Simplicity

In an effort to get prepared for my upcoming holiday shows, I've been putting in a lot of time at my bead table.  While my favorite things to make are earrings and one of a kind necklaces with art beads, I want to make sure that I have a wide variety of styles and price points for everyone's gift giving needs!  I thought I'd share what I've been working on to fill the need for more simple styles today.

For this first series of necklaces I wanted to keep things super simple and let the gemstones shine.  Each necklace features one lovely gemstone pendant on either silver plated, copper plated, or brass chain and they are all about 20 inches long.  At under $30, I'm hoping that these will be popular with gift givers this holiday season!

I've also been playing with the idea of making chain tassels to go with colorful focal beads.  Here are two that I made this past week with almond shaped ceramic beads by Golem Design Studio.

I decided to revisit a best selling design too and whipped up a couple more large dragonfly necklaces with gemstones.  I've had these two painted for a while but finally got around to finishing the pieces.  I probably won't do more of these until spring unless I get a special order.

Lastly on the simplicity front, I'm working on making more embossed medallion necklaces.  Full disclosure, this picture is from the fall and all but one of this batch have sold but I'm making more this week!  I make these in 20 and 28 inch chain lengths.

Thanks for stopping by to check out my experiments with simplicity.  I hope that you all have a happy and safe Thanksgiving this year.  Let us embrace the simple things that mean so much!

The Honey Do List: July 2016

This year, my husband Eric has decided to issue me a design challenge each month to get me out of my comfort zone and to help clear out my bead stash... we're calling it the Honey Do List.  I know that I'm not the only one who loves a good design challenge, so I'm inviting folks to play along!  

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

I'm a huge fan of the beauty to be found in nature, especially that hidden within the depths of the earth.  The random patterns of these stone pendants are a work of art unto themselves--some abstract, others more defined.  The challenge this month is to incorporate such a patterned natural stone into your jewelry!

I'm sure that Eric was thinking about all the gemstone pairs and pendants that he helped pick out at Bead & Button when he chose this challenge!  Here is a shot of some of those goodies.

Even though I strongly suspected that Eric most wanted me to make use of some of my new pendants, I was in an earring mood when I started working on this month's Honey Do List so I started with some of the fun earring pairs.  I made one pair with red creek jasper (left) and one with a combination of galaxy jasper and apple jasper rounds (right).

I wanted to do at least one necklace for this challenge... I chose a large red creek jasper pendant for my focal.  Seriously, this is a statement piece!  Red creek jasper is one of my favorite stones... so many great colors and patterns... Yum!  My biggest challenge for this piece was the wire wraps for the pendant.  (I'm jealous of folks who make that seem so effortless!)  For the left side of the necklace I chose red creek jasper in a variety of sizes and shapes.  The right side features copper beads and some abreciated jasper nuggets.

I didn't make this last necklace for this challenge (and I shared it in an earlier post) but I think it works here too so I'm sharing again!

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July 2016 Inspiration for the Honey Do List

Happy Fourth of July, everyone!!  Sorry I'm running later than usual with this, but it's finally time to announce this month's Honey Do List Challenge! 

This year, my husband Eric has decided to issue me a design challenge each month to get me out of my comfort zone and to help clear out my bead stash... we're calling it the Honey Do List.  I know that I'm not the only one who loves a good design challenge, so I'm inviting folks to play along!  

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

Close ups of some of the gemstone pendants that Eric helped pick out at Bead & Button!

I'm a huge fan of the beauty to be found in nature, especially that hidden within the depths of the earth.  The random patterns of these stone pendants are a work of art unto themselves--some abstract, others more defined.  The challenge this month is to incorporate such a patterned natural stone into your jewelry!

The reveal date will be Monday, July 25th.  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 on July 25th 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 out 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!

 I hope that you all have a happy and safe holiday!  I'm going to go get back to work!