Garden Friends

We've had so much rain this Spring, that it seems now, we have much more little creepy crawlies and all sorts of 'friends' popping over in the garden... One of my favorite garden friends are beautiful  dragonflies!

I wanted to make some jewelry components that featured these cuties, and so I've created a handful of handmade dragonflies earring drops, and decided to use a pair to make these fun lightweight earrings:

The great part about making my own polymer clay colors is that I can pretty much 'match' any other component that I plan on using. In this case, I had this gorgeous green hemp cord that I wanted to use in some fun summery designs. It was perfect to use with the design I wanted to create:

A pair of my handmade green/blue dragonfly earring drops, Greek ceramic beads in dark blue, tiny seed beads in blue, and small TierraCast gold-tone rustic spacer beads, on fabulous green hemp cord.

The light flurry of beads/cords at the bottom represents that flutter effect that I feel/see when they fly around in the garden, like a light trail of happiness that they spread around.

Oh happy happy Summer Days....

What are your favorite garden critters?

You can find these earrings and more of my jewelry components HERE in my Etsy shop.

Thank you for stopping by! Enjoy the weekend!
Cheers,
Nathalie Lesage

Visit my Handmade Jewelry & Components shop here: My Garden Of Love
Visit my Digi shop here: The Crafty Tribe

Ferris Wheel Earrings

I've been having fun making these ceramic Ferris Wheel components.  When I first started making them, I glazed them all in one color, like the pair on the right.  But now, I'm getting a kick out using all sorts of color combinations.  I have a lot of these in bisque form now, just waiting for me to cover them in happy colors.

So I grabbed a pair of my Ferris Wheel components to use in today's earrings.

Purple and lime green are such a fun color combination.  I paired the ceramic components with pretty faceted amethysts, some pressed glass leaves and handmade brass ear-wires.  These are just fun to wear and I think I'll be keeping them for myself!

Linda Landig Jewelry

Pinky Love Knots

A couple of weeks ago I mentioned that I get giddy just thinking of certain color combos, well this one is another one of my favorites: Pink and gold. It's sunny, happy, and makes my girlie heart sing :)

Being that my health hasn't been the best for quite some time, being able to work with polymer clay and create with happy fun colors and components is such a joy, and such a healing process. I highly recommend it. Just do it for yourself, if nothing else.

So today, I wanted to share these happy earrings with you:

Small polymer clay oval earring drops, handmade by me - these are water-colored in and I added some glitter (because life is happier with glitter, and because I can LOL), sealed with a glaze. I used some pretty Gold-tone Tierra Cast rings to create the two Love Knots.

Throw in a little natural hemp cord and Swarovskis for some lighthearted sparkling fun, and my gosh, we're ready for a fun Summer party! Wanna join me? We'll get the BBQ going :)

Have you added some fun accessories to your Summer wardrobe this year? What kind of accessories do you gravitate towards the most?

If you're looking for one of a kind handmade jewelry components and finished jewelry, hop on over to my Etsy shop HERE.

Cheers,
Nathalie

Visit my Etsy Jewelry/Components shop here: My Garden Of Love
Visit my Etsy Digi shop here: The Crafty Tribe

Building.....achieving

My latest order from Helen Chalmers included quite a few sets of these absolutely wonderful butterfly beads.  Today's post was going to have a series of earrings featuring these beads.  That was the plan and here's what actually happened.

(photo by Helen Chalmers)

Step 1: I wrapped brass squares with seeds and added 4 strands of cup chain on each square.  Let me tell you, attaching those cup chain strands was the most time consuming process ever, I almost gave up numerous times.  I finished them but you won't see me wire wrapping cup chain strands like this again for a while.  I need to get over how many hours I spent on just that one thing.

Step 2: is where I add the butterfly beads to the wrapped squares, and I did....but they just wouldn't work.  They didn't look right with the squares - I forgot to take a photo (oopsi) but they didn't look great.  It was probably the shapes - squares and lentils....
I found these beautiful lampwork caps by Beth Mellor and they were perfect.  This was the second most time consuming task in this project.  You know how you have your mind set on particular beads (butterfly pairs from the first photo in this case) and then how it becomes absolutely impossible to look beyond those beads when they don't work out! Argh, it took me forever to find something that looked just right on top of the squares

Step 3: I still wanted to add more on top of the caps.  I played around with plain brass connectors for a while and finally settled on this.

Step 5: I tested these out (ear wires changed) to make sure they feel and look ok and they did.  they are now listed in my shop <3

Those butterfly beads, well I'll figure something else out for them....maybe for a future post :)

See you again soon <3

Suhana xxx

My Etsy shop: Buttoned Up Beads

Bon Apatite!

