Art Elements Theme of the Month: Repurposing

For this month's Art Elements Theme of the Month, Lesley Watt has given us an interesting prompt... repurposing!  This is a really broad theme and I had super grand plans at the beginning of the month.  I'm sure that some of you can relate to the fact that time has sort of gotten away from me this time!

I'm guessing that my contributions are not going to be as impressive or exciting as what many folks come up with, but meet the challenge where you're at, right??

I started out by making a necklace with another one of the vintage keys that a friend gifted me awhile back.  I've still got quite a few keys left in my stash, so I'm guessing you'll see more key-filled designs from me in the future now that I've broken them out!

The perfect addition to the key pendant was a sweet little heart charm by Mary Harding.  Then the light bulb went off and I decided to stamp "Key to My ♥️" on a silver plated circle to tie things together.  I picked Czech glass and vintage lucite beads to go with the colors in the heart charm. 

This one is long and can just be slipped over your head without any monkeying around with a clasp.

Next up, I played more with some of the vintage tin that I broke out for the Art Bead Scene Art Journey 2 challenge.  This time I'm using some of the pieces from the edges of the containers lid (I'm so glad that I didn't toss them... Packrat for the win!!)  I had really hoped to be able to cut a taller triangle, but I just didn't have the material to work with this time.  I'll have to revisit my other idea later.  After cutting the two trapezoids instead, I hammered the rolled edge of the lid flat and filed all the edges smooth.  Because of the shape, I knew that I needed two connection points at the top for them to hang correctly... so then I had to decide what to put up above the tin pieces.  The solution?  My (very under-utilized) Now That's a Jig!  Yay me!  I whipped up two cute little connector pieces to fit perfectly and hammered them a bit for strength and texture.

Lastly, because I was needing to get ready for a little home jewelry party I'm doing at a friend's house this weekend, I started to make a new batch of my up-cycled beer can earrings.  I had a lot of new beer can colors and patterns that I wanted to play with for the first time.  Unfortunately, I didn't finish any of them... this is where things were at yesterday when I called it a day.

In the next couple of days I'll get them all put together but I always underestimate the amount of time it takes to complete these.  There are so many steps... emboss the metal blanks that serve as a base, smooth the rough edges of the aluminum punch outs, punch holes in the centers of the flowers and the metal blanks, rivet, hammer in the dapping block, pick out beads, complete the bead links, attach earwires.  Whew... tired just thinking about what I need to get done!  Those aluminum circles at the top edge of my photo will hopefully become medallion style necklaces this week too.  Fingers crossed!

This is a blog hop... Check out what everyone else created by repurposing this month!  This should be a fun one!

Guests

Tammy

Alysen

Evie & Beth

Karin

Hope

Divya

Anita

Sarajo  - You are here!

Kathy

Rebecca

Martha

AE Team

Niky

Laney

Cathy

 Caroline

Jen

Jenny 

Sue

Claire

Lesley

Inspired by Reading: Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine

The April selection for the Inspired by Reading Book Club was Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman.  This is one that I'd been interested in for a little while so I was happy to see it on our list for this year!

As the story began I really just felt like Eleanor was just an odd duck of a character.  She's someone very rigid and totally stuck in her routines.  She really lives for the structure that her office job gives her during the week and then loses herself in vodka over the weekend to make the off time go faster.  As you continue to read, you begin to understand that there are many layers to Eleanor and they are slowly peeled back.  As usual, I really don't want to say too much about the book to avoid giving anything away. 

As much as I enjoyed this novel, I was at a bit of a loss for what to make.  Maybe I just go too immersed in the story and wasn't paying attention to creative jumping off points.  In the end, the only thing that came to mind was a bit of a stretch.  I chose Eleanor's froggy pouf to start off my design! 

I knew that I had a pair of enameled frog charms from Gardanne that would be cute as part of a charm style necklace.  When I was picking those out of my art bead storage, a little word bead from Swoondimples caught my eye as well.  I thought the message of "give more" made sense for Eleanor... her life starts to change as she starts to give a little more of herself to those around her... opening up.  I added the key to represent Eleanor unlocking the secrets of her past to herself and those close to her.  The flower is to mark how Eleanor really blossomed by the end of the novel.

I love the colors in this long charm necklace.  I added a few Czech glass links along the chain for additional color.  I know that this one is a bit quirky, but I hope it finds a happy home with the right person!

