We're All Ears: July 2016

For this month's inspiration for the We're All Ears challenge on the Earrings Everyday blog, Erin Prais-Hintz has chosen hot air balloons!  So much gorgeous color and fun patterns in balloons... I can't imagine what it would be like to see a big rally or other event with tons of balloons in the sky at once.  So cool!  Here is my favorite picture from the ones that Erin shared.  See more over on Earrings Everyday HERE.

[Photo credit :: ellehem :: Unsplash]

I was a little stumped at first about what I wanted to do but then I realized that I had some orange ceramic beads from Golem Design Studio that had a corrugated design that made me think of the balloon material.  I also had some new dark red teardrop beads that I picked up at Bead & Button that I thought would be fun to dangle below the ceramic rounds like the balloon's basket.  I originally thought I could just thread one onto a jump ring and have that hanging from the ceramic bead unit but I didn't have any that fit nicely through their holes without being too flimsy.  On to plan B!  I strung the teardrop onto some wire first then ran that wire up through the ceramic pieces and formed a wrapped loop at the top.  Voila!  Behold my hot air balloon earrings!

Not earrings, but I'm sharing anyway... a few years ago I bought some fun hot air balloon shaped pendants from lampwork artist Wendy Mosman.  (She doesn't seem to still be making beads from what I could find online.)  I was captivated by their fun colors and details and just had to have them.  Soon after I tried making a necklace with one of them, but when it didn't come together the way I'd hoped, I ended up scrapping and putting the pendants away for another day.  Today is that day at least for one of them!  I strung a long necklace with a variety of recycled and Czech glass beads interspersed with seed beads.  I'm pretty happy with the end result so perhaps I'll tackle the other two pendants soon.

Another brief aside: a number of years ago I had the chance to go for a hot air balloon ride when I was at a conference in New Mexico.  I'm so glad that I took advantage of this amazing opportunity.  It was a pretty thrilling experience to see the world floating from above!  The only part that was a little scary was the landing... it was a bit bumpy.

A picture I took from about 1000 feet above the ground of the other balloon carrying our group.

I hope you'll check out what everyone else was inspired to make over on the Earrings Everyday blog HERE.  I'm headed up, up, and away in my beautiful balloon....