Hedgehog Delight

My husband is from Germany and many of the German picture books that his family gave our children, when they were little, featured adorable hedgehogs. Here in the United States we don't have wild hedgehogs, although some people keep them as pets.  One summer, many years ago, we took a vacation with my husband's family, at a resort in Ronshausen. And that's where I first saw these cute little critters. I've been a fan ever since!

I've had these cute little polymer clay hedgehogs for such a long time that I no longer remember who the artist was that made them. Aren't they cute?

The ribbed, gold tone tubes were salvaged from a vintage necklace and I topped them with some luscious, faceted garnets. These cuties are now available on my website.

Linda Landig Jewelry

Purple Please

I recently received a lovely, large gift of beady goodness from Monica Pena of Mariposa Originals. Contained within the package were a gorgeous pair of lampwork beads. I was so inspired to use them right away. Just look at all the yummy swirls of color in the glass. Swoon!

I paired them up with my ceramic Ferris Wheel components and it was a match made in heaven! I used some purple and blue metallic hexagon beads in the middle. They flash in the sunlight.

Lastly the earrings have some Bali silver beads and spacers sprinkled throughout. Shout out to Monica for generously sharing her stash with so many others. 💓 The Purple Please earrings are available in my shop now.

Linda Landig Jewelry

Sunshine And Flowers

I made a bracelet last week, about which my husband said, "It's pretty, but aren't those kind of Autumn colors?". Well, yes. So today I decided to go for sunshine and flowers. No mistaking which season these are for!

I started with two of my handmade ceramic ovals which I combined with some new brass ovals. My first design had a large flower above the brass ring, but the earrings ended up measuring 3.25 inches long! Back to the drawing board.

In this version, I used smaller orange glass flowers which I topped with brass filigree bead caps. I dangled the flowers in front of the brass and the ceramic ovals. You can find these earrings in my shop now.

There's a lot of upheaval and unknowns in our world right now, which can make earrings seem almost frivolous. But the creative heart finds balance in the act of making. I hope you are doing ok, as we each seek to make the world a safer and more loving place. I'm sending out big hugs. 💕

Linda Landig Jewelry

Chrysanthemum Earrings

One of my Pandemic Projects has been cleaning and organizing my studio. It had gotten so bad that I had no space in which to work. Oh look! I've organized one corner!

I won't share any other studio pictures, as the rest is still a disaster zone. I'm taking it step by step, otherwise the task is too overwhelming. Anyway, while I was cleaning, I found a pair of earrings that I had started, but never finished. So I finished them up in time for today's post.

The copper shards are the work of Kristi Bowman Designs. They remind me of the rays of petals that circle the center of chrysanthemum blooms. I used enameled headpins by Sue Beads to wire on a pair of carved fluorite flowers. The fancy copper ear wires are by wire wizard, Joan Langmo. 

The Chrysanthemum Earrings are available on my website.
Do you have any Pandemic Projects you're working on? Let us know in the comments. Stay home and stay safe friends!

Linda Landig Jewelry

New Directions

While I've made jewelry for most of my adult life, I only began working with clay about 5 years ago. I've been mostly offering my ceramic components for sale to other designers, via FaceBook and my website. But I feel myself moving in a new direction right now. I want to reduce my emphasis on selling my components to other designers and mostly focus on making jewelry using my own ceramic pieces.

I've opened up an additional shop that solely focuses on jewelry featuring my ceramic components, such as these delightfully rustic, sage green flower earrings. I also have some easy going post earrings on offer.

There are also some earrings that you may recognize from previous Earrings Everyday posts, such as the following.

My new shop also has necklaces and bracelets and a few jewelry components. I am adding new jewelry all the time. I hope you will come, visit and check it out. My original website will continue as always, with a wonderful array of handmade jewelry and components. Here are the links for both shops.

Linda Landig Jewelry at the ClayShare Market, (my new shop for my ceramic jewelry).

Linda Landig Jewelry (my original website, with a wide variety of my jewelry to choose from).

As always, thank you for visiting Earrings Everyday and I'll see you again in 2 weeks!

Day Of The Dead Calaveras

As some of you may know, about 6 years ago, my husband and I spent a month on Oaxaca, Mexico; from mid-October till mid-November. This put us right in the middle of one of Mexico's most exuberant celebrations of The Day Of The Dead. Handmade altars, decorated with food, flowers and sugar skulls, were constructed all over the city. Huge skeleton puppets were paraded in the streets and placed in business storefronts.

Near Llano Park in Oaxaca, Mexico

The puppets as well as the sugar skulls, were often crowned with colorful flowers, especially marigolds. Orange marigolds are said to guide the spirits of the departed, back to their homes on the Day Of The Dead.

In keeping with these customs, I dangled bright orange flowers beneath these wonderful pewter skull (Calavera in Spanish) charms by Inviciti.

The flowers have a golden luster finish that looks especially pretty in the light. I made my own Sterling silver ear wires to go along with the skull earrings.

The skull motif is popular year round, but these would be especially fun to wear this month! You can find these earrings in my shop now.

Linda Landig Jewelry

Looking Forward To New Adventures Ahead

I made today's earrings the day before my 66th birthday. As I was trying to name the earrings, it occurred to me that the turquoise parts of the lampwork beads looked kind of like eyes. They even have a little air bubble decoration in the center, that could be interpreted as the iris of the eye.

