Honey Do List December 2019

This is the fourth year that my husband Eric has been giving me a design challenge each month to get me out of my comfort zone and to help clear out my bead stash... it's the Honey Do List 2019!  I know that I'm not the only one who loves a good design challenge, so I'm hoping folks will continue to play along with us!

Here's this month's inspiration and what Eric had to say about it:

I decided to get a little arty with this month's shot.  I like the deep colors in it as well as the statue and architecture.  I took this in our hotel in Milwaukee this past summer for Bead and Button.  Good luck with this one...I'm looking forward to seeing some fun interpretations!

I'm going to be real honest here... this one had me kind of stumped for a while.  I'm hoping some of you guys had quicker flashes of inspiration!  Luckily, some of my leftovers from the faux tin portion of Heather Powers' Inspired by Nature Retreat from this November were still floating near the surface of my beady mess and I realized that some of the William Morris patterns reminded me of the rug that is reflected in the crystal ball in Eric's photo.

Whenever I go to a jewelry making class or retreat, I always end up coming home with extra bits and bobs and unfinished projects.  I had several pieces of faux tin that I hadn't yet cut into or filed that were going to be great for some earrings.  First up, some little faux tin rectangles to which I added brass filigree teardrops.  The ear wires on these are niobium in a nice bronze finish that plays nicely with brass.

Next up, I punched some circles out of our practice sheet of faux tin that is actually an aluminum product.  Because of that, these are super lightweight!  This first pair combines my faux tin discs with some hammered brass rings from Vintaj for some fun and flirty dangles.

For the second pair I used some fun charms from Anna Bronze that I had sort of forgotten I had.  (Amazing things happen when you start trying to clean up!)  The ear wires on these are the bright Vintaj Vogue brass.   

Another thing that I brought back from the fall retreat was a not quite finished faux tin pendant in the same William Morris pattern.  I had cut and filed the piece but hadn't yet attached it to the hammered wire frame that I had made using the Now That's a Jig!  There's no time like the present, so I finished the pendant up and started to plot my necklace design.

I had several different shapes of Czech glass in ivory with a Mercury glass finish to choose from that have a nice creamy, pale yellow color perfect for the faux tin.  I chose some English cut grey/brown beads to round out the design.  There's a subtle mix of copper and brass in this one that I really love.

Now it's your turn!  Please add links to/photos of your own creations below.  I love seeing what everyone else is making too!  Check back on January 3rd (slight delay since we're taking a mini trip for New Year's Eve) to see what Eric has in store for us next month!  Wishing you all a happy and healthy New Year!!

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

Art Elements Theme of the Month December 2019: Handmade Christmas

First off, let me just say that I hope that each and every one of you has had a delightful holiday season... whatever holidays you choose to celebrate.  Our Christmas holiday was spent making and eating tons of yummy food including my very first (and thankfully, quite successful) attempt at making gougeres (also known by me as cheesy poufs!), spending some quality time with good friends that we don't see nearly enough, and finally getting to the new Star Wars movie!

I love the idea of sharing all the handmade goodies that we create this time of the year.  Seeing what other creatives have been up to and how they respond to each theme of the month is always fun, but I especially love seeing the special holiday treats that everyone dreams up.

For me, this handmade holiday challenge reveal isn't too very different from what I did last year, but I thought I'd share what I've been up to anyway since I do have some new designs!  Once again, I went a little bit overboard with the saltwater etching.  I had a friend who has a guillotine cut down a bunch of copper sheet for me into manageable rectangles.  I stamp my images on the copper pieces using rubber stamps and StazOn ink and then etch them using batteries and a hyper-saturated kosher salt solution.  Fun mad science times!!

After the pieces are done etching, I antique them with liver of sulphur, cut my desired shape out, sand and file the edges.  When that's all done, I punch any holes I want and add beads and/or charms and a ribbon to hang them.

Some of the ones I made this year are designs that I used last year and some are totally new for 2019.  Here's what I've managed to make:

Three brand new designs!  

Happy Christmas was new this year... I love the leaf charm and red "berry" beads on this one!

The middle one was new this year and the first one I sold.

I added all of the ornaments that didn't sell in my holiday shows into my Etsy Shop (you can see what I still have for sale HERE).  From that I ended up with a special order for a very specific saying... "Deck Them Halls Y'all!)  Since I didn't have a rubber stamp for that, I had to get creative!  Luckily, Heather Powers had shown us an image transfer technique at her Inspired by Nature Retreat in 2018 so I went to work trying to figure out how to use that for the desired results.  I played around with the words and some holiday graphics in PicMonkey and then got them printed onto transparency film.  From there I was able to transfer the image onto my prepared copper and proceed with the etching and ornament making process.

Special order ornaments.  I'll be making more of this design for next year!

Last but not least I'll share an ornament that's doing double duty for this reveal as well at the last Art Bead Scene Art Journey challenge of the year.  I had pulled a large porcelain snowflake pendant by Nancy Adams of Round Rabbit thinking that I might make a necklace with it for the ABS challenge.  The more I looked at it, the more I thought that it was just too big for me for a necklace.  I switched gears and whipped up a little Christmas ornament that currently is gracing our tree.

That's all that I have for this month, but this is a blog hop.  I hope you'll check out what everyone else created for a Handmade Christmas!

AE team: 

Lindsay

Jenny

Sue

Karen

Claire

Niky

Cathy

Guests: 

Sarajo

Kathy

Mary

Hope

Tammy

Evie and Beth

Divya

Merja

Sarah

We're All Ears December 2019: Use Your Leftovers

This is the fifth year of the We're All Ears "Use Your Leftovers" challenge!  I haven't looked back to last year but I expect that I'm doing something similar since I've been knee deep in salt water etching for the second year in the row!  I honestly have made much of anything else this month... I knew had good stock built up of everything other than Christmas ornaments for my holiday shows.

If you want to see most of the ornaments I made this year, I have them for sale in my Etsy shop.  You can see them HERE.

Anyhoo... for my contribution to the Use Your Leftovers challenge I present you with the pieces that I made from the etched copper sheet left over after I cut out my ornament shapes.  I used my handy dandy disc cutter to cut as many circles as possible out of the extra copper then gave them a good tumble to help smooth any rough edges.  Then it was time to match things up for earrings, punch holes, and dome them.  Yes, there are some necklaces in the mix too, but that's just how I snapped my pictures as I was making things.    

This is a blog hop.  Pop on over to the Earrings Everyday blog HERE to see what everyone else made with their personal craftermath!

Inspiration for the December 2019 Honey Do List

This is the fourth year that my husband Eric has been giving me a design challenge each month to get me out of my comfort zone and to help clear out my bead stash... it's the Honey Do List 2019!  I know that I'm not the only one who loves a good design challenge, so I'm hoping folks will continue to play along with us!

Here's this month's inspiration and what Eric had to say about it:

I decided to get a little arty with this month's shot.  I like the deep colors in it as well as the statue and architecture.  I took this in our hotel in Milwaukee this past summer for Bead and Button.  Good luck with this one...I'm looking forward to seeing some fun interpretations!

The reveal date will be Monday, December 30th.  To make it super easy for you to participate and share your creations, I'll set up an Inlinkz link up so folks can add their blogs as they are ready.  Just stop by my blog starting on December 30th and join the fun!  I'll leave the link up open for a while... so you have plenty of time to add your links.  (Last month's is still open... check it our HERE.) No blog?  No worries!  Feel free to send me a picture of your creation and some brief comments and I'll happily share in my blog post.  You can reach me at sjdesignsjewelry@gmail.com  The more the merrier, so I hope you'll play along with me this month!