June 2022 Honey Do List

2022 marks the seventh 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... The Honey Do List!  (Y'all, time really does fly!!)  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:  

While recently in Seattle, we visited the Chihuly Garden and Glass.  Sarajo is a serious glass-o-phile and has wanted to go see this place for ages.  Much of the glass in indoors in somewhat dark rooms so I had a hard time taking good photos.  However, this area, and the gardens outside were much better for my type of photography.  So this month's challenge is glass! 

I've wanted to visit Chihuly Garden and Glass for quite some time... I was foiled by a stomach bug the last time I was in Seattle back in January 2019.  This was my one big request for the agenda for this trip and it did not disappoint!  I need to got through my cell phone pictures and share more from our trip... I'm kind of terrible about that.  I'm fairly confident that we'll see more Honey Do List inspiration from Chihuly in the future.   

Anyway, onto what I made this month.  Look, look... for once I actually started with a bracelet instead of earrings!  LOL.  I've had this hand painted wooden flower bead from Summer Wind Art in my stash for ages.  This seemed like a good time to finally use it!  While the yellow and orange are more dominant in the inspiration photo, red definitely takes center stage in the bracelet.  Creative license?  I'm pretty happy with the Czech glass flowers I pulled out my collection for this design.  Bracelets still aren't my comfort zone, but I keep trying.

Next up, surprise... Earrings!!  I paired some fun red and yellow/orange Golem Design Studio ceramic rounds with orange Czech glass flowers and tangerine rondelles.  I think these turned out super fun.  I need to play with more of my Golem beads in this shape!

I still had a number of things on my bead table to play with but, distracted by other projects, this bracelet was the only other thing I managed to complete for this challenge.  Sometimes that's just the way it goes!  Anyhoo... I whipped up this little multi-strand bracelet at the last minute with a Golem Design Studio ceramic lentil, matte acrylic, and lots of Czech glass.  

So that's my round up for this round of the Honey Do List challenge!  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 tomorrow to see what Eric has in store for us this month! 

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

Inspiration for the January 2022 Honey Do List

Happy Belated New Year my friends.  Sorry for the radio silence over here as well as the lack of new Honey Do List challenges.  We seriously went into hibernation over the holidays.  I'm hoping after some much needed down time to feel more energized as we get 2022 underway!  I hope you all had happy, healthy, peaceful holidays as well.

2022 marks the seventh 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... The Honey Do List!  (Y'all, time really does fly!!)  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:

Sorry we dropped off on challenges there at the end of 2021, but I've been taking more pictures and feeling more motivated already this year! This month's challenge is a cool ice sculpture from the MN Landscape Arboretum's Winter Lights display.  They did a special photographer only night that Sarajo got me into, which let us take tripods in and get high quality pictures.  I thought the juxtaposition of winter and ice along with butterflies and flowers was a pretty evocative challenge piece!  Good luck this month and get making!

The reveal date will be Friday, January 28th.  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 or links as they are ready.  Just stop by my blog starting on January 28th and join the fun!  I'll leave the link up open for a while... so you have plenty of time to add your links.  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

We're All Ears May 2020 :: May Flowers

For this month's We're All Ears challenge, Erin chose the theme of May Day for us.  I'd never heard of the idea of flowers in cones or baskets for May Day... May Poles... yes, cones... no.  Either way, I can totally get on board with the idea of flowery earrings.  For someone who doesn't consider herself super flowery or girly, I do love flower beads!

I started with a fun pair of pressed pansy flower charms in resin from Twinkiedinky that I've had for a while.  The purple and yellow combination is not always an easy one for me, but how can I argue with Mother Nature?  I added some purple Czech glass flowers and little yellow rondelles for some fun and lightweight earrings.

Next up, I finally made something with some pretty yellow rose charms made by our hostess Erin Prais-Hintz of Tesori Trovati.  These have been languishing in my stash since 2016 (hangs head in shame) but they are finally getting their day in the sun!  I used some faceted citrines and little turquoise Czech glass beads to bring an extra pop of color into the design.

I also couldn't resist playing with some cool components from Artisticaos.  The colors were just so yummy, and the shape with it's wire "handle" does remind me a bit of a flower basket.  Once again I picked some coordinating Czech glass flowers as well as some little dyed agate rondelles.

After playing with a bunch of of my flowery art beads I decide to try my hand with a more May Day specific idea that came to me in the shower of all places, lol.  I thought it would be fun to have some little Czech glass flowers coming out of a cone shaped bead cap.  I had to play around with the lengths of the headpins until I was happy with how they behaved, but I think the end result is pretty cute!

