The Honey Do List: July 2017

I'm so sorry that I'm a few of days late with this month's Honey Do List reveal.  I was gone last weekend for the fabulous Adornments Retreat (more on that soon, stay tuned to my blog if you're interested in hearing more about that) and then life threw me a couple of curve balls this week.  Better late than never though, right?  Right??  Anyway please forgive my tardiness!

Last 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... and we're continuing the Honey Do List for 2017!  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!  

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

We spent a wonderful day with our friends Vicky and Ken in New Ulm last month.  As part of that day trip we visited the grounds of the historic August Schell Brewery (the second oldest family owned brewery in America) and found this beautiful peacock out courting.  I took about a hundred pictures and this side view though his feathers was my favorite.  Now is the time to break out those colorful blues and greens and show us YOUR stuff!

I love that Eric chose this proud peacock as our inspiration this month!  What he didn't tell you about the photo is that while this male was literally shaking his tail feathers to impress the pea hens, the ladies pretty much completely ignored his show boating!  It was pretty hilarious.  Anyway, that's not why I'm glad he picked this one... it's because I've got some lovely peacock beads in my stash that I've been itching to use!

My friend Michelle McCarthy of Firefly Design Studio has recently started making some fabulous peacock feather components... and I just had to use some of them here!  I picked up the pendant at Bead & Button but then was tempted by her earring charms at a Facebook trunk show she did after I got home.  Since I was still waiting for the earring charms to arrive, I started with a necklace.    

The darker glaze of the feather called out for brass... also I knew I had a toggle clasp with feathery details in brass.  I picked a selection of green and blue Czech glass to complement the glaze colors in the pendant and made beaded links.  To mix things up and add a little more brass to the design, I also used a few filigree beads in the design.

Below are the earrings I made... combining Michelle's lovely components and peacock worthy discs from Heather Powers of Humblebeads.  I added some Swarovski pearls and plated hematite along with brass accents for these.  I wire wrapped the loops on the charms with wire to hide them... I like the look of that versus the raw metal.

Actually the last thing I managed to finish (mostly because I needed to patina some copper wire before I could make my wire-wrapped links) may be the one I'm most proud of for this month.  I bought the amazing polymer clay peacock feather pendant from Staci Louise Smith at Bead Fest Philadelphia when I went (check out her stuff at Staci Louise Originals HERE).   This pendant is CHUNKY and has a great metallic iridescence that my photo just doesn't capture.  This time I used mostly gemstones including carnelian and plated druzy.  There's also some Swarovski pearls and Czech glass thrown in the mix.  I think the right person is going to go nuts for this one.

Another little gem that I found while looking for other peacock inspired beads was a large Vintaj Natural Brass blank that I had etched with their "Bird of Paradise" DecoEtch die and then added patina paint to a while back.  (When I play with the paints I tend to do way more than I plan to immediately design with and then save them for later.)  I had also picked up some peacock patterned shell beads ages ago and used one as part of the pendant.  With the large size of the pendant I wanted a longer necklace.  I had fun picking a wide variety of Czech glass beads to coordinate with the pendant blank and bead.

Not art beads, but I found a bag of items that needed to be put away that happened to include a cool patina green feather pendant and some faceted blue green quartz coins... it was a perfect combination!  I just added some small bronze seed beads in between the coins for a simply strung necklace.  I didn't have quite enough coins to make the necklace as long as I wanted (also, the holes were a little small to double the stringing wire back through them) so I finished it up with a few bloodstone rounded puff coins.  To pull it all together I added some Vintaj patina paints to the clasp to make it match the pendant.    

As an added bonus, I whipped up a little pair of earrings with some fun luster finish Czech glass teardrops and peacock spotted coins.  I don't know why I haven't used more of my teardrop beads... they really are great for earrings!

I'm proud as a peacock about all my new designs!  I can't believe after all this creativity that there are STILL more things that I didn't get to sitting on my bead board.

An InLinkz Link-up

get the InLinkz code

Inspiration for the Honey Do List: July 2017

Last 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... and we're continuing the Honey Do List for 2017!  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!  

