And of course ear wires made by Lucy Haslam from Faerystones.

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.

Wishing you all a wonderful day, full of sunshine, laughter and love.
Janine
Esfera Jewelry

Labradorite

Hello there.

Hopefully spring has arrived where you live. Currently I am in the Netherlands for my day-time job and oh boy, it is cold. Very, very cold. What a difference with Greece. 

Remember these? 

I love labradorite, it’s one of my favorite stones. I made this design a while back and got a bit bored by it. So, time for a make-over.

I think the new design had just that bit extra. What do you think?
Labradorite, amazonite, yellow ceramic bead caps, crown bead caps, tiny Swarovski crystals in fuchsia and my favorite ear wires made by my friend LucyHaslam of Faerystones.

Now available in my shop.

Thank you for looking and till next month. And you know it by now, I love to read your comments, so don’t be shy. Let me know what you think of the new design. 

Janine

Esfera Jewelry

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A do-over too

It seems Jetta and I are going through the same phase: rethinking old designs.
For me it has more or less to do with space. Storage space that is.
As most of you probably know me and hubby live in a truck, converted into a mobile home. 

Which comes with limited storage space. Very limited storage space. You can imagine that this is not a good combination with my urge to hoard beads.
We live in Greece but often have to fly back to the Netherlands for our work. So, most of the time a great part of my bead collection is stored in our “bench seat” and I would only have a small working stock more easily accessible. Now you know the reason those cute ceramic bead caps pop up in almost all of my latest designs. A baggie of these is part of my working stock.

To have more choice in beads I periodically go through my stock of jewelry and make a selection of pieces which will need a re-do/make-over/re-think.

Here an example.

This older design was pretty, but didn’t actually sing. It was missing something.  Now I did have some beautiful lampwork glass beads left from an order the lovely Kate from Maya Honey made for me, for use in a very special bracelet for a very special customer.
And that’s what this design needed. And some colorful ceramic bead caps of course.

Now available in my shop.
Thank you so much for looking. And you know it by now, I love to read your comments, so don’t be shy. Let me know what you think of the new design. And if you are an artist, do you re-do/make-over/re-think your designs sometimes?

Janine

Esfera Jewelry

My etsy shop

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From a Sarcophagus.

A creative slump. We all have them. Doesn't often happen to me but this week I've struggled to even summon up a pair of earrings.

I've been super busy over the last month with village events, real life and on-line shows, and grandchildren stuff and reckon I'm just tired and in need of a holiday - cue Halkidiki in a couple of weeks time to recharge my rapidly aging batteries!

So for this weeks earrings I decided to take Janine's advice and revisit an old design. Looking through albums from a couple of years ago, I found a pair I really liked and decided to make a new, differently coloured version - the originals had green kyanite with the red enamelled tins.

The enamelled tin sticks are, of course, by Kimberly Rogers . Those gorgeous lapis lazuli discs come by recommendation of Norbel, from funkyprettybeads. Very rich, with the deep red. Favourite colours of the Egyptians; Tutankhamen's sarcophagus abounds with lapis, although with gold rather than copper.
The etched copper rings are sadly no longer available - they were from Tracy Smith, of Cinnamon Beads, who is now concentrating on her jewellery (more's the pity - her copper findings were second to none). Those Tangled earwires are by none other than Lucy Haslam, who is re-opening her findings shop with some new, exciting things for us in mid-August after her move to wild Wales. Hurray, I hear you all shout. Not before time, ya slacker (don't tell her I said that!)

 

 

 

 

And they've set me off on a real red and blue thing...so expect to see more of these colours together. I'm busy studying my guide book from the Museum of Egypt in Cairo - I feel a collection coming on!

 

 

See you in  a couple of weeks.

 

 

Lindsay

(Precious Violet)

M y etsy shop

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Nature as inspiration

Hello lovely earring fans,

What inspires you when you create? Normally I get my inspiration from the beads itself. When that doesn’t work, nature, in all its glory does the trick.

Lilac-breasted Roller-Wikipedia, picture by Prabir2011

Look at the picture of this amazing bird. It’s a Lilac-breasted Roller. Never heard of it, but isn’t it magnificent?

I have tried to incorporate the colours into this pair of earrings.

Beautiful turquoise, matte, lampwork glass beads, made by Elasia, embellished with pink aluminium jump rings, silver plated bead caps, rose glass beads and handmade copper ear wires made by Lucy Haslam from Faerystones

Simple earrings as I wanted to draw attention to the gorgeous turquoise colour of the headpins.

Thank you for looking and I hope to see you again in a couple of weeks!

And you know by now I really love to read your comments, so don’t be shy, just write a few lines. I always respond.

 

Wishing you a wonderful day,





Janine
Esfera Jewelry

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Inspiration

According to the dictionary inspiration is:

1.
the process of being mentally stimulated to do or feel something, especially to do something creative.
synonyms: creativity, inventiveness, innovation, innovativeness, ingenuity, imagination, imaginativeness, originality, individuality; artistry, expressiveness, creative power, creative talent, creative skill, genius, insight, vision, wit, finesse, flair, brilliance, sophistication

the quality of being inspired.
synonyms: stimulus, stimulation, motivation, motivating force, fillip, encouragement, influence, muse, goad, spur, lift, boost, incentive, incitement, impulse, catalyst 

divine influence, especially that supposed to have led to the writing of the Bible.
   
2.
a sudden brilliant or timely idea.
synonyms: bright idea, brilliant idea, timely thought, revelation

When my muse wants to “cooperate” and I am in the flow I get my inspiration mostly from the colors of the beads. Especially from art beads. One can feel the love an artist puts in these tiny wonders of art. By looking at a beautiful art bead, designs often create themselves. 

Design Seeds: http: wanderlust/color-view31

When I am having my “beads play-day” and my muse is deciding to take a prolonged coffee break, I’m having a harder time finding inspiration. My go-to stop for instant inspiration is the website of Design seeds. The pictures are mouth watering gorgeous and the color palettes are inspirational.
 

 
If my muse is on holiday I find inspiration in design bead kids, like the muse packs from Smittenbeads, browsing the fresh picks from Lima beads, flicking through beading magazines or by picking up a bead embroidery project.

When that doesn’t work…Well I’m just calling it a day and go for a long walk in the mountains.

 

Glass headpins: Earthshinebeads
Copper earwires: Faerystones

These are available in my shop.
Can you tell what inspired me creating these earrings?
And of course I like to know what inspires you in your creativity?


Thank you for visiting. Wishing you a wonderful time, full of joy, happiness, laughter and lots of inspiration. See you in a couple of weeks.

Janine

Esfera Jewelry

My etsy shop

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Hydrangea

Hello lovely earring fans. I hope you are enjoying a wonderful end of summer. Here in Greece we still have warm weather so we can still swim and enjoy the sun. My apologies as I have to keep this post short. I am a bit running behind with my work.
These earrings are a bit shorter than my usual style. The inspiration were the gorgeous lampwork glass beads from Into the Fire. Half of the set was etched for me on request. I think they turned out  beautifully.

They are combined with Czech glass flowers in a beautiful blue. The colours in the lampwork and Czech glass beads make me think of Hydrangea which I love. Of course with wonderful handmade antiqued copper ear wires made by Faerystones.

These are available in my shop. Thank you so much for looking. We here at Earrings Everyday love to read your comments, so don't be shy and write a few words. We appreciate it! See you in a couple of weeks.

Wishing you a wonderful week full of joy, laughter, sunshine and flowers.

Janine

Esfera Jewelry

My etsy shop
My website/blog
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