Over the past six months or so I've been feeling creatively restless--not necessarily dissatisfaction with what I'm doing, but more the feeling that there are new things coming to add to it.   Lately I've been attracted to jewelry techniques and styles that have never really "called to me" before, and I've been learning new techniques and trying new ideas.    

Anyway, that kind of brings me to these earrings...  :)

I don't often use gemstones in my work, even though I love them, and I don't do a lot of wire-wrapping these days either, though I also enjoy doing that as well.  So these earrings use techniques I haven't made use of in a while.

My starting point was Cathleen Zaring's beautiful white-and-blue enameled copper crescents, a shape I love.  To suspend components like these, I often knot tiny beads into thread instead of wrapping beads on metal.  But a week or so ago I'd been digging around in my little trove of gemstones looking for some garnets and found a small bag of tiny, GORGEOUS blue neon apatite beads--and they looked great with the crescents.  I also had a feeling that these rustic-cut little beads would look best wire-wrapped onto metal.

So I made four copper connectors, darkened them with liver of sulfur, and then tumbled them for hours to give them a gorgeous gleaming chestnut brown color.  Before I put all the parts together, I wrapped the apatite beads to the connectors with raw 26-gauge copper, and then attached the crescents to the connectors and to copper jump rings (which had also received the liver of sulfur and tumbling treatment).  The teal blue niobium ear wires were the perfect final touch.

"Bon Apatite" can be found in my shop, Two Trees Studio.

I really enjoyed making these blue beauties and sharing them with you.  I also wonder how many of us might be feeling that pull of restlessness that I identify as the urge to grow and expand on a creative path.  My love and best wishes go out to you all as we share our paths together!

xoxo
Meridy

My Etsy shop

My Facebook page 

  

Art in the Garden

Last weekend I took part in a lovely event. New to me, it was held in the wonderful garden of Jan Lord, a friend of my friend Helen Backhouse (she of Helen's Bat Cave fame).

As well as keeping about 5 acres worth of garden looking magnificent, Jan is a potter, so pottery and ceramics featured quite strongly in the show. 35 artists of all genres, in marquees placed in the garden. Very English - lots of tea and clotted cream scones!

Here's me on Sunday - having left my cardigan at home on the Saturday when it proceeded to pour with rain after the first hour, I had learnt my shivering lesson and took a jacket. Of course, it came out warm and sunny! I'm also wearing my grandson's pumps (I possess no flat shoes, not very useful when you are on grass for 2 days).

                             You wont miss the fact that I have A LOT of earrings for sale.
Here is one of my favourite pairs from the show - a sleek and simple design with copper cones that show off the beautiful colours in Helen's leaves.

And I couldn't resist showing you Tarquin, my lovely pottery tortoise (cheap to feed and no vet's bills). Traded with my neighbour for a necklace - one of the perks of live shows. He's now out in my garden, peeping out from a hosta plant, tasked with keeping the slugs and snails at bay!

                  I'm taking away great memories of a beautiful place, along with several new plants. 

                              Do you love your garden?  Or have  a favourite plant? Tell us about it.

                                                              See you next time

                                                                    Lindsay x

                                                                My Etsy shop

                                                           My Facebook page

Caribbean Getaway

A friend of mine just returned from a wonderful getaway to a resort, just south of Cancun, in Playa del Carmen, Mexico.  We visited Playa, (as the locals call it) about 15 years ago, when it was just a sleepy fishing village, with a touch of tourist activity clustered near the beach.  My friend says there is now a mall, shopping centers and tons of resorts and restaurants.  Frankly, I'm glad I got to see the area in its more "natural" state.

Nevertheless, she and her middle school aged son had a wonderful two weeks of relaxing, exploring Tulum and swimming in a cenote.

When my friend described her trip to me today, I remembered how vividly turquoise the Caribbean waters are. The lampwork beads in my new earrings are Caribbean turquoise too.  I love the unusual "drip shape" of these beads and the touches of purple and white on the lower edges.  The beads were made by one of my favorite lampwork artists Julie Burgard of Outwest Beads.

I decided to play up the purple touches by suspending the lampwork glass from purple leather cord, which I topped with  lavender Czech glass flowers and handmade brass ear wires.

We may not be able to lounge on a white sand beach or splash in warm turquoise waters, but we can wear a little getaway dream on our ears. The Caribbean Getaway earrings are available in my shop.

Hope you are having sunny days, wherever you live.  I'll be back here in a week.  Till then -

Linda Landig Jewelry