Honey Do List December 2018

This marks the end of the third 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... it's the Honey Do List 2018!  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:

For this month's challenge I wanted to make folks work with bright colors and designs.  While visiting Sarajo's mom in her hometown of Huntsville, Alabama we happened across this cute decorated alley.  This is why I like just walking around areas with my camera--you never know what you might discover!  

I have to say that it was kind of fun walking around downtown Huntsville with Eric... it's changed a lot since I was a kid and even since he was last there!  There's something to walking around a place with a camera (or with someone with a camera!) and trying to see the world through that lens.  We discovered a lot of cool nooks and crannies, little bursts of art hiding in a town that I've known my entire life.  

I took inspiration this month both from the bright colors of this alley's murals in general and the "Alley Cats" painting in the foreground in particular.  My first design is ALL about bright color!  I've been hanging onto this adorable heart shaped resin pendant with a sweet black kitty from Gaea for awhile.  It was the first thing that I thought of when Eric gave us this challenge.  With all the vibrant colors in the pendant, I decided that the smart thing to do was to start by going through the collection of bead mixes that I've got left over from a bunch of different Allegory Gallery design challenge kits and little gift mixes as well.  I plucked most of the beads that I used in this necklace from those mixes and then added in a few more things to round out my options.  

It's a bit hard to see in my picture (and apologies for the bad lighting... yay Minnesota winter) but the back of the pendant says "wander."  I used some fun new copper plated chain at the back and left it long with no clasp.

With the craziness of the holidays, I really wasn't sure I'd manage to make more than one design this month.  Luckily, I was able to carve out a little last minute making time and whipped up a second necklace!  I've had a sweet floral cat pendant from Golem Design Studio for a couple of years and am happy to have finally made something with it.  I kept this one fairly simple and just made links with Czech glass beads in the colors from the kitty's flowers and added brass chain at the back.  I just had to use a toggle clasp that had a flower similar to the ones on the pendant to complete the necklace!

While I was waiting (in vain) for the light to improve for picture taking, I managed to whip up a little pair of kitty cat earrings too!  I paired some adorable bow-tie wearing cat charms by Anna Bronze with some tiny lampwork beads and little Czech glass flowers.  The ear wires are bronze colored niobium.

An InLinkz Link-up

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Art Elements Theme of the Month: White

For the December Theme of the Month over on the Art Elements blog Claire Fabian chose "White" to inspire us.  She shared some truly lovely inspiration photos over on the blog HERE that I encourage you to check out.  I honestly have less white beads in my stash than probably any other color making me initially thing that this might be a BIG challenge for me.  (And, yes, rules lawyers, I know that white is technically not a color, but explaining that makes my head pound.) 

Not surprisingly, since I live in MinneSnowta, I chose to focus my creative energies on the idea of snow flakes this month.  It also doesn't hurt that tis the season for selling snowy creations!  :)  I happened to already have a pair of copper clay charms by Kristi Bowman sitting on the corner of my bead mat waiting for attention when this month's theme was announced... serendipity!!  I made little links with copper wire that I had antiqued and lovely matte star cut crystal quartz and some plated hematite for a little flash.  I love how this pair turned out and it's going to be difficult to part with them!

As I mentioned in my recent post for We're All Ears, I've been doing tons of saltwater Christmas ornaments and playing with the leftovers.  Some of them had snowflakes on them... perfect for the white/snow theme I was already working on.  The snowflake is the star of this tiered necklace which mixes the etched copper circles, brass chain and findings, and a small Swarovski crystal bicone.

I made a few different pairs of etched copper earrings featuring snowflakes as well.  I kind of felt like I just couldn't stop myself! 

Not a new creation, but on the same day that I saw the theme announcement, I was also reminded by Facebook of a post from back in 2014 when Erin Prias-Hintz was doing her 30 Word Thurdsays.  The picture I took of snowy drifts totally fit the theme so I thought I'd go ahead and share it with you all!

Snow blown into drifts.  

In the light of setting sun, 

I squint my eyes and can almost believe that 

I’m standing amidst dunes of sand.  

Dreaming of warmer days ahead.

