Art Headpins! An Art Jewelry Elements Challenge

The editors over at the Art Jewelry Elements blog have come up with another fun challenge this month... and it has to do with using art headpins!  What's an art headpin, you ask?  It's a headpin handcrafted by an artisan... something beyond just a balled end... something that has the potential to be the focus of a design... a show stopper.  Here's a great collage put together by Lesley Watt from the AJE team to show some examples of art headpins in designs and on their own:

Collage from Art Jewelry Elements blog

There's some great stuff out there in the jewelry making world for sure!  I have to admit that I've been a little bit timid (ok, terrified) to use my small collection of art headpins in my designs.  I mean, these are special, one of a kind pieces and if I screw it up, I don't get another chance.  When I'm using "normal" headpins, if I botch something it's not a huge deal.  I just cut the wire and start over.  Not so once the fancy pants headpins come into play!

For this challenge I picked a set of awesome, crusty looking headpins from Havana Beads.  I had been making some variations on a theme from the earrings that I just made for this month's We're All Ears challenge (you can see those HERE if you missed them) and got a wild hair to try something similar with this set of headpins and accent beads and some flame painted copper rings.  

My original intent was to use both the headpins and the spacers together, but when I started putting things together the earrings were just getting too big for my taste... in part because I felt the headpins needed the larger sized copper rings to look right.  I kept it simple and just added faceted amazonite rounds on either side of the headpins.

Remember those accent beads?  I couldn't let them languish alone without their friends so I whipped up a pair of earrings with them too.  No fancy art headpins here, but I wanted to share them anyway.

And while I didn't make this last pair for this challenge (they were for the June We're All Ears challenge from Earrings Everyday) they do represent my only other recent foray into using art headpins.  They feature lampwork glass strawberries from Thornburg Bead Studio.

I really had intended/hoped to do more designs and break out more of my art headpins, but a super busy schedule and some unexpected travel sort of threw a monkey wrench into my plans!  Never fear, there is a lot more headpin goodness to be seen out there since tons of other folks participated this month... hop around to see what everyone else came up with!

Guests:

Alison Herrington

Renetha Stanziano

Karin Grosset Grange

Gloria Allen

Deb Fortin

Cate van Alphen

Mona Arnott

Shai Williams

Sarajo Wentling

Kathy Lindemer

Solange Collin

Brooke Bock

Melissa Meman

Patricia Handschuh

Tammy Adams

Melissa Trudinger

AJE Team Members:

Caroline Dewison

Lesley Watt

Cathy Mendola

Jenny Davies-Reazor

Susan Kennedy

Laney Mead

Diana Ptaszynski

Lindsay Starr

Niky Sayers

Honey Do List: August 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!

This month I chose a picture from our recent trip out to Ligonier, PA for the Allegory Gallery's Creative Camp.  Andrew Thornton directed us out to a nearby bog where the carnivorous plants were in full bloom.  An entire field of these pitcher plants and much smaller sundews stretched around us--beauty and savagery all wrapped up in one tiny leafy package.  The strange shape, as well as the striated deep red patterns against green really jumped out at me and I wanted to see what a bunch of jewelry designers could pull off with this inspiration!

When I started sorting through my beads, the first thing that jumped out for me was one of my treasures from Gardanne that I picked up at Bead & Button.  Yes, I know it's a ginkgo leaf, not a pitcher plant, but the colors were spot on!  I quickly decided on some light green Picasso finished seed beads I had on my bead table from a previous project as the base for a strung necklace.  As I dug through my green gemstone beads, prehnite became the obvious choice.  Luckily I had some faceted coins in two different sizes to pull into the design along with some bordeaux colored Swarovski pearls.  Voila!  A necklace inspired by the colors of the bog!  

I also wanted to try my hand at painting some brass leaves from Vintaj for some earrings.  The colors aren't exactly what I was hoping for (they are a little too bright), but I'm making it work!  For the first pair I picked out some fun disk beads from Humblebeads that I grabbed during the Creative Camp Vendor Night that Allegory Gallery hosted.  I wire-wrapped those, some Czech glass discs, leafy patterned bead caps, and iridescent green Swarovski pearls.  The second pair features some more prehnite (boy do I wish I had more of these gorgeous rondelles!), Czech glass flowers, and crystal.  The leaves seemed too far away from the beads above so I added jump rings decorated with some fun seed beads to give it some more pizzaz.  I'm not sure pink and green is my personal style, but I'm really happy with how they turned out!

