March 2024 Honey Do List

2024 marks the ninth 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... The Honey Do List!  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!  Thanks to all of you who have participated over the years... it means a lot to both of us!

Lately no one has been playing along with us, but we will continue on since I enjoy having the inspiration to make something each month.

This month's inspiration is from the pearl factory in the Czech Republic that we visited last fall.  I loved the colorful metallics here and the drips were really interesting.  I only wish they had offered some for sale at the factory...Sarajo would have bought a bunch! 

Well, I had grand plans this month but the Bead Cruise fun sort of got in the way of my productivity!  I still plan to make some little cascading pearl earrings with a mix of pearls from this factory tour and some coordinating Swarovski pearls for the Lowertown St. Paul Art Crawl in April.

But how about I talk about what I did finish?  I was determined to make a special bead embroidered necklace for the costume party on the Bead Cruise.  Luckily for me, I had a polymer clay cabochon made by Kimberly Cherwaty that was a gift on the cruise two years ago.  It was perfect for my flapper dress with a green beaded and sequined peacock on it.  

The majority of the beads that I used in this piece came from our trip to the Czech Republic....  Mixed metallic size 10s from Matubo, two different sized green pearls from the glass pearl factory, and copper colored O beads from Rutkovsky.  Oh, and the laser etched daggers were from the trip too!  I don't have a good picture of it yet, but I used some gorgeous leather from Kinga Bledsoe for the backing.  

Now it's your turn!  Please add links to/photos of your own creations below.  I love seeing what everyone else is making too.  Not ready yet?  No problem, I'll leave the link up open until late next month.  Check back on April 1st to see what Eric has in store for us next!  

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

Inspiration for the March 2024 Honey Do List

2024 marks the ninth 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... The Honey Do List!  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!  Thanks to all of you who have participated over the years... it means a lot to both of us!

Lately no one has been playing along with us, but we will continue on since I enjoy having the inspiration to make something each month.

This month's inspiration is from the pearl factory in the Czech Republic that we visited last fall.  I loved the colorful metallics here and the drips were really interesting.  I only wish they had offered some for sale at the factory...Sarajo would have bought a bunch!

The reveal date will be Monday, March 25th.  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 or links as they are ready.  Just stop by my blog starting on March 25th 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.  You can 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! 

February 2024 Honey Do List

Apologies for posting this so late... we were having such a great time visiting Las Vegas that I totally forgot to get this post done!  2024 marks the ninth 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... The Honey Do List!  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!  Thanks to all of you who have participated over the years... it means a lot to both of us!

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

This month's challenge is a little...frosty.  This is actually a literally frosted glass window from the museum of glassmaking in Jablonec in the Czech Republic.  I took a ton of pictures here and this one jumped out for a good Winter post.  Don't worry, I've got more color coming for next month!  

There's a tiny bit of irony that Eric chose this frosty picture as our February inspiration considering how bi-polar our weather has been here!  Who would have expected 6.5" of snow on Valentine's Day and then days in the 50's within the week?!  Crazy!  In keeping with the weather, my designs aren't exactly icy either... but yet somehow feel appropriate.

First up, a necklace featuring a pendant from Inviciti.  Both the whitewashed colors and floral burst design of the focal reminded me of the photo.  I paired it with the last of a strand of moonstone rounds left over from a special order a few years ago.  The soft, pearly colors playing nicely off the more rustic pendant.  Copper plated chain and findings complete the design.

The other thing I made this month features some of the new beads that I bought on our trip to the Czech Republic... fitting I think.  Again, the design on the glass beads isn't super frosty but the frosty white with AB finish sure is!  These are super simple but still have some charachter.  

Now it's your turn!  Please add links to/photos of your own creations below.  I love seeing what everyone else is making too.  Not ready yet?  No problem, I'll leave the link up open until late next month.  Check back on Monday to see what Eric has in store for us next!  

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter