We're All Ears May Reveal

Zigzag Nerite Shells

I got a little silly with this month's inspiration.

I made FIVE pair of earrings based on this theme! I'm not sure what got into me...I rarely use black or true red, but the nerite shell motif really inspired me, especially the stripy black patterns.

Turns out I had lots of beads to work with, and you don't mess with The Muse so I let her go.

This pair sports a duo of incised, glazed stoneware stick elements by Petra Carpreau of Scorched Earth, in a lovely caramel color with black stripes (they make me think of pretzel sticks and I want badly to nibble on them.) I think this might be the first time I've used her work--I've been hoarding an entire container of it! I introduced the red element with red jasper, and added ivory bone rounds to the earwires. I added my textured beadcaps in sterling to the jasper.

This pair incorporates some etched red agate tubes and my poppy caps in sterling silver. I added batik and plain ivory bone beads to the bottom to introduce the ivory color and add more of the black patterning, and then popped some butterscotch amber roundels onto the earwires (I got this wonderful opaque amber locally at Powderhorn Trading and I am in LOVE with it.)

For this pair I started with some black and white patterned beads from my stash--these are actually from a jewelry making party hosted by my friend Ada years and years ago. I'm not sure what they're made of, they feel like maybe wood. She has traveled the world so they could be from anywhere! I added red jasper sticks and my textured beadcaps, both traditional round ones and some small folded poppy ones, and more of that delish amber to the earwires.

This pair relies on more beads from Ada's jewelry party--a pair of striped cones! Again I've combined them with red jasper (I just LOVE this stone), ivory bone, and more amber. The cones make me think of a sporty fez. I think this pair is actually my favorite, this is the first time I've ever tried vertically wrapping a bead like this--I was inspired by Brenda McGowan--her shop is on vacation right now, but you can check out her sold items. Lisa at Angry Hair Jewelry also has some items with this vertical wrapping--LOVE her style too. I would buy her clean out if I had a spare $5,000 and my ear piercings hadn't healed up for lack of adornment.

Lastly, I dipped again into my Petra Carpreau stash for these lipstick red "bobblers." Boy, it felt like I spent hours trying to find the right beads to go with these. I finally settled on these black manol buri beads and of course ivory bone and more amber. I added a little vertical wire wrap again to keep the little seeds in line, they're kind of naughty.

This was fun! Head over to the Earrings Everyday blog to see what Erin cooked up with this month's inspiration, and to get links to other bloggers' reveal posts!

These will all be listed in my Etsy shop over the next few days.

I Guess More People Should Tell Me What To Do

Gosh, I wish I had thought up this design all by myself. I'm really pleased with it. I didn't think up the palette, the customer did, but I DID suggest the donut, and I did figure out myself how to stick it all together. Although I admit the customer sent me a photo of something she liked for inspiration and I sort of riffed off it a little--with the double strand and adding smaller beads in between the larger beads to give it an airier feel. But other than that it was all me. She sent me some gorgeous onyx beads to use, and the little white howlite beads, and a strand of charmingly rustic silver heishi made in India. I hunter-gathered the rest.



Might have to get another donut like that and do it again! Loving snowflake jasper too. I tried it on to make sure the two strands were the right length and I wanted to keep it. I guess that's a good sign. I have developed a fondness for round beads, used to hate em. I was into squares for a while, now not so much. I bought some triangles, hoping to learn to love them (got suckered by the colors), but what to do with triangles...I hate mixing pointy geometric shapes with non-pointy geometric shapes. Squares and circles--aiyeeeeeee! can't do it!!! I could maybe do triangles and squares, since a triangle is just half a square. Triangles and circles are too much like Jack in the Box. Bad memories.

Well, now I'm exhausted from giving birth to this necklace. Maybe I'll go to the gym.