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Some New Earrings

I've been super busy trying to get a bunch of new designs worked up for my big show in September and I wanted to give you all a bit of a preview of some of the earrings I've been making!  Enjoy the eye candy!

Fun with flame painted copper rings!  Amazonite and Swaroviski crystal on the left, Chalcedony and Swarovski on the right.

Brass painted feathers by me paired with matching Czech glass.

Polymer clay birds by Humblebeads with nest charms that I painted to coordinate.

Variations playing with honeycomb and bee combination.  I've got copper versions in the works!

I've clearly been obsessed with earrings lately... what have you been working on?

We're All Ears: August 2016

The theme for this month's We're All Ears challenge over on the Earrings Everyday blog is campfires!  This is perfect for the end of summer (although this girl who hates the heat is way more interested in sitting around a fire come the cooler temperatures of autumn).  We really have to use our fire pit more... add that to our life goals!  

[Photo credit :: Tirza van Dijk :: Unsplash]

I decided to focus on the colors of the flames for my design this month.  This seemed like a great time to break out my Swarovski crystals in their "Fire opal" color!  At first I was thinking that I would attach the crystal bicones to lengths of chain dangling from... well, something.  Before I could figure out that idea, I stumbled on some flame treated (or "rainbow") copper rings.  I picked two that had a rich, darker orange color and hung the crystals from those.  I could have stopped there, but it just didn't have as much umph as I wanted.  I added a larger orange bead above the ring along with a bead cap that reminded me of flames a little bit even though it's supposed to be a flower.  Here's the finished product...

Sorry the picture is so dark... it's super gloomy here today!       

And I'll end by sharing a little funny that Erin put in her original post.  This totally sums up how I feel about camping.  Have a great weekend, everyone!  Oh, and head over to Earrings Everyday to see what everyone else made!

Art Bead Scene: August 2016

I'm not going to lie, some of the artwork that the Art Bead Scene has chosen for their monthly challenges have been, well, challenging for me.  This month is no exception with the choice of "Park Near Lu" by Paul Klee.   The mix of colors and the abstract shapes really throw me off!  You can read more about the artwork and artist over on the Art Bead Scene blog HERE.

"Park Near Lu"

By Paul Klee, 1938

Since I try not to buy any new art beads for the monthly challenge (my monthly subscription to Erin's Simple Truths Sampler Club doesn't count by my twisty logic!) I was more than a bit worried about my ability to make something this month.  Luckily, when digging through my art beads I found a set of tribal beads by Gaea that I'd totally forgotten about that were pretty perfect!  (I actually won this set a while back for an ABS challenge so it comes full circle!)

I chose waxed Irish linen to keep to the primitive feel of the painting.  I tied the ceramic beads, some jasper, Czech glass, and brass along black and teal linen and then finished it off with brass chain.  The end effect is totally different from my usual style but I'm pretty happy with how it came together.
    

A Few New Designs

It feels like I've been a little bit too quiet on my blog recently... a problem when most of your jewelry challenges have reveals at the end of the month!  I've been keeping myself pretty busy making jewelry, but much of it can't be shared just yet.  Not everything I've created has to be kept under a veil of secrecy though... I thought I'd do a quick post with pictures of a few random designs I've created over the past couple of weeks.  Enjoy!

Starfish pedant by Michelle McCarthy of Firefly Design Studio

Fun butterfly set!

New version of a favorite bracelet design using leather cord! 

Turquoise and copper... a favorite combo!

Bombette Beads by Erin Prais-Hintz of Tesori Trovati

I love the way the paint job on this pendant turned out... and all that yummy Czech glass!

August 2016 Inspiration for the Honey Do List

Welcome to August!  (Seriously, where is the time going??)  It's been a busy summer with no signs of life calming down anytime soon... maybe October.  No matter how much I wish these summer days would slow down, time just keeps marching on and that means it's time for the newest 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:  

This month I chose a picture from our recent trip out to Ligonier, PA for the Allegory Gallery's Creative Camp.  Andrew Thornton directed us out to a nearby bog where the carnivorous plants were in full bloom.  An entire field of these pitcher plants and much smaller sundews stretched around us--beauty and savagery all wrapped up in one tiny leafy package.  The strange shape, as well as the striated deep red patterns against green really jumped out at me and I wanted to see what a bunch of jewelry designers could pull off with this inspiration!

The reveal date will be Monday, August 29th.  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 August 29th 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 can't wait to see what everyone makes this time!