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

We spent a wonderful day with our friends Vicky and Ken in New Ulm last month.  As part of that day trip we visited the grounds of the historic August Schell Brewery (the second oldest family owned brewery in America) and found this beautiful peacock out courting.  I took about a hundred pictures and this side view though his feathers was my favorite.  Now is the time to break out those colorful blues and greens and show us YOUR stuff!

The reveal date will be Monday, July 24th.  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 July 24th 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!

Royal Feather Challenge Blog Hop

It's been a long, long time since I have participated in one of Andrew Thornton's challenges where he concocts a wondrous kit of materials including a mystery component designed by Andrew himself...but I'm back!  I've certainly played along with many others along the way but, for one reason or another, haven't gotten in on one of these fun challenges in forever.

It's really cool to be doing this one at this point in time... and I'll tell you why.  Way back in July of 2011, I participated in my first ever design challenge which just happened to be Andrew's first ever Readers Challenge.  You can see that one HERE.  My blog wasn't even a twinkle in my eye yet and I really hadn't ventured too very far into the realm of selling my creations.  While I had been making jewelry for a few years I was still a newbie in so many ways.  Here I am almost three and a half years later and I've just left my library job to design and make jewelry full time, I'm a resident artist at a fabulous new gallery in my hometown called Unearthed Arts, I've done a variety of arts and craft shows selling my designs, and I've even had two pieces published in a magazine.  I've come a long way in a relatively short time!

Ok, sorry about all that.  Enough introspection... on with the challenge at hand!  It's no secret to anyone paying attention to the jewelry I make (or the beads that I buy!) that I LOVE shades of blue and green.  So when Andrew decided to do a pre-sale of his Royal Feather kit without showing us any more than the picture up above, I jumped on it right away before they all sold out.  It was a little while before my envelope of goodies arrived but the wait was totally worth it!  Here's some of what each of us received:

I'll admit that there was more bright green and less turquoise than I expected... but I was really excited about some of the purples and that feathery looking wooden bead.  I knew that I could work with this!

My first thoughts turned to doing a variation on a peacock necklace that I was in process on for my big fall art show.  I figured that was an easy enough place to let my brain start so I etched a big brass blank to be the focal for my first necklace.

Here is my original design (currently for sale at Unearthed Arts):

To play off the predominant colors in the kit, I decided to use green paint instead of the turquoise from my original.  I wire-wrapped the wooden peacock feather bead to the etched brass pendant and then added a variety of beads on three colors of waxed Irish linen including the purple from the kit.  I mostly used the crystals and some of the smaller Czech glass beads from the kit but added in a few extras from my stash as well.  This is the first time I've worked with the waxed linen where I've left so much of the threads exposed...I like the effect!

I etched a pair of earrings to coordinate with the necklace and used some of the small green Czech glass beads as dangles.  

My second pair of earrings is actually the first thing that I created with the kit.  When I dumped out the luxury bead blend I found a few clear leaf shaped sequins that I thought would add some fun movement and texture to earrings in a feather effect.  I painted two Vintaj Arte Metal tiered leaf pieces that I painted green and purple and those became the backdrop for the sequin pieces.  My peacock "feathers" dangle from gold colored Czech glass beads that I added fancy bead caps to... again thinking that they mimicked the feeling of plumage.

Even after all of these creations, I still have a bit of the original kit left.  I love, love, love Andrew's mystery component this month (and it's unlikely I'll let that one go!), but I just didn't get something made using that piece in time.  I have some other ideas bumping around in my brain... just need to find more time to actually pursue them!

This is a blog hop... I hope you'll check out the rest of the participants! 

Kari Asbury

Ann Schroeder 

Sarajo Wentling - You are here! 

Christina Porter 

Tammy Bowman 

Tara Linda 

On Andrew Thornton's blog:

Andrew Thornton 

Margriet Schnabel 

Keisha Russell 

Tara Linda

Alison Herrington

Laurel Ross 

Marcia Gilbert 

Joanne Goldberg 

Crystal Lombardo Farrell 

Cheryl Lee Tucker