A Little New Stuff

Hello everybody! I took a little break from jewelry (the Muse was apparently doing other things!) but I'm slowly working my way back into it. I thought I'd start with some earrings--baby steps! I thought I would use my small supply of enamel elements as inspiration:

Here is a pair with some lime-hued sand dollars from Anne Gardanne:

Raspberry Lemonade

The little glass beads right above the sand dollars are lampwork spacers in "jonquil" by Michelle at The Spacer Bead Shop on Etsy (she took a break for a few years, so glad she's back! Crazy-huge assortment of colors and sizes). The little berry-colored beads are itty bitty pearls. I used a mixture of copper and argentium silver (a low tarnish type of sterling) here--the earwires are argentium silver.

This pair is built around a couple of enameled keyhole elements in pretty powder blue and mauve, also by Anne Gardanne:

Blue Jeans and Rosy Cheeks

I used copper and silver again, leaving the rosy coloration on the headpins from the torch. (If I pickle them in salt and vinegar after torching them, it takes off the black, but not the pink--yay!). The other beads are lampwork (above the keyholes), moukaite jasper, and etched glass seed beads.

Here is my other set of sand dollars, in sky blue and rusty red, again with copper and silver, lampwork glass spacers in baby blue, and pretty Indonesian glass beads in shades of deep red.

Blue Sky Sand Dollars

The little silver beadcaps are the ones I make with my hand punch from silver sheet.

Lastly, this pair is lampwork glass and Czech "Picasso" glass flowers, with just argentium silver. I liked the different glass beads together so much I couldn't resist, and I've never used these little flower beads before!

Farewell to Summer

I guess I was feeling nostalgic for summer...It's pretty cold here in the Rockies!

OK, that's all for now, I wish you a peaceful evening!

Crazy Jackpot Giveaway and New Monthly Challenge

We're out of our minds over at Earrings Everyday--out of our minds with inspiration and giveaways!

The incomparable Erin Prais-Hintz has put together both a colossal giveaway, as well as volunteered to captain Earrings Everyday's new monthly earring design challenge. Look at these fabulous prizes you can win!

Hop on over to Earrings Everyday to enter to win, and to see this month's design inspiration! We have new members, new designs, and a new look! Come see us!

Free Poppy Cap Tutorial

Pop on over to Happy Mango Beads and check out a free tutorial (by me!) on how to make simple poppy caps for a variety of beads--no sawing or soldering!

Blueberry poppies

I've used Happy Mango's wonderful Indonesian lampwork discs, and Indonesian seed beads for these (except for the last pair--those purple seed beads are "glass tile beads" from Fire Mountain).

Green Bean Poppies

And I've used some of my new photo props below--an iron shoe horn and old sheet music:

Grape Poppies

Irish Waxed Linen cording from White Clover Kiln.

Etched Metamorphosis

I was recently thrilled to have discovered the right tweaks to get my Press n Peel sheets to work for transferring printed images to metal. I've been an etching fiend ever since! I found some fabulous digital damask collage sheets at Aesthetic Addiction on Etsy and got started creating some things with an exotic feel. The raw pieces above are based on a tube bail I had made, but miniaturized, flipped upside down, and modified for earrings. Here's the result:

Gypsy Festival

This pattern made me think of a gypsy caravan for some reason, so I had to make it colorful! I started with amber and iolite, and added some peridot. Juicy!

Another set of these had a more distinctly floral pattern, with flowers that made me think of sunflowers. I couldn't get a saffron color out of my head for them, so chose some deep golden coin pearls as the central color, and fished around in my stash for what seemed like hours trying to find the right companion color. I wired on two sets of beads in other colors, only to cut them off in dissatisfaction. I tried going a little out of my comfort zone, and I was surprised how much I liked cool iceberg blue amazonite with the coin pearls. It was really vivid, and made me think of a French country house all done up in sunny yellow and robin's egg blue:

Haystacks in Provence

It also put me in mind of many of Van Gogh's paintings, especially "Haystacks in Provence."

I was really thrilled with the color in the copper in this pair--after I etched it, I had to anneal it to make it workable, and then pickle it. That took it back to shiny pink. Before I formed the tube shape, I antiqued it in liver of sulfur to bring out the pattern, and then heated it with a hot clothes iron to bring up the cherry/orange colors. It has a really warm glow now.

This last pair sports beadcaps I've been thinking of for a long time. I had sketched them eons ago but didn't know how to fit them together--and then I discovered tube rivets! So the other day I decided to give it a try. I had some textured copper strips lying around for other uses and so I just did them up really fast. They look kind of medieval to me!

Medieval Spring

I used them with a pair of Alisha White's hollow lampwork globes in taupey-mauve, some Czech glass in olive and lime green pearls. I have some more of these hollow beads and will probably do a similar design with the rest of them--I love how lightweight they are, and yet they have such presence!

I have one more set of etched copper tabs like the ones at the top of the post (the ones at bottom left), and the pattern seems to be telling me "Purple and Red!" so keep your eyes peeled for those!