Bold, Brown and Boho

Lately I've been making an effort to work through my mound of UFOs (Unfinished Objects). I have an embarrassing number of jewelry projects that I've never finished or pieces that I no longer like or which aren't in fashion anymore.  I'm determined to either finish them, rework them or cut them apart and use the beads for something else. Today I'm going to share a pair of earrings I made a long time ago, for Earrings Everyday, but which I never liked much.  In fact I never even listed them on my website, because I wasn't satisfied with them.  Here's the original version.

The dangly beads on the waxed linen always looked too bulky with the fat ceramic drops, and the waxed linen caused them to stick out awkwardly over the rounded drops. Also the drops have a beautiful glaze on them, which the beads pretty much covered up. The earrings look OK in the photo, but in real life - not so much.
Sooo...I cut them apart and tried a bunch of variations till I got what I liked. I love the colors of those little barbell shaped beads in combination with the ceramic drops, so I wanted to keep them. Here's what I came up with.

The new version was hard to photograph because the little dangles fall off to the side when the earrings are horizontal, but you can see how there are beautiful shades of caramel, chocolate and coffee in the glaze, (sounds like a restaurant menu!).  Here's how they hang when worn.

The mother of pearl hoops used to be part of a necklace that I also took apart and re-purposed. The earrings look so much more airy and uncluttered in their new form. Unlike the first version of these earrings, I have listed this remake in my shop.

Linda Landig Jewelry

Chainmaille: Variations

For today's post, I thought I'd share two very different pairs of chainmaille earrings:  one pair that looks like they might have been worn during the Renaissance--or earlier--and one pair that's much more modern.

The cool thing is that both pairs of earrings are made with the same chainmaille weave, called European 4-in-1 (below),  a simple and familiar weave.  Woven tightly of small metal rings into large flat pieces, it was

the armor worn by medieval European fighters (you may have noticed it in just about every sword and sorcery film or TV show).  (In ancient Asia, chain mail armor was made of a totally different and beautiful weave, which is a story for another day.)

Because I specifically wanted these earrings (below) to look like they could have been worn centuries ago, I needed the triangular chainmaille pieces to hang like banners, so I made the spiraled "hanger" pieces

and hung the chainmaille triangles from their widest section, the seven woven rings.  I made 4-mm mother-of-pearl dangles and attached them to the outer edges of the chainmaille, and then fashioned wire-and-bead links to connect my decorated "Renaissance Banners" to matching ear wires. 

My second pair of earrings are completely different:  small and sleek and simple, sterling silver and midnight blue. The chainmaille part of these earrings was made using the same weave as the first pair, but with one fewer row of rings, stopping at six, naturally making the earrings smaller and slimmer.   

Ingredients:  Sterling silver rings, sterling silver wire, sterling silver ear wires, and deep blue polymer clay spikes by Jon Burgess. 

Thanks so much for reading!  I'll see you in about two weeks. 💗 

Meridy (Two Trees Studio)
xo

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Happy Independence Day! I know you are probably expecting to see some red white and blue here today, but instead I am nodding to the past by using some beautiful vintage brass and carved mother of pearl buttons in my earrings.

I found these at the Bead & Button show,  at a great booth called Nifty Thrifty Dry Goods.  The buttons have a nice shank on the back and I wire wrapped them with some faceted Shell pearls.  I have never really seen buttons like these anywhere.
These earrings can be found for sale in my online webstore, Lorelei Eurto Jewelry.