Guest Artists

Alysen

Anita

Beth

Cat 

Divya

Elaine

Hope

Jill

Karin

Kathy

Lucy

Rozantia 

Sarajo  -  You Are Here

Susan

Tammy 

Art Elements Team

Caroline

Cathy

Claire

Laney

Lesley

Marsha

Susan

We're All Ears: December 2018: Use Your Leftovers

I have to admit that Erin's Use Your Leftovers challenge is often one of the toughest of the years for me... that's because I don't really tend to have the kind of "craftermath" that she's challenging us to make use of.  My space is so limited that I really don't tend to leave beads out on my bead mat once I've finished a project unless I know I'm about to use them for something else that got sparked when I was creating the primary creation.  In the past, I've cheated a little bit and tackled some earring UFOs (unfinished objects) of making something from new beads that I haven't gotten around to putting away (I won't show you the piles of bags that fall into that category right now!)

Anyway, for this, the 4th annual Use Your Leftovers challenge over on the Earrings Everyday blog, I finally have true craftermath and actual leftovers to make new earrings with!!  Woo hoo!

Since Thanksgiving I've been on an etched Christmas ornament making kick.  I mean, I've been a machine with the salt water etching and still may try another small batch.  Here is a peek at just a few of the ornaments I've made so far.

Some of these have already sold, but there's still time for a special order!

So, as you can imagine, when I cut my ornament shapes out of the small pieces of copper sheet that I've etched, there's a decent amount of copper left over.  Here's the pile from my most recent batch!  If you really look you can see that there are some places that there's just extra design left over from what I cut, and some places where I had tons of extra blank space so I filled in with extra stamped images.  Now you may wonder what I'm going to do with all of that!  Why, use my handy-dandy disc cutter of course!!

After cutting as many circles in various sizes as humanly possible (trying for matched pairs first), it was time to file any rough edges.  Fortunately, my little Pepe cutter is a wonder and the circles mostly just needed some light sanding and a little brush with steel wool to be plenty smooth.

Next came the process of matching various pairs up for two-tiered earrings and deciding which ones would be singletons.  So. Many. Circles.

Some I went matchy-matchy with the patterns... some I added some Gilders Paste to parts... some I added charms or bead dangles... some I went a little more random.  I love them all!!  I'm hoping my customers enjoy this new collection even half as much as I enjoyed making them!

Not earrings... but I also made a couple of necklaces that I'm just too excited about to not share at least one of them!  I ended up with some singletons of different sizes so I put some together.  This one has gone off to live with my good friend Kathleen in Georgia!

Thanks for stopping by to see what I've been up to.  This is blog hop, so I hope you'll pop over to the Earrings Everyday blog HERE to see what everyone else has created from their craftermath.

UFO Roundup

Who else has tons of half thought out projects cluttering up your workspace?  C'mon, I know I'm not alone!  Over the last few months I've managed to get quite a few of these finished up and out the door... I thought I'd share a couple of them with you here now since I hadn't done that yet.

First up, I finally made something with some of the polymer clay charms that I started at the Inspired by Nature Retreat in October 2017.   I finished up two sets... the first one pictured has already sold.  We aren't going to talk about the bag full of the other pendants and charms that still haven't been finished up!

Next, I made a sweet little necklace with a butterfly pendant that I had painted a while back in a crazy fit of patina paint play!  I used a mix of gemstones and Czech glass for the links and used a strand of fun "dancing" pearls around the back.  I hope that this one finds the right person to fly home with!

I also had another green butterfly pendant in my painted pile... this one in profile.  This one I whipped up using a design idea that I've used before with other colors in the past.  I grabbed some faceted agate beads along with a couple of different Czech glass beads in various shades of green.

Another LONG lingering project is a bracelet bar that I had used a DecoEtch die and patina paints on ages ago.  I painted a fun brass vine piece that I planned to rivet on top.  Well, those two pieces have sat gathering dust for ages, but I finally put on my thinking cap and worked out the riveting.  Once the bracelet bar was all put together, pulling together the rest of the design was easy peasy!

Next up, a pair of earrings with a pair of cute charms made by my friend Monica Peña of Mariposa Originals.  Now these charms haven't been lingering quite as long as some things, only since October, but I'm still counting them since they've been sitting quietly together in my "to-do" container since I got them. 

   
Last, but not least I finished one of my oldest UFOs.  I made the resin filled pendant several years ago and it has been sitting in a bag with some beads and findings ever since.  Yikes!  I bit the bullet and got this bright and happy necklace finished.  This one is currently at the Arts Council of Carver County Holiday Gift Show.

