Getting Stuck and Looking Back

I know many of us get in a so called, "unproductive-stuck zone",  when it comes to thinking up something different to make. I dispise these times, but they are inevitable, at least for me.  It was just last week I was reading the comments of a fellow beader that said they just wanted to give up, going no where, sales were down and feeling so discouraged.  Well, welcome to the club.  These emotions are not uncommon and I've found they don't last.  Those of us who love this release of energy love it too much to quit.  I suppose the challenge is there for me too, it's all part of the process.

One thing I do when this happens is to scroll back through my sold items.  I can see new ways to re-make an older design utilizing the inventory I currently have or a whole new idea all together.  This past week I created versions of an older design and remembered just how gorgeous they are.

The only thing that remained the same from this original design is the stones and the old metal wraps above them. Everything else was new based off of some previous work I just finished.

Similar design using green Kyanite with Prehnite above, silver saucers and chain fringe on each side.

One must have some earthy goodness with Mystic Quartz in a lovely root beer color mixed with copper, gold and silver though out.

So there you have it, we've all been there and it's OKAY.  You'll find your mojo eventually and perhaps going through some old designs will help you get there, ♥

Thanks for visiting this week and always, appreciate your feedback and comments, ☺

Much Love- Lynn Ferro aka Yucca Bloom

Winter Blues. Cindy's Art & Soul.

Stacked Earrings

Me and four of my beading friends have had a thing going on for a while. We call it The Stacked Earrings Challenge. The idea has been that we take turns in sending the others in the group the same small selection of beads, possibly suiting to make earrings in a stacked style from. So that we all have the same beads as a start point to work from. We make as many earrings as we want. At least three of the beads in each pair should come from the lot we were sent. Then we all blog about the earrings we made on the same day and compare what everyone came up with, and get very inspired of course :-).

It was I who introduced the idea about 1,5 years or so ago, at a time I just felt in need of some interacting inspiration from beading buddies around the world. I am so happy that they wanted to join in. And then we just continued taking turns. Yesterday was the fifth and last reveal for us. I am a little sad that it's over, but mostly so happy and grateful it's been such a great thing to do.

Anyway, so now I thought I'd share with you a couple of the earrings from my own last reveal from yesterday.

The three beads in the center come from this time's challenge lot put together by Heidi Post. The rest from my own stash. The two circles are made by MissFickleMedia.

All the beads including the bent copper tubes come from Heidi's lot. I added the handmade earring hooks and the head pins from Sacha Crow.


If you are interested to see more of the reveals from the Stacked Earrings Challenge I highly recommend it. A good starting point would be my own blog post:
http://beadingbymalindekoning.blogspot.se/2016/11/stacked-earrings-challenge-reveal.html
And from there you can find the links to the other ladies in the group. Our own Claire Lockwood is one of them.

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All my best,
Malin
www.beadingbymalindekoning.blogspot.se
www.etsy.com/shop/MalindeKoning

We're All Ears :: November Inspiration

I love to see how things are made. Maybe it is because I live with a manufacturing engineer, but I think it goes back a lot further than knowing my husband! When I was a kid, I would be fascinated by the inner workings of things. I might take things apart...but I was not all that good about putting them back together. But that was okay, because I liked the pieces that came out of those things just as much.

I am also fascinated by those inventions that people created to make a process run smoother. It always makes me wonder how someone came up with the idea and all the things that went into making that machine to do the job quicker and easier.

So it was with great delight that I discovered a set of videos of hand-crank candy machines from the 1800s that are being put to good use today by a candy-making company out of Tallahassee, Florida called Public Displays of Confection. They have rescued these rusty relics, refurbished them and even resurrected some of the vintage confection recipes.

Can you say "yum?"

This is one of several videos on their YouTube channel that shows how they use the old equipment to make these candies. This video shows the making of a Victorian Nector Drop and answers the question, why are Lemon Drops called Drops? It is not what you think!

I love the color of this candy, the golden honey yellow is so soothing. I love the process of taking the molten liquid sugar and molding it into long ropes to feed into the machine. I love the fact that this is essentially a vintage rolling mill, with all the gears and cranks and brass shapes and the lovely patina of time. This crank machine has a very steampunk vibe. I even love the clever backsplash they have above their candy cooling table!

What inspires you about this video?

The good news is that if you aren't in the Tallahassee area, you can still order their candy through their website www.pd.net.

Make some earrings inspired by this video and come back on November 18th to reveal what you made inspired by these sweet confections!

Sanctuary Earrings

I don't know about you, but I am so sick of this election season. I can hardly wait for it to be over - although I do have anxieties about what will happen post-election too.  Anyway, while the news was on TV tonight, I just felt a need to escape into the sanctuary of my studio, where I made these earrings.  Creativity nurtures my soul, especially at times when the world feels like it is sucking me dry.

I got the delightful ceramic drops from Diana Ptaszynski in August 2015, when I visited her, and her husband Colin, prior to the summer Bead Fest in Philadelphia.  

Using dark green Irish waxed linen, I knotted the ceramic drops to multi-colored speckled lampwork glass beads by Sue Kennedy of Sue Beads.

