Boho Ruffled Hoops

I was honored to have several projects chosen to be included in Interweave's 2015 Easy Metal.  I created these hoops based on traditional foldforming techniques.  They are lightweight, colorful, unique and versatile.  I  need to make myself some in other metals as well!

Copper hoops with sterling earwires and Czech glass embellishments

The beauty shot by Interweave

These aren't up in my shop yet, but they will be soon as a custom order, available in 3 different metals.  If you are interested in making your own, be sure to check out Easy Metal...there are a lot of wonderful designs by fabulously talented artists!

These would look great with my uniform of jeans, t-shirt and boots, but are really so versatile, they would go with anything!

Thanks for stopping by!

Melissa Meman

Melismatic Art Jewelry

Tropical Hibiscus

"Tropical Hibiscus" earrings featuring artisan lampwork beads by Sue Kennedy

These colorful earrings feature flower beads and headpins by the wonderfully talented Sue Kennedy of SueBeads.

I added little copper caps to the flower beads and embellished the earwires with some teal seeds.

They totally make me want to go to a sunny beach on an exotic tropical island.  I can imagine wearing a bright sarong with a big hibiscus flower in my hair and of course, a big fruity drink!

Gorgeous Rainbow Sherbet Hibiscus  via Pinterest

Melissa Meman

Purple Haze

My hammered copper & torch-fire enameled morsels, embellished with Jen Cameron's fabulous lampwork headpins which have been wrapped into a bail, finished with  my hand-wrought sterling and copper earwires.

"'Scuse me, while I kiss the sky"...(thanks, Jimi!<3)

"is it tomorrow, or just the end of time?"

Have a "purple haze" kind of day!

Disclaimer...after writing this post and looking at the photos, I realized that these aren't truly purple, but more raspberry-ish?  But, I have been singing "purple haze" now for at least a day, and can't really get it out of my head, but if you like, you can substitute "Raspberry Beret" by Prince :)

Melissa

Pinwheels

Hi everyone! It's been a while since I've had the privilege of posting on EE, but am happy to say I will be showing up with a post here and there!

These fun earrings were created from lampwork headpins by the talented and lovely Jen Cameron of Glass Addictions.  I layered them onto brass flowers that I torch-fire enameled with bright colors and then wired them onto textured copper ovals.

Even though they are securely attached, they have just enough slack so that the flowers twirl around...sort of like a pinwheel or a whirligig!  Remember these cute little toys?  As a kid, I used to get plastic ones that had little candies in the stem.   I would stick them out the window of the car to let them twirl in the wind as we drove home from the store...much to my mother's disapproval!

From livingtheswelllife.com via Pinterest!

They are so fun....I will be putting them in my shop later today, and will be creating more, since I had the opportunity to snag more of of Jen's gorgeous headpins at BeadFest last weekend!

A sweet bouquet of lampwork headpins by Jen Cameron and Sue Kennedy!

Melissa Meman
Melismatic Art Jewelry
Art. Life. Love.

Autumn Harvest

Fall is in the air!

We just got a post-card from the local farm where we normally take our yearly autumn hayride into the pumpkin field to choose a few for Halloween and to have on the porch for the rest of the season into Thanksgiving.  I love those little jaunts with my 2 boys.  The little store where you pay for your pumpkins always has a pile of cute little gourds and multi-colored corn with dry shocks; beautiful chrysanthemums in magnificent shades of magenta, yellow, and rust; and yummy apple cider!

Photo from terragreenhouses.com/ via Pinterest

I got these sweet little ceramic hearts/leaves from Diana P of Suburban Girl Studios, when I made a short trek to BeadFest in August.  I thought they actually looked pretty "Spring-y" and was going to save them for then, but when trying to find inspiration for a post today, they were on my table along with some enameled brass elements I had been experimenting with.  The colors sort of popped out at me and said "Apple Cider"!

They needed another color though, so after looking through my Czech glass stash, found these cute little flowers in rust.  They wouldn't face forward though, so I strung them on sterling wire and did a sort of herringbone wrap with copper to hold them tight!  I finished the pair with hand-wrought sterling earwires embellished with copper.

Perfect for the season, or anytime!  They are long, about 3 inches, and would look so great with lots of outfits, but neutrals, denim, leather all sort of jump to mind!

Melissa Meman
Melismatic Art Jewelry
Art. Life. Love.

Red Garden Party

I covered copper washers with molten metal and embossed them, then soldered filigree flowers.  Tiny carnelians are set in bezel cups for the finishing touch.

 I would love to wear them to a garden party with this fabulous dress! Granted, the shoes would probably only last about 10 minutes!

garden party by melismatic featuring nine west

Melissa Meman

Melismatic Art Jewelry

Art. Life. Love.

Serendipitous..

I love that word!  It describes how I feel about the creation/evolution of these earrings!

I had etched a big copper disk a couple of weeks ago when I was writing this post over at Art Jewelry Elements.  This past weekend, it was on my beading table at exactly the right moment when I needed something pretty to fasten a length of leather cord to a chain necklace for my Bead Soup piece.  I cut the center strip out of the disk and rolled it up into a tube!

Fast forward to last night, as I suddenly remembered that today was indeed my day to post here.  I saw the curled up scraps from cutting the center strip out of the disk and was like,"hmm, these are to pretty to ditch...I wonder if I can use them for earrings?"

So I did!  At first that were going to hang horizontally, with chain connecting them to the earwires, but after turning them around a bit, I liked the mirror image vertical look much better.  To bring the bling, I added some faceted chalcedony briolettes in a finish called "Mystic Mango" by the seller!