I still have a stupid number of unfinished projects, but it's nice to have some of them off my plate and out of my mental space!  I hope I've inspired you to tackle some of your UFOs!

Inspiration for the December Honey Do List

This marks the third 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... it's the Honey Do List 2018!  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:

For this month's challenge I wanted to make folks work with bright colors and designs.  While visiting Sarajo's mom in her hometown of Huntsville, Alabama we happened across this cute decorated alley.  This is why I like just walking around areas with my camera--you never know what you might discover!  

The reveal date will be Monday, December 31st to give some extra with the holidays (and our slightly late announcement.)  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 December 31st 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 our 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!  Until then, have a wonderful holiday season!!

Art Elements Theme of the Month: Stars

This month Laney Mead over at the Art Elements blog chose the theme of "Stars" for the theme of the month.  At first glance, the theme seems pretty specific, but she left it open for a broader approach.

My first design plays on the star of the ocean... the starfish!  I had gotten the idea to put a bunch of Unicorn Beads drops along my bracelet chain (instead of a different type of bead I've been using) from one of my fellow Inspired by Nature retreat goers.  I thought that these turquoise with white, cream, and black had a beach feel and coordinated nicely with the two-holed starfish bead from Heather Powers of Humblebeads.  I added a fun shell charm and some Czech glass beads to the clasp side of the bracelet to finish things off.

I remembered that I had some Twinkiedinky charms that I bought a while back.  They have a quote on them from Mary Poppins by P.L. Travers...  "You can't expect two stars to drop in the same field in the same lifetime."  So the star theme plays out here in words instead of shapes or images, but I've been waiting for an excuse to play with these!

Lastly, I ended up making one Christmas ornament with a star pattern across a heart shape.  I used a borrowed rubber stamped image as the resist for this salt water etched copper.  I added the little dots around the border by hand with a Sharpie.  That one sold at last Sunday's Holiday Market but the other 4 are still available.  :)  I plan to work on another round of these ornaments this week.

This is a blog hop!  Take some time to see what starry creations that everyone else created!

Guest Artists

Jill

Divya

Alysen 

Kathy 

Tammy 

Cat 

Samantha

Anita

Karin

Sarajo - you are here

Rosantia

Kimberly

Art Elements Team

Jen 

Jenny  

Niky 

Laney 

Claire 

Cathy 

Marsha 

Caroline

Susan

Lesley

Honey Do List November 2018

Wow!  I don't know about you, but the time sort of got away from me this month between Thanksgiving and preparations for my first brewery show of the holiday season.  That's why I'm getting this posted a bit later in the day than I had hoped.  

This marks the third 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... it's the Honey Do List 2018!  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:

I wanted to use a shot from our trip to the Czech Republic for this month's challenge.  I took a lot of cool architectural shots, but most are pretty lacking in color--something I feel like we need for this kind of challenge.  I thought this art nouveau mural would be fun and full of colors and interesting motifs.  

This was just one of the lovely buildings we saw on our trip in August.  (I swear, one day I'm going to get my pictures off my phone!  Until then, I highly encourage you to check out my husbands blog chronicling our journey.  Here's a link to the first post for Beerploma HERE!)  I love this inspiration photo but really didn't have much in my art bead stash that really worked for it.  Luckily for me Anne Gardanne of Gardanne Beads had a show recently and I snagged not one but two things that ended up being perfect!  (Full disclosure, I bought WAY more than these two things.)

First up I made a pair of earrings with some decal pieces that had a great floral motif.  The colors are more pastel than the inspiration but I think they fit the inspiration.  I paired Anne's lovely enamel work with some faceted prehnite rounds and some tiny pink Czech glass flowers topped with green crystals.

I'm so amazingly happy with the necklace that I made with the cool semi-circle pendant that I snapped up.  Both the colors and the floral/leafy pattern are just perfect, if I do say so myself!  I made links with Czech glass and some dumortierite rounds and finished things off with a pretty brass clasp with a small glass rondelle decorating the toggle side.

An InLinkz Link-up

get the InLinkz code

Inspired by Reading: The Rules of Magic

I'm a little bit behind on posting my creation for the October installation of the Inspired by Reading Book Club... mostly because I've been crazy busy with shows and travel.  Better late than never, but this is a super short post!