Before I was done creating for this challenge, I managed to get in some play time with some new patterned cork that Heather Powers of Humblebeads turned me onto.  Here are a few variations on an earring idea using a thicker version of a floral cork sheet.  All are paired with brass charms from Vintaj, Czech glass flowers, and plated hematite beads.

This is a blog hop.  You can check out what other folks were inspired to make over on the Earrings Everyday blog HERE.

Art Elements Theme of the Month: Flowers

I had a lot of fun with July's Theme of the Month from the Art Elements blog!  Marsha Neal challenged us to be inspired by flowers... an easy task especially this time of year when things are actually blooming in Minnesota.  It didn't hurt that I had just visited some lovely gardens during our tour of Great Britain last month either!

Not totally a new idea for me, but this month I did get the chance to play with some new colors as well as a slightly different spin on some branch components wire wrapped with Czech glass flower beads.  This first one was a special order for a friend.  I had made a similar one with copper plated components but she wasn't a fan of copper.  Once I got my hand on some silver colored branch components, I was able to whip this up for her!

For this next necklace, I clipped off one of the branch connectors and turned the piece on it's end as a fun floral dangle from one of Heather Power's larger scale polymer clay birds.  A fun way to give flight to this little Humblebeads creation!!

Next up, I finally made a necklace with the floral pendant that I made in last year's instructor make & take round robin at the Adornments Mixed Media Jewelry Retreat.  This was Erin Prias-Hintz's project and was made with two part epoxy clay and some fun Pearl Ex powders.  The pendant was fun to create and I'm glad that I've finally made something with it.  It's a pretty simple design... just strung with tons of great metallic Czech glass beads.  Maybe I'll add some of those powders to my Amazon shopping cart... hmmm.

Since earrings are my favorite thing to make, I had to include at least one pair for this reveal.  I picked out a gorgeous pair of copper and resin charms by Twinkiedinky with a blue and golden yellow floral pattern.  To keep them from getting too heavy, I used some chunky amber colored lucite beads framed by copper plated bead caps.

For some time I've been looking at a tube of some fun green-yellow tube beads with white stripes that I got in a goody bag from Candie Cooper at a Twin Cities Bead Bazaar event this spring.  I had cut them off the strand and got them into a box... but that box has been hanging out off to the side on my bead table ever since.  I was toying with the idea of doing a multi-strand bracelet with them (and I still may) but this amazing daisy pendant from Golem Design Studio jumped out at me.  This is one of the thicker pendants I have from Golem (it's domed rather than flat) so I thought that using some heavier weight waxed linen

There are still a bunch of flower pieces on my bead board... we'll see how many more become something now and what gets put away for another day.

P.S.  I did manage to make something else for this challenge!  I had a couple of floral pendants from the super talented Ashley Bonney of Summer Wind Art on my bead table but in the end it was this sweet and subtly colored piece that had to be made into a necklace.  I had a lot of fun picking out a variety of Czech glass beads in pale hues to match the pendant.  There are also a couple of rose quartz rounds in there.

Please take some time and look at the wonderful things people are creating and contributing to this theme by visiting these artists blogs (if you are having issues leaving comments, please try using google chrome as your browser).

You can also see and participate yourself via social media by using the hashtags: #AEThemeChallengeand #AEFlowers

Here is a list Visiting Artists:
Alysen
Cat
Divya
Evie and Beth
Jill
Hope
Kathy
Linda
Louise
Martha
Melissa
Michelle
Rozantia
Sarah
Sarajo (you are here)
Tammy

Art Elements Blog Contributors:
Caroline
Cathy
Claire
Jenny
Laney
Lesley
Marsha
Susan

New Designs with Polymer Clay!

I've been having tons of fun playing with the pieces and the techniques I learned in Heather Powers' Wings & Dreams class at the Adornments Retreat last month!  I thought I'd do a super quick post sharing some of what I've come up with so far.  I still have a few painted butterflies and a bunch of leaves to play with, but here's what I've completed over the past week.

These posies were supposed to be for earrings, but I decided to go with pendants instead!  If only I could find the cutter for this flower... I want more of these and can't find one.  :(

Only the top leaf in the pendant is my handiwork (and the patina on the brass leaf too!) The "Hope" bead is by Diane Hawkey.  I'm wishing I had picked up more of her word beads.

I had fun with patinas, rivets, and metal stamping for this one!  It's a little more vibrant than my normal work.

I'm so glad my vision worked for this one!  I had to slightly modify the butterfly filigree from Vintaj to attach my polymer clay creation on top, but I made it work!  I wanted to veer away from the monochromatic so I added some pops of turquoise.

This is actually a holdover project from Heather's Inspired by Nature Retreat last year.  I made the fern imprinted polymer clay circle at the retreat (also the beads) and then used her metal sketching technique on a copper blank.  My rivets are a tiny bit off center, but that's ok.