A Trickle of Creativity

Well, I am slowly trickling out new pieces. They are from the 24-item list I made a couple weeks ago in my efforts to increase my focus. As I write this, at this very moment I am realizing that "24-item list" and "focus" may be conceptually incompatible. Perhaps that is why I have only completed three items on the list in two weeks. Of course part of the reason for that is because of my 25-year high school reunion that took place over the weekend--I would have made at least one more thing over the weekend if I hadn't been out goofing off with people I haven't seen in 20+ years. Then it would have been a ratio of 4 items completed:24 items contemplated. (Still not real good). I did do prep work--oxidized a bunch of brass wire with ammonia fumes to a lovely brown color, and antiqued a bunch of sterling wire to a nice gunmetal color. I am all about the ammonia fumes method for brass--it happens slow so it's easy to control the degree of oxidation, you can get anything from a nicely mellowed brass to a sable to a deep brown to black (depending on how long you forget to take the items out of the container), and the finish doesn't come off!! You can brighten it up again some with steel wool, but unlike using some of the Midas solutions, the finish doesn't just wash off in water. It's really durable. If you want a slightly greener oxidation on your brass, Liver of Sulphur works better.

Here is the first item on my list, that I started at the lake at our camp spot, and then finished in the car last week. I'm calling it Sea Bubbles.



The large smooth slightly irregular sea green stones are aqua agate--just love the stuff. (Golden agate is lovely too, a mellow golden yellow like the inside of a peach). The teardrops and rounds are new jade, and the three mint green discs on either side are matte, opalescent glass discs from Happy Mango. The chain is handforged and all the sterling wire is lightly antiqued with Liver of Sulphur. Oh, and there are soft green freshwater pearls. I'm just surrounded by water all summer, being down at the lake, and as it's glacier-fed, it tends to be green--I keep making these aqua green things and I have more in the pipeline. (Just got some tiny, deep green aventurine rectangles that I'm dying to use).

I completed this piece two weeks ago at the lake--I'd been carting this cherry quartz around for months, trying to decide what to do with it. The watermelon association is obvious, and I had to maintain iron discipline not to fold up and do something literal and cheesy with blackstone roundels or little black coins. So I used garnets instead. I took the photo under our awning at the camp spot in my lap with the item in the lid of a copy paper box. No tripod. Like I said, steady as a friggin' rock. And that was even after a night of heavy drinking. Should have been a neurosurgeon.



I did this the other night--I cheated and just riffed off one of the necklaces I already did. I have had a devil of a time photographing this, and the necklace and earrings that are made from the same stuff. The silver coin pearls and sterling silver are pretty remarkable in person, but they just don't look very impressive in photographs (so unimpressive in fact that it only got one measly view on Etsy overnight). Pearls are weirdly hard to photograph. They almost look blurry to me sometimes (like after said night of heavy drinking). Going to try photographing this item again later but for the moment this is all I got.

Well I've never been to Spain but I kinda like the music

I bought this stone donut a couple weeks ago with a vague idea what I would do with it. I nearly drooled in the store over the creepy black veining in it--makes me think of the black moss that hangs from the conifers up here. It is so not my usual style, but I was determined to try something different (I think the market for casual jewelry is probably a little bigger than the market for royal interview/Academy Awards/ballroom jewelry.) I was nervous about making the bail though (I mean, my God, 16 gauge wire is, like TWENTY THREE CENTS an inch--that's like, a quarter. Seven more and I could do one small load of laundry.) I wanted to make something kind of almost noir, maybe sort of Old World, maybe it would turn out kind of Mad Maxx. Or Anne Rice. Or sort of industrial. My only goal was that it not be frou frou. I collect shiny things and hide them and then make jewelry out of them that tries gamely to be casual but doesn't quite make it. Too much flash. Things start out as Just a Simple Pendant and end up as a Coronation Neckpiece.

Well, this one didn't quite make it to Mad Maxx. Little too dressy probably for Aunty Entity. Stopped just shy of casual. It's more like, maybe, something the wife of the Mayor of Barcelona would wear. But I think it's a step in a good direction that it looks more like Spain than Beverly Hills. I think that's partly because of the focal piece--it doesn't glitter or anything. Just trying to diversify. My current inspiration is an artist named Lorelei Eurto. Here is one of my favorites of hers:



(CLEARLY I HAVE A REALLY LONG WAY TO GO). This kind of design doesn't come naturally to me (being, apparently, a disturbing human-magpie hybrid, all the supplies I have are really shiny), and I'm trying to be disciplined to use what I have before buying more. But I did buy four bottles of highly caustic substances for oxidizing metal in an effort to increase my inventory of "casual" (non-shiny) jewelry--if you never hear from me again you'll know that I used it in a poorly ventilated area.