We're All Ears: September 2014

I'm super excited by the inspiration photos that Erin Prais-Hintz chose (and took!) for this month's We're All Ears challenge on the Earrings Everyday blog.  She did a nice collage of some moss and lichen up close and personal and I love it!  I have always been fascinated by the super up close photos of the natural world that a macro lens makes possible and my husband has been making good use of the new lens that he just got, so this challenge feels right in my wheel house.

And not to get too far off topic, but speaking of my husband's recent macro photography craze, pop over to his blog to see a great butterfly shot HERE.

I really wanted to do something to capture some of the great textures from Erin's photos and the subtle greens.  I especially like the little dot like formations in the top right and the cool almost coral-like lichen in the middle right pictures.

I decided to break out my texturing hammer with all the interchangeable heads and play around with some copper blanks.  I added a little green paint into the depressions to give it a mossy look and then finished the design with some little green gemstone dangles.  I'm not entirely sure what the stones are since they've been in my bead stash for years, but I liked the mottled green and brown colors and thought they went well with the inspiration.

I'm pretty pleased with the effect I achieved with texture and a tiny bit of paint.  I'm definitely going to play around with variations on this technique in the near future!

Check out what everyone else created this month over on the Earrings Everyday blog HERE.