Well, anyway, that's how I saw them, late at night after a glass or 2 of wine... Anyway, my thoughts went to the fact that even though my body sometimes fails me at 66,  my eyes (and heart) are still always looking forward to the next adventure in living this life of mine. The adventures may not be as physical, as they once were. I have some chronic illnesses that I have to contend with.

So I may not be hiking in the mountains or backpacking all over Europe anymore. But life holds many different types of adventures. I look forward to watching my grandkids grow up and being a part of their lives. I look forward to learning more about ceramics, to making new jewelry, to growing older with my husband. I maybe entering into senior citizen land, but I have much to look forward to.  So the turquoise "eyes" in these earrings symbolize looking forward to all the adventures to come. What are you looking forward to?

The Looking Forward earrings will be in my shop later today or tomorrow. Thank you, as always, for visiting Earrings Everyday.  I'll be back in two weeks.

Linda Landig Jewelry

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

Pleasantly Pink

 When I bought these pretty, floral copper dangles, I knew I wanted to pair them with something pink, because I think that is such a natural color combination. However, I have a love/hate relationship with pink. I'm not fond of baby girl pink and hot pink is not much better.  I do like mauve and I like bright pink with green (think peonies with their green leaves).

Digging around in my drawer of pink beads, I found these pink leopard skin jasper beads. Perfect! I framed them with antiqued copper bead caps, some strawberry quartz and some copper colored glass spacers. I was pleasantly pleased with the outcome.
I will be adding the Pleasantly Pink Earrings to my shop later this afternoon.

Linda Landig Jewelry

Lava, Raku and Hawaii

My husband and I just got back from the island of Hawaii. We spent the week there with our daughter, son in law and their adorable 6 month old daughter, who I'm completely smitten with! We were in the Kona area of Hawaii. If you've ever been to Kona, then you know that many (but not all) of the beaches and hills in the area are covered with lava.

The lava fascinated me. In some areas it was all broken up, sharp and rocky, as in the photo above. But in other places it was smoother and you could see how it had flowed and piled up. It reminded me of pouring just cooked caramel or pudding out of spoon and watching it mound and puddle up.

The raku beads in today's earrings remind me of those mounds of cooled lava.  Very organic and mounded up a bit. Perhaps I've got Hawaii on the mind and so I'm seeing Hawaii in totally unrelated things.  I've always had an active imagination! 😉

The lava, erm, raku beads were made by Xaz beads. The tops and bottoms of the beads have a definite metallic purple sheen to them. I emphasized that purple sheen by topping the raku beads with amethysts. The leaf shaped head pins and fancy, wire wrapped ear wires are from Handmade by JGL.

Linda Landig Jewelry

Purple or green?

Hello!

It's been a gorgeous Easter weekend here in the UK. Bright and beautiful. And speaking of bright and beautiful, I received my latest batch of goodies from Petra Carpreau recently! And these rather lovely connectors caught my eye straight away.

First off...purple. These connectors have a lovely long loop, which I wrapped with some oxidised copper wire and little seeds. I framed them with some small oxidised brass hoops and added some pretty amethyst beads.

The green ones were next... I kept the same elements of the design, but added some brass spacers and tiny czech glass. I love both colours -can't pick a favourite! What do you think? Purple or green?

They'll both be available over on The Jewellery Show on Facebook on Friday/Saturday. See you again soon!

Sue x 

Utterly Lovely Stuff

Ferris Wheel Tassels

When you buy faceted gemstone briolettes the strands often come with matching tassels on the ends, which I save. Today's earrings upcycle some tassels from a strand of carnelian briolettes.

I paired the orange tassels with a pair of my ceramic Ferris Wheel components. Between the ceramic connectors and the tassels I have bronzy-orange Czech glass flowers, silver spacers and Swarvoski crystals.  These earrings are really long, but I figured that this way I can give them a "haircut" to any length the purchaser desires. Don't you think these would be fun, swinging from your ears, on a sunny day?

See you in April.

Linda Landig Jewelry

Midnight Sky

I had fun making today's earrings. I've had the blue sparkly beads for many years, but never found the right thing to pair them with, till now.  The red and silver flower beads are a new acquisition and they were just what I needed.

 The midnight blue glass beads are from Vienna - known worldwide for it's long history of making outstanding glass. What appears as tiny white flecks in the photos, is actually a glittering, metallic material in the glass, called aventurine. Whether in daylight or candlelight, these Viennese glass beads shine and sparkle! 

Legend has it that aventurine glass was invented by accident when a Viennese glass artist spilled copper filings into a batch of molten glass. The glass that resulted from that happy mistake was named aventurine.  "A ventura" is Italian for by chance. The deep blue of the beads reminds me of the night sky, strewn with hundreds of twinkling stars.

The blue beads are topped by bright red flowers that are accented by a metallic, silver wash that adds to the shimmer from the Viennese glass. Silver metal spacers are nestled on both ends of the blue glass beads. The Night Sky Earrings are available in my shop.

Linda Landig Jewelry

Teal Tassels

I have a small hoard collection of enameled cones from Sue Beads and thought I'd use a pair for today's earrings.

The cones are enameled in teal, with hints of green and maybe even a little golden yellow. I paired them with mint green and light turquoise crystals. They turned out quite elegantly, with their sparkling crystals and silver lined teal seed beads.

The Teal Tassel earrings are available at Linda Landig Jewelry.

See you in two weeks.