The Love of Art Beads

Hello everyone and Happy April.

At the moment, this is feeling very surreal. Maybe it was meant to be, for whatever reason. 

I wrote a very long post. About my love of Art Beads. How I started making jewelry. My Art Bead Collecting, my passion for them as an art form, and a bunch of other stuff. 

Right now it's about 11:00 p.m. and I've had a really long day. My wrist is aching and my eyes are trying to close. Not complaining just setting the stage. :) I came back to my post to add the links for the earrings I just listed. I must have hit a Ctrl+A key combination and hit a key or the space bar and my whole post disappeared. I quick tried to Undo and I see that the Auto Save feature is saving it. The Undo did not work and it saved a completely blank page. YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!!!!!!!! NO. PLEASE NO. I tried to Undo yet again and it was hopeless. I looked around for somewhere there might be a backup but nada. 

There were six different photos in it, links to four or five different shops, links for the photos, all of which take a fair amount of time to complete, along with what probably amounted to three pages of blog. 

So rather than straining your eyes and maybe scratching your brain to read my lengthy narrative, this is it! Three new pairs of earrings made with Artisan beads by Petra Carpreau of ScorchedEarthOnEtsy and accompanying wheel beads by Jana Bliznakova of HappyFishThings. 

I am really very sorry but I just can't pull it together long enough to try to re-write it. 

Here are my earrings for today. With love and great big kudos to Petra Carpreau of ScorchedEarthOnEtsy.

Link to SheFliesAgain

Link to SheFliesAgain

Link to SheFliesAgain

As always, thank you so very much for taking the time to stop in and see what we've got going on, or maybe reading in your Inbox. We all appreciate it! Be back in two weeks. :)

With love, peace & happiness to all of you, each and every single day.
norbel
SheFliesAgain

The Ancient Tlingit People

Hello. I hope this day finds you healthy and well. 

I have always been and still am interested in all things ancient, indigenous American peoples, and other cultures around the world. And I love making jewelry that connects in any way to an expression of any of those things.

A shop I recently discovered, and love, makes, among other things, white and yellow bronze elements that depict images inspired by ancient Egypt, Africa, the Mimbres, and the Tlingit. The pieces are cast in the U.S. from their original masters and molds. The shop's name is that of its owner, RobertWGilmore. And once again, I am hooked! ☻

My earrings today are made with Robert's "Tlingit Whales." The Tlingit are indigenous people living, past and present, in the Pacific Northwest, Canada and U.S., including Alaska. Their art is unique, as are Robert's elements. They are extremely detailed, beautifully made, thin and lightweight.

earrings available here

I had a specific color in mind I wanted to use with these and thinking through my beads, paddling through some of them, there wasn't a single pair that fit what my mind was stuck on. 
So I pulled out the old polymer clay and made a handful of beads. 

Squares, rectangles, rounds, some textured, some not, and in the end the plain old round beads worked best for me. I used several colors of acrylic paints to get the color I wanted, a vibrant, vivid, turquoise blue. That was to be the only high-contrast in the earrings. As an aside, if the beads appear to be too large for the design, they don't look that way in person; it must be the way they are angled in the photos???? I used Mykonos patina spacers and square brass-plated spacers on both sides of the polymer bead, something I don't often do, the same thing on either side of the bead, but it was the right look. 

earrings available here

The dangles below are 3mm Czech glass beads, and the intent with those was to elongate the design, and not to create a high-contrast to the whales. They are so perfect in and of themselves that I really did not want to take away from them at all. However, the beads behind the whale are a bit more colorful to create interest when viewed from the side when the full face of the whale is not visible.

The next two photos are of earrings I made previously with Robert's elements. Both of those have sold so they're not available, but I wanted to show them to you. Robert's bronze pieces were inspired by the Mimbres. Mimbres first referred to beautiful and distinctive pottery found in southwestern New Mexico, and eventually became the name used to describe the people who had created the pottery.

 















That concludes our history lesson for today. 
Class Dismissed! ☻

As always, I sincerely appreciate the time you take to view our posts. I hope your day continues, unfolds, and ends with peace of mind, no matter what occurs. ☮
Norbel Marolla
SheFliesAgain
You can find me on Facebook and Instagram

Brick and Mortar

Once again, I'd like to welcome our lovely friend and wonderful designer, Meridy Migchelbrink, of TwoTreesStudio, and thank her as well for giving us her time to design and create these earrings special for today. I love Meridy's style, her work; she is also one of the loveliest women you will ever meet. She works color expertly! If you have not yet, a walk through her shop is joyful.
norbel

I love well-crafted, beautiful, and whimsical earring components, so when I found these beautiful, playful enamels by Marlene Kazor Quigley of Markazo, I knew I wanted to make something with them! 

The enamels begged for RUSTIC, so I went looking in my stash to see what beads I might have that would work with them (I’m trying to cut back on my bead spending—yes, you may laugh now, I’ll wait).  After no immediate success, I remembered that I still had a pair of Leese Mahoney’s, GlassByLeese, gorgeous crusty-rustic cones in a perfect shade of green. 

So I started to play.  I needed a bit more red, so I pulled out some chunky 10mm red horn discs, which looked great with the cones and the enamels.  I also wanted motion, so I made small wire-wrapped dangles in red and olive green and hung them from matching green niobium jump rings (thank you, chainmailling habit—I always have plenty of rings to choose from!).  Since I wanted to use my signature fiber-wrapped earring technique, once I got the cones and horn discs onto the linen cording, I had to weave the cording through the holes in the enamels AND through the rings, making sure the linen was wrapped tight enough around the area between the enamels and the beads (so that all was secure) before I started the decorative wraps that drape over the tops of the rings.  

When I was happy with the look of the earrings, I trimmed the cord ends and made backings from red handmade paper and glued them to the backs of the enamels to hide the cord ends.  

 

And the finished product.  Pretty, whimsical, swingy, and definitely fun. 

And they’re even a tiny bit Christmas-y—which hadn’t even occurred to me until I had finished them!  ;)

Thank you for inviting me to sit in here at EE again—I always enjoy being here with you all.  J

Meridy Migchelbrink

Two Trees Studio on Etsy  -- 

Two Trees Studio on Facebook  -- 

Swinging Lightly

I'm finding that the smallest of polymer pieces that I've made are so versatile.

The double holes afford more options in designing

I often get remarks from women that find they can't wear heavy earrings anymore but enjoy the length and variety of the boho style.

Using lots of jump rings both steel and copper you can achieve length and lightness.

I found these little glass baubles with a sort of titanium light iridescent finish recently to lightly swing.

The polymer pieces are so easy to make. I used the Blue Bottle Tree Rustic Beads tutorial for the varied affect.

You can see that the bauble beads have a hole from side to side across the top.

 I was so happy that the hole was big enough to accept a jump ring.

Copper earwires by Faerystones

Happy Thanksgiving to all of you that will be celebrating today!

Thanks for looking at my NuminosityBeads Creations!

Kimberly Rogers

e t s y   www.numinositybeads.etsy.com

f a c e b o o k  www.facebook.com/numinositybeads

i n s t a g r a m    www.instagram.com/numinosity/

p i n t e r e s t  www.pinterest.com/numinosity/

and my f a c e b o o k auction and sale group 

www.facebook.com/groups/967164829979604/