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.

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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!!