The October selection was The Rules of Magic by Alice Hoffman which is a prequel to her super popular Practical Magic.  While I enjoyed reading the story of the Owens family and how each of the children dealt with the ramifications of the family curse, my creation was more inspired by the cover of the book.  The cover really plays on the time period of the book... the 1960s... and I took my cue from that. 

I was in a frenzy of painting with my Vintaj patina paints and added color to these sweet little daisy or sunflower charms.  I'm super happy with how my paint job turned out with just a tiny hint of bronze on the stem and leaves as well as the center of the happy yellow flowers. 

Sorry for the brevity of this post... but there's so much on my plate right now and I'm zipping off to tackle the next 20 things on my ever-growing to do list!  Enjoy the day!

Inspiration for the November Honey Do List

This marks the third 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... it's the Honey Do List 2018!  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:

I wanted to use a shot from our trip to the Czech Republic for this month's challenge.  I took a lot of cool architectural shots, but most are pretty lacking in color--something I feel like we need for this kind of challenge.  I thought this art nouveau mural would be fun and full of colors and interesting motifs.  

The reveal date will be Monday, November 26th so you've got the long Thanksgiving weekend to work on something if you need it.  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 November 26th 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 our 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!

Art Elements Theme of the Month: Petroglyphs

The theme for this month's Art Elements Theme of the Month challenge was another challenging one for me... Petroglyphs.  At first I really wasn't sure that I had anything that would work... but after some good digging through my art beads with an open mind, I found a few earring charms that felt right.

First up a simple little pair of earrings that I whipped up with some of Marsha Neal's fabulous ceramic charms and Vintaj Natural Brass findings.  Even though these are a simple design, they have a nice visual impact. 

Next, I finally played with one of the few pairs of painted pewter charms that I've managed to snag from Inviciti.  I felt like the raised pattern and the colors evoked the feeling of cave paintings or carvings.  For this pair I used some faceted Red Creek Jasper rounds, some Swarovski studded rondelle spacers and some little Czech glass beads in pale neutral tones. 

Last but not least, a colorful little pair of earrings featuring some super fun charms from Jana of Happy Fish Things.  I haven't made two many earrings with charms that have two top holes or loops (although there are two in this post!) so this design definitely pushed me out of my comfort zone!  I paired some little Amazonite rounds and fun shaped vintage German glass beads. 

And just for giggles, I'll leave you with this little photo taken at a lovely set of waterfalls near Mankato, MN.  I wonder if future civilizations will one day find things like this and wonder about the cultures that created them... Hmmm.

This is a blog hop.  Check out the links below to see what everyone else was inspired to make this month!

Guest Artists:
Jill Egan: https://kilnfiredart.wordpress.com
Tammy Adams: http://www.paisleylizard.com/blog
Alison Herrington: http://AlisonAdorns.blogspot.com
Alysen: http://chicchixnchampagne.blogspot.com
Sarajo Wentling: https://sjdesignsjewelry.blogspot.com
Jenny Kyriach: http://anafiassa.blogspot.com
CraftyHope: http://CraftyHope.com
Kathy Lindemer: https://bay-moon-design.blogspot.com

Art Elements Team:
Lesley Watt: http://www.lesleywatt.com
Jenny Davies-Reazor: https://jdaviesreazor.com
Cathy Spivey Mendola: http://cmendola.blogspot.com
Sue Kennedy: http://www.suebeads.blogspot.com
Caroline Dewison: http://www.blueberribeads.co.uk
Laney Mead: https://laney-mead.blogspot.com/
Marsha Neal Minutella: http://blog.marshanealstudio.com
Claire Fabian: https://saraccino.blogspot.com

Inspired by Nature Retreat 2018

This is the third year that I've attended Heather Powers' amazing fall retreat in South Haven, Michigan... the Inspired by Nature Retreat!  As always, it was a fabulous weekend of friends, creativity, laughter, and fun at the lovely Riverbend Retreat Resort.

Me with my fabulous road trip buddy Anna!

Once again, my friend Anna Pierson and I drove to Chicagoland where the fabulous Monica Peña of Mariposa Originals Jewelry, otherwise known as the hostess with the most-est, invited some of us to stop over for a sleepover at her place the night before the retreat started (as well as on the way home for Anna and myself!)  This year, Erin Prias-Hintz joined the party and Lin Stanke was back too.  We had to get an obligatory selfie before starting our little Chicago to Michigan convoy!