Thanks for stopping by to see what I've been up to lately!  I hope you're having a great week.  We're finally getting some spring weather here so I'm trying to balance making new jewelry with enjoying some fresh air and sunshine!

Honey Do List April 2019

This is the fourth 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 2019!  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 took this last spring (it is still brown and drab here in Minnesota right now) at the Arboretum. They were doing an Origami sculpture exhibit and I liked the two boats a lot.  The previous picture was also from the same exhibit.  Good luck with this month's challenge!

I adored last year's garden sculpture exhibit at the Minnesota Landscape Arboretum!  These large scale metal origami pieces were really amazing to behold and Eric and I had a great time wandering through the gardens exploring the exhibit.  (Memo to self... I need to check and see what this year's will be!)  I really wanted to do something related to the paper boats, but I didn't get there.  The closest thing I have are some adorable canoe charms (with paddles!!) from Holly Stultz but they weren't totally right and I'm still not sure what (if anything) I want to pair with them.  

So, instead of little boats, I focused on the purple flowers in the foreground.  True to my usual form, I started with a little pair of earrings.  (True confession... making earrings is relatively quick and then the pressure is off because I know I've made something for a challenge!)  The flowers on these Golem Design Studio ceramic lentils aren't quite the right color, but I rolled with it anyway.  I love the green background on these and it is so nice with the deeper red tones.

Earrings out of the way, it was time to turn to lovely pendant from my friend Erin Prais-Hintz of Tesori Trovati.  The purples in this amazing polymer clay creation are so vibrant and have a great pearlescent finish that was difficult to capture in photos.  

For this one I pulled together a bunch of different purple beads, mostly Czech glass but punctuated with some faceted amethyst rounds.  Too keep the necklace from being too monochromatic, I used a few dark iridescent turbine beads and some bright blue and bronze flowers.  Copper colored seed beads were the perfect spacers for this strung design.

This month's challenge pushed me to try something that I've been thinking about since I bought some fun branch focals at Bead Fest back in 2015.  I wire wrapped some of my favorite Czech glass flowers in two shades of purple onto a brass colored branch to mimic the flowering branches in Eric's photo.  There's enough going on with the focal so I kept things simple with plain chain and just a coordinating flower dangle from the clasp.  

Heres' a closer look at the branch focal.  I love how the flowers sit at all different angles.  I was so happy with how this one turned out that I went ahead and made three more... each in different color combinations!

Now it's your turn!  Please add your links to your own creations below.  I love seeing what everyone else is making too.  Please check back May 1st to see what Eric has in store for us next month!

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

We're All Ears: April 2019: Wanderlust

This month for the We're All Ears challenge over on the Earrings Everyday blog, Erin encouraged us to create earrings inspired by travel.  This was a broad net as it could be about the act of traveling or inspiration of a particular destination.  I love this as an idea!

Feeling a bit crunched for time between some other projects, moving my jewelry into Unearthed Arts' new gallery space, and some real life travel I wasn't sure if I'd manage to get anything made for this challenge.  I only made one pair of earrings, but I'm still considering that a win this month!  I had some other ideas but just couldn't get my act together.

I made a new variation of a pair of earrings that I made awhile back.  I'd actually forgotten about that design until I was moving my earring display into the new building and shifting things around.  I curled the pokey bits on some fun compass themed Decorivets from Vintaj and used those resulting loops to attach the moonstone teardrops and the ear wires.  I'm still sad that Vintaj discontinued their Arte Metal line... I love how you can bring out the silver underneath with a little buffing for an fun look. 

Stop by the Earrings Everyday blog HERE to see what everyone else was inspired to make this month!  Have a great weekend.  I'm off to the bead table to finish up some things to share with you all next week!

Inspiration for the April 2019 Honey Do List

This is the fourth 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 2019!  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 thought I'd get a little nutty.  For your consideration: I call this one "Two Squirrels and a Nut."  
















Ok, you got me.  April Fools!  This is the actual challenge for the month!  I took this last spring (it is still brown and drab here in Minnesota right now) at the Arboretum. They were doing an Origami sculpture exhibit and I liked the two boats a lot.  The previous picture was also from the same exhibit.  Good luck with this month's challenge!

The reveal date will be Monday, April 22nd.  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 April 22nd 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!