July 2022 Honey Do List

2022 marks the seventh 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!  (Y'all, time really does fly!!)  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:  

This month I wanted to go back to Washington state.  On our trip, we hijacked two of our friends in Kent and made them take us to Tacoma for a day on the town.  We visited the Chihuly Bridge as part of our day and this is just one of many cool installations on said bridge.  I bet you can all find some inspiration in this chaos of color and shape!

I feel like this photo captures one of the two looks that I think of as quintessential Chihuly.  I'm loving the riot of color in this cool ceiling installation... and yet, as you'll soon see, I tended mostly towards the reds and oranges again.  What is wrong with me?

Anyway, this month was pretty much all about the earrings for me.  You're shocked, right?  In honor and celebration of Chihuly's glass work it's also mostly about glass beads and components too.  It just seemed a fitting material for the inspiration.

First up, I made long, swingy pair of earrings with Firelily lampwork glass and beaded cocoons from the newest Saga Hus Creativity Pack.  A pretty simple design with some blackened findings.

Next up I did manage to mix in something other than red when I found some fun lampwork beads from Jeff Barber with a navy base with cream and red dots.  Not a huge departure color wise, but I was trying!  I feel like the texture of the melon drops is reminiscent of the stripe in some of the Chihuly glass.

Next up I went super wild with some enamels focused on shades of orange, lol.  I felt like the murrini on the charms by Blue Hare Art Wear were a good match for Eric's photo. I didn't want to go too over the top so just added some little brass drops from the bottom of each charm and kept it simple above with some Czech glass and plated hematite.

Oh look... I found some blue beads too!  This last pair of earrings feature another pair of charms from my recent Saga Hus Creativity Pack with some lovely, glowing lucite.  I used melon drops here to reflect the stripes again.

Believe it or not, I did manage to eke out a necklace before I ran out of time!  I love the riot of color in this lovely ceramic focal from Golem Design Studio and felt like it was perfect for the inspiration.  I made a chain tassel with coordinating little glass dangles at the ends and make links along the lower portion of the long chain with Czech glass and moon glow lucite.  I think this is a perfect fun necklace for summer!

Now it's your turn!  Please add links to/photos of your own creations below.  I love seeing what everyone else is making too.  Check back at the beginning of August to see what Eric has in store for us next month! 

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

Inspiration for the July 2022 Honey Do List

2022 marks the seventh 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!  (Y'all, time really does fly!!)  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:  

This month I wanted to go back to Washington state.  On our trip, we hijacked two of our friends in Kent and made them take us to Tacoma for a day on the town.  We visited the Chihuly Bridge as part of our day and this is just one of many cool installations on said bridge.  I bet you can all find some inspiration in this chaos of color and shape!

I don't know about you, but I'm excited to be revisiting Chihuly again this month!  Loving the color and pattern here.  I hope you feel inspired too!

The reveal date will be Monday, July 25.  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 July 25 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!

June 2022 Honey Do List

2022 marks the seventh 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!  (Y'all, time really does fly!!)  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:  

While recently in Seattle, we visited the Chihuly Garden and Glass.  Sarajo is a serious glass-o-phile and has wanted to go see this place for ages.  Much of the glass in indoors in somewhat dark rooms so I had a hard time taking good photos.  However, this area, and the gardens outside were much better for my type of photography.  So this month's challenge is glass! 

I've wanted to visit Chihuly Garden and Glass for quite some time... I was foiled by a stomach bug the last time I was in Seattle back in January 2019.  This was my one big request for the agenda for this trip and it did not disappoint!  I need to got through my cell phone pictures and share more from our trip... I'm kind of terrible about that.  I'm fairly confident that we'll see more Honey Do List inspiration from Chihuly in the future.   

Anyway, onto what I made this month.  Look, look... for once I actually started with a bracelet instead of earrings!  LOL.  I've had this hand painted wooden flower bead from Summer Wind Art in my stash for ages.  This seemed like a good time to finally use it!  While the yellow and orange are more dominant in the inspiration photo, red definitely takes center stage in the bracelet.  Creative license?  I'm pretty happy with the Czech glass flowers I pulled out my collection for this design.  Bracelets still aren't my comfort zone, but I keep trying.

Next up, surprise... Earrings!!  I paired some fun red and yellow/orange Golem Design Studio ceramic rounds with orange Czech glass flowers and tangerine rondelles.  I think these turned out super fun.  I need to play with more of my Golem beads in this shape!

I still had a number of things on my bead table to play with but, distracted by other projects, this bracelet was the only other thing I managed to complete for this challenge.  Sometimes that's just the way it goes!  Anyhoo... I whipped up this little multi-strand bracelet at the last minute with a Golem Design Studio ceramic lentil, matte acrylic, and lots of Czech glass.  

So that's my round up for this round of the Honey Do List challenge!  Now it's your turn!  Please add links to/photos of your own creations below.  I love seeing what everyone else is making too.  Check back tomorrow to see what Eric has in store for us this month! 

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

Inspiration for the June 2022 Honey Do List

2022 marks the seventh 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!  (Y'all, time really does fly!!)  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:  

While recently in Seattle, we visited the Chihuly Garden and Glass.  Sarajo is a serious glass-o-phile and has wanted to go see this place for ages.  Much of the glass in indoors in somewhat dark rooms so I had a hard time taking good photos.  However, this area, and the gardens outside were much better for my type of photography.  So this month's challenge is glass!

The reveal date will be Monday, June 27.  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 June 27 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!