New Earring Monday: Weeks 49 & 50

Since we are so close to Christmas and solidly into winter weather now, I thought I'd tie into that for New Earring Monday this week.

I've got two variations on a theme again... this time I'm playing with some post style earrings for the very first time.  We keep getting inquiries at the Unearthed Arts gallery about post-style or non-dangly earrings so I decided to give it a shot.  I bought a pack of Nunn Design ornate mini circle earrings in silver plate and started to play.

Hoping to get a few holiday items done this year before the holidays are over (memo to self, start working on holiday items MUCH earlier next year!), I pulled out my Christmas scrapbook papers and my UV resin and here's the result.

First up, I went a little more subtle with these little sleighs paired with some small fluted gemstone dangles.  (So, these don't fully fill the no dangle request, but they are much smaller than most of my other earrings.) The black and cream color scheme makes these appropriate throughout the winter.

My second pair is more obviously Christmasy since I filled the bezels with Christmas trees!  For the little dangles I used some small dyed green agate rondelles paired with silver plated spacers.

I took both of these pairs to Unearthed Arts last Friday (along with another pair I'll share in the next New Earring Monday reveal) and I hope they will get snatched up quickly.

I think I'll definitely order some of the other post style earrings in my next Nunn Design order... including some without the loops for dangles.

More Fun with UV Resin - Sparkle Time!

I haven't been blogging as much because life has gotten a little busy with trying to prep for the shows I have coming up this fall.  I'm not sure you ever feel like you have enough pieces made so I've just been working, working, working to get more new things made.  Wish me luck!

I tend to work in batches of things...it's just how my brain works.  So last week I spent some time playing with UV resin and some raised tag pendants from Nunn Design.  I had one specific pendant I wanted to make but didn't want to pull out all the supplies for just one thing.  So, to make the most of my efforts, I decided to try out some of my new Nunn Design Silhouette transfer sheet designs.

I love the way the shine of the metal pendants shows through the color and you see the silver or copper where there is white space on the transfer sheet.  I'm not really sure what got into me, but I decided to try adding some flat backed Swarovski crystals into the resin.  I wasn't entirely sure that it would work if I just set the crystals into the uncured resin, so I started with just one.

I was super excited when I took it out from the UV light and discovered that the resin had covered enough of the crystal's edges to keep it secured... success!  After that little victory I might have gone a little crazy adding crystals to some of the other pieces.  Here's a look at the pendants that I made.  Sorry for the bad lighting...it was a quick iphone pic while I was working.

Pendants in various stages of progress.

I guess sometimes you just need some sparkle in your world... and I just kept going in that direction as I completed my designs.  Here are a few pictures of the finished necklaces that have helped me get my glitter fix!  On some of them the crystals got a little more covered with resin than is ideal, but it's a learning process and they still have plenty of sparkle for all you magpies out there.

These feel a little different than some of my other work, but I feel like it's a little collection within my whole body of designs.  I still have a couple of pendants that still need to be made into finished necklaces, but I'll call this progress!  Next up, I plan to tackle that big purple butterfly.