I really like glaze that Diana used for these rustic drops and how they contrast and accent the smooth surface of Sue's lampwork glass beads.

Do you have a sanctuary place in your home or elsewhere?  It's important to have a place for self-care and renewal.

Linda Landig Jewelry

The Most Humble of Finds

Never trust a person who doesn't appreciate a good walk, hike, or meander through the woods.

My day job involves working from home, which is a huge blessing, but it can also mean that I work up a hell of a case of cabin fever every now and then. Not being a hugely social person, at these moments I tend to flee the house in search of parks instead of humans. And what does a girl like me do when she's taking these hikes? Well, she collects bits, of course. Sometimes it's just one or two things, sometimes it's a couple handfuls wrapped in the front of my shirt and weighing it down like a sagging potbelly. I'll come home with any number of natural wonders: hawk feathers, flaming red maple leaves, shards of bone, a squirrel-gnawed walnut, a rusted-out nail, or--if I'm really lucky--a trilobite fossil. 

Here in southwest Ohio we are rife with fossils from the Ordovician period---that's 450-500 millions years old! Whole cliffsides are just stratified with them. Erosion and time ensure that our creeks are always teeming with brachiopods, bryozoans, crinoids, gastropods, and horn coral. Talk about treasures!

Several weeks ago I was taking a hike at French Park, one of my favorite local parks. Being autumn, the leaves were turning and falling and the tree nuts were doing the same. I came across a grove of massive oak trees and the forest floor was littered with--you guessed it--acorns. I'm sure no one will argue that an acorn cap is quite possibly Mother Nature's perfect bead cap. Now, I've always seen jewelry makers dabble with cast metal or ceramic or polymer clay acorn caps. But what about using actual acorn caps in designs? I picked up a handful, inspected, checked for hardness and durability, and then decided to take some home to play around with. 

Back in the studio, I drilled a hole in each top and gave them a healthy coat of wax to help preserve and waterproof. It seems so elementary and so obvious, but it feels so...right. Here's the first pair I came up with, featuring a pair of deliciously grungy sawdust fired ceramic beads made by our own Claire Lockwood of somethingtodobeads. I strung everything on a couple of my fat pitted copper headpins and topped them off with wee black filigree bead caps and a dot of blackened silver solder. 


Just goes to show, art can be found in and created with just about anything, even the most humble of finds. 

Happy Wednesday!
Nikki
LoveRoot on Etsy

how do things end. . .

. . . up the way they do?

Hello! Happy November, and thank you so much for taking time out of your day to give us a look.

I don't know how others design jewelry. I've never sat with anyone else while they were designing, nor had discussions about it. But for me, very often, I don't know what I am going to end up with. Sometimes it's great; other times not so much. But either way, it's a joyful adventure and a learning experience for me. And yes, I'll admit, sometimes a little bit, or more, of frustration. 

I hear people talk about sketching their designs, and that sounds so wonderful. They can visualize the beginning and the end. I do have some visual but it often ends up different. If I'm making wire or sheet metal pieces, those I do lay out on paper. Anything else generally starts with a lot of handcrafted components out on the table, and I take the ones that yell the loudest. "Me, me, pick me! "Nah, not me, I don't feel like working today." :)

From there, I ponder a bit where I want to go; I go through colors, textures, beads in my mind until something clicks, and then I might pull out many possible complementary things, glass, bone, metal, chain, linen, etc. I often do basic try this, try that. A lot of trying. And if after whatever amount of time I find reasonable, if nothing is working for me, I go back and start again with the other things I had out that are in their containers on my table, out of the way but close enough to pull them right back. Or something else entirely might pop into my head. That is basically how it goes. Not at all scientific. There are many times that I want to work with a specific something. Sometimes I can; sometimes I cannot. I think the bottom line is that it ends up being all about how I feel. My head doesn't get too involved. There are even the rare occasions when I'm not sure how it all got put together and all of a sudden it's done! Love when that happens. :) I would very much like to know if others work in this relatively haphazard fashion, or how do you generally work? 

Over the weekend I selected these sweet, little, pale blue handcrafted ceramic drops by Lorna of Balela Ceramics. She has a distinctive soft and muted style in much of her work, yet will also throw out the most gorgeous bright and shiny blue beads here and there.

You can find these earrings here

These drops were sweet and a bit whimsical. I wanted to "rustic them up" a bit so I selected stone-like ceramic beads, also by Balela Ceramics, and a simple handmade copper bead. That was all I had at that point. So I cut a long piece of copper wire and wrapped it around once, finished up the top, and then went back down to the other end of the wire and decided to wrap a whole bunch of it in a deliberately wide and messy fashion. I would have stopped there except that there was an ugly vacant space left below the wire, which showed only the bare loop at the top of the dangle and it all looked not so nice. But I didn't want to wire all the way down; I wanted the dangle to be able to move. So I added back in a bit of whimsy and created a series of "swags" with tiny 2 and 3mm beads along the bottom, sides and back of the wire. No more empty space, and I liked the result. 

You can find these earrings here

And that is how they ended up the way they did!

Thanks so much for visiting us. I hope you enjoyed my musings today, and I'll be back in two weeks' time. :)

Norbel Marolla
She Flies Again