Add a fun, flowy spring blouse and your favorite jeans, and you are ready to go!

These will be up in my shops later today!

Melissa Meman
Melismatic Art Jewelry
Art. Life. Love.

Dots and Flowers

Wow, Easter is just around the corner!  I have pastel, springy, Easter Egg-y colors on the brain lately.

With that in mind, I created these pretty earrings with copper flower components I embossed in my Big Shot, then enameled in Springy Robin's Egg blue. The sweet dots in Jelveh Jaferian's lampwork beads matches exactly! Not to mention the gorgeous shades of purple that surround them!

I used sterling silver to keep them soft to the eye, adding hand cut caps, little molten drops, and of course, hand wrought earwires.

And, since we all know how crazy the weather is in March, it always pays to have rain gear ready!  I chose some sweet, colorful, fun items to wear when the Spring rain comes!

Easter Rain by melismatic featuring uniqlo coats

These and more can be found in my shops...Hope your Spring is just around the corner!

Melissa Meman
Melismatic Art Jewelry

Art. Life. Love.

Sand and Surf

When I remembered today was my day to post here at EE, I thought I was going to create some festive holiday-themed earrings using these new embossed morsels I made (more on my blog later), embellishing them with the traditional red, green and gold. 

After sorting through my artisan glass box, however,  I spied these beauties by KreationsbyKaren that were sitting there, waiting to be loved, and all of a sudden, those baroque-looking swirls embossed in my components were huge waves, curling and crashing onto a sandy beach, spewing seafoam and leaving lots of little colorful shells and ocean "stuff" in their wake.

I used silver and copper with these and left the copper bright and shiny! Sorry for my ugly claw in the photo..sometimes holding them is the only way to get them to hang straight!

via Pinterest.com

Find these and more of my eclectic handcrafted jewelry at my shops...Melismatic Art Jewelry and Etsy.  Psst...Everything in my etsy shop is 20% off for entire month of December...coupon code HOLIDAY :)

Pale Tropics

I have been holding on to these pretty floral porcelain charms created by LeAnn Weih of Summers Studio for a while!  I love the pale green glaze with just a hint of blue in the depths.  They are so sweet ...to me they didn't really need anything else...I could just put them on earwires and call it a day.  I didn't do that, though...I added some pale green fluorite beads that are carved into flower shapes, the wrapped sterling wire around them in a "herringbone" weave for a little extra somethin' somethin'.

I can envision wearing them at the beach or boardwalk with an outfit similar to this I put together on Polyvore.

Summer Knockabout by melismatic featuring short sleeve t shirts

These earrings and more of my eclectic jewelry can be found at Melismatic Art Jewelry!

Confetti!

I accompanied my son to a birthday party a few weeks ago. His friend, a boy turning 11, chose a green camouflage theme with little plastic soldiers all over the table..very age and gender stereotypical and appropriate, but not very bright and cheery. The party venue was hosting other events and while the boys were playing laser tag, I peeked into a few of the other rooms and one, in particular, caught my eye. Bright orange, red and yellow streamers hung from the ceiling, a bright red table cloth sprinkled with multi-colored confetti adorned the table. Now we're talking! Later as I was having some playtime with enamels and frits, I thought of that brightly colored, confetti covered room and came up with these. I covered dapped copper disks with orient red enamel, then added some brightly colored frit. Embellished with just a couple of Swarovski crystals and hung from my hand-wrought sterling earwires, these simple "confetti" earrings will bring the party to your earlobes!

You can find these and more of my unique designs at my Etsy shop.  To read more about me and my designs, go visit my blog!

Green, hopefully....please?

I have been so inspired by thoughts of Spring this last week!

These "hopeful" green earrings are a combination of some borosilicate glass beads created by a fellow Frederick, MD glass artist, Julie Delaney, and I chose them a while ago for their lovely, muted shades of green...my all-time favorite color!  I created the sterling and faceted green agate components after a wonderful workshop with Richard Salley, where I learned to solder bezel cups and set tiny cabochons.  In my quest for the perfect, Spring-like, green creation, I paired the 2 and came up with these!

We haven't really had a bad winter here in Maryland, but for some reason, I am totally ready for new shoots of green to spring from the ground.  They actually have here and there on warmer days...I know they will die back when the big snow/cold finally hits here, but they are always a hopeful sign!

Daylily shoots from my garden...

Green Hostas (one of my favs) via Pinterest.com

Think Green!

These and other eclectic creations can be found in my Etsy shop.  Stop by and say hi at my blog!

Azure

I totally fell in love with these drop-dead gorgeous borosilicate glass beads by the talented Lori Robbins as soon as I saw them!  The blue and green combo reminds me of the lush tropical greens and cool azure blue ocean from a long-ago trip to Hawaii…anyone else need a vacation?  This may be as close as I get!

Waipao Valley on the Big Island of Hawaii - via Pinterest.com

These quick and easy earrings show that sometimes all you need to create beautiful unique jewelry is to just combine beautiful components…not alot of extras.  I simply embellished the glass beads with a lovely Thai Hill Tribe silver flower charm, and a Balinese silver bead or two, then dangled them from my hand-wrought sterling earwires.

I have a market day coming up this Saturday and will definitely be creating a few more simple pairs like this!

You can find these earrings and much more at my Etsy Shop, Melismatic Art Jewelry.  For more info about me and/or my designs, check out my blog at Art, Life, Love.