Our little band of naughty monkeys before we hit the road!

Here are some pictures of our weekend home away from home and the lovely fall foliage along the river.  The first picture is the cabin that Anna I and I were bunking in... the smallest of the three buildings at the resort.

Day one was all about salt water etching.  A super fun and non toxic way to etch metals... especially copper and brass.  Heather taught us how to use an image transfer process to apply an image to the copper for etching... I also brought my collection of rubber stamps to play with and share.  I had mixed results with the image transfers... since I think we figured out why some of us had troubles I'll likely give it another shot at home sometime.  Our etched metal would eventually become part of our jewelry projects on Sunday.

Anna's etching set up before we got started; my finished etched pieces, and my "used" salt water solution in the jar that Eric oh-so-helpfully labeled for me!

A retreat tradition is going to Taste in downtown South Haven for a big group dinner.  It's always a fun time to reconnect with beady buddies and get to know new friends.  Here are few shots from around our end of the table!  Miranda and Beth win for most "vibrant" cocktails.

Day two started out with some polymer clay fun... cane making to be more precise.  The inspiration for the technique Heather taught us was fossilized coral or agate.  I feel bad that I didn't do a great job of documenting the process, but I was just too wrapped up in trying to do it right.  Heather is seriously the queen of making polymer clay canes... she makes the process look so amazingly easy, and it so is not!  I did manage to snap one photo of my in progress beads... just not my actual cane.  The bottom blobby thing is a bead that I had applied slices of my cane onto but had not yet smoothed out; the middle pieces are a couple of my beads ready to go into the oven; the top mess is a mix of cane end cast offs and a little pile of my core color for my beads.  While I'm not convinced that I'm going to run out and try this cane again super-soon, I'm extremely happy with how my beads turned out.  The translucent clay is pretty much magic in this application.

The afternoon focused on Heather's amazing faux tin process.  It's a proprietary technique that she's asked us not to share, so no process photos for this.  We used some great Audubon illustrations this year.  Swoon!  Seriously, if you ever get a chance to take this class with her, DO IT!!  You won't be sorry.

Day three was focused on making some finished jewelry and/or components to play with at a later time.  I usually crap out when it comes to cutting and filing my metal pieces... this year I did pretty darn good!  I wasn't feeling in the mood to work with steel wire (plus I didn't bring my heavy duty cutters) so I skipped making a bunch more links like the one on the far left below.  I have the supplies and the jig at home so I can always revisit that later.

The last two years, retreat participants have made charms to give to each other person there.  So, each person comes with 24 of their own charms and leaves with 24 charms... one from each person there.  The necklace on the left was made with three of my precious little charms including the most adorable tiny journal made by Sarah Raines.

My finished pieces as well as the components I have ready to become jewelry.

Here are a few more photos from the weekend... mostly grabbed from other folks because I forget to get pics!

Our very own double trouble twins Rosanne and Beverly "guarding" the goody bags; our table of bead making maniacs; best buds Erin and Heather; silly Monica doing her best vampire impression... good times!!

Another wonderful retreat in the books with this fabulous group!

After lunch and our group photo, it was time to say goodbye and start the journey home.  Monica, Anna, and I weren't in a crazy rush so we stopped by a couple of Monica's favorite antique stores before leaving South Haven... and boy, am I glad we did!  I found a fabulous addition to my basement studio space... an antique dental cabinet!!  I found a label on the bottom that dates this piece to 1913.  So cool!

Monica and Anna were fabulous enablers... as was my super supportive husband (who may just be interested because he wants to put his painted game miniatures in the glass fronted cabinets!).  With some creative re-packing and some help from the vendors "muscle" we got this guy into Monica's vehicle for the ride back to the Chicago suburbs.  Thank goodness we weren't in my car... there's no way we could have fit all three of in there!  I've now got the cabinet in place in its new home and am almost done cleaning out all the drawers.  I can't wait to rearrange my studio storage to better suit my needs! 

I know my little write up doesn't begin to do this retreat full justice.  I mostly post things like this as a reminder to myself... a sort of online diary I guess.  I hope that you've enjoyed this little peek into one of my favorite events of the year.  Much of what makes is special just can't be captured in words... it's the laughs, the one on one conversations, the feeling of the place.  May you go out there and be Inspired by Nature too!