December 2023 Honey Do List

2023 marks the eighth 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:

On our recent bead tour of the Czech Republic we visited a Christmas ornament factory.  While this wasn't completely bead-related, it was all hand made glass.  I think all of us really enjoyed learning the process and seeing it done.  This picture is from the step after the glass was dipped in colored glazes and left to dry before the next step.  You have all sorts of shapes and colors to work with here!

It was so interesting to see how these glass ornaments have been made for over a hundred years!  So many cool shapes and lovely colors!  For this month's Honey Do List I went in a few different directions... I made a few different Christmas ornaments but I also played with some tiny Christmas ornaments that I bought at the Rautis factory and tour.     

For the last several years I've made batches of salt water etched Christmas ornaments.  Here are a few of this year's:

For us there's a tradition of Eric getting an ornament every year.  When he was a kid he got one each year from his grandmother.  She's been gone a long time but I continue the tradition.  This year, I made Eric a very special ornament... I present Krampus!!  I bought the fantastic focal by Diane Hawkey last year but it was too late to get something made in time for the holiday so I saved it for this year.

As I know that Eric's intention wasn't just for me to make ornaments that I was going to make anyway... I did grab a collection of mini ornaments that I bought during our trip to turn into earrings.  I only got two pairs made with everything that's been going on the last few weeks, but that's better than nothing!  

I'm not sure how delicate these little glass beads are so I'm probably just keeping these for my own enjoyment or maybe will give a pair away... not sure yet.  

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 January 1st to see what Eric has in store for us next!  I know he's got tons of new photos he's been going through.

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

Inspiration for the December 2023 Honey Do List

2023 marks the eighth 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:

On our recent bead tour of the Czech Republic we visited a Christmas ornament factory.  While this wasn't completely bead-related, it was all hand made glass.  I think all of us really enjoyed learning the process and seeing it done.  This picture is from the step after the glass was dipped in colored glazes and left to dry before the next step.  You have all sorts of shapes and colors to work with here!

The reveal date will be Wednesday, December 27th.  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 December 27th and join the fun!  I'll leave the link up open for a while... so you have plenty of time to add your links.  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 :: All Things Christmas

 

It's been a while since I have made enough for one of the Art Elements themed challenges to warrant a blog post, but I've actually been fairly busy with holiday themed items lately for a series of online shows I've been a part of over in my friend Anna Pierson's Sagahus Components Facebook Group.  Yay!  

I made a little collection of earrings using upcycled tins pairing them with snowflake charms and really fun Italian glitter resin.  I think my favorites are the ones with the embossed silver snowflakes that I cut from some small storage/gift tins that I snatched up last year at Michael's after the holidays.  

I also made a few more wintery versions of my etched copper earrings that use the leftovers from my Christmas ornaments.  I like the combination of the copper evergreen patterns with pewter charms and luckily I had the perfect niobium ear wires in grey with copper accents.  

I don't always buy a ton of holiday specific artisan beads, but this year maybe I just felt the need for a little extra Christmas cheer.  I snagged some fun enameled charms from Lindy's Designs (left and right below) that I paired with more of the Italian glitter resin.  The middle pair of earrings below are some adorable, slightly mismatched poinsettia ceramic charms by Golem Design Studio paired with vintage German marbled resin and Czech glass.

Necklaces featuring artisan beads with some holiday flair were also on my creative docket.  I bought a set of partridge and pear ceramic lentils from Golem Design Studio at Bead & Button last year and I knew I wanted to make a tree for the little bird!  I used the general idea from one of Heather Power's tutorials to shape the tree out of copper wire and then hammered the whole frame to work harden it.  I then filled in the tree with a mix of seed beads, Czech glass, and Swarovski crystal pearls in colors to coordinate with the ceramic bead.  The middle necklace features a whimsical reindeer enameled pendant by Lindy's Designs strung with tons of Czech glass and some lavender candy jade.  The necklace on the right is a stack of polymer clay goodies from Humblebeads.  Love the the little red bird, it's sweet nest, and the snow kissed pinecone she made.  I added a few elements including some copper plated branches and Czech glass beads.    

If you've been following my creative journey on Instagram or Facebook you know that I've been having lots of fun with beer bottle caps and bead embroidery.  Bell's Brewery has some of the best bottle caps around for their seasonal beers.  They had a holiday ale with a cute Christmas tree on it that has become a couple of pins so far... and I'm still hoping to make one more as a gift but it will probably be late.  The middle pin below is the Fulton Brewing logo but it kind of made me think snowflake surrounded by silver.

Last but not least, I made another batch of saltwater etched Christmas ornaments this year.  It's a fun but sometimes frustrating process as you don't always get a clean or deep etch.  I only had one true failure this year... so that's good!  I really should do some non holiday, non ornament etching at some point... or at least start using some of those things I've done in the past.  New Year's resolution maybe??  

I hope you've enjoyed my little tour through this year's holiday makes!  Wishing you all a joyful holiday season!

Art Elements Theme of the Month December 2019: Handmade Christmas

First off, let me just say that I hope that each and every one of you has had a delightful holiday season... whatever holidays you choose to celebrate.  Our Christmas holiday was spent making and eating tons of yummy food including my very first (and thankfully, quite successful) attempt at making gougeres (also known by me as cheesy poufs!), spending some quality time with good friends that we don't see nearly enough, and finally getting to the new Star Wars movie!

I love the idea of sharing all the handmade goodies that we create this time of the year.  Seeing what other creatives have been up to and how they respond to each theme of the month is always fun, but I especially love seeing the special holiday treats that everyone dreams up.

For me, this handmade holiday challenge reveal isn't too very different from what I did last year, but I thought I'd share what I've been up to anyway since I do have some new designs!  Once again, I went a little bit overboard with the saltwater etching.  I had a friend who has a guillotine cut down a bunch of copper sheet for me into manageable rectangles.  I stamp my images on the copper pieces using rubber stamps and StazOn ink and then etch them using batteries and a hyper-saturated kosher salt solution.  Fun mad science times!!

After the pieces are done etching, I antique them with liver of sulphur, cut my desired shape out, sand and file the edges.  When that's all done, I punch any holes I want and add beads and/or charms and a ribbon to hang them.

Some of the ones I made this year are designs that I used last year and some are totally new for 2019.  Here's what I've managed to make:

Three brand new designs!  

Happy Christmas was new this year... I love the leaf charm and red "berry" beads on this one!

The middle one was new this year and the first one I sold.

I added all of the ornaments that didn't sell in my holiday shows into my Etsy Shop (you can see what I still have for sale HERE).  From that I ended up with a special order for a very specific saying... "Deck Them Halls Y'all!)  Since I didn't have a rubber stamp for that, I had to get creative!  Luckily, Heather Powers had shown us an image transfer technique at her Inspired by Nature Retreat in 2018 so I went to work trying to figure out how to use that for the desired results.  I played around with the words and some holiday graphics in PicMonkey and then got them printed onto transparency film.  From there I was able to transfer the image onto my prepared copper and proceed with the etching and ornament making process.

Special order ornaments.  I'll be making more of this design for next year!

Last but not least I'll share an ornament that's doing double duty for this reveal as well at the last Art Bead Scene Art Journey challenge of the year.  I had pulled a large porcelain snowflake pendant by Nancy Adams of Round Rabbit thinking that I might make a necklace with it for the ABS challenge.  The more I looked at it, the more I thought that it was just too big for me for a necklace.  I switched gears and whipped up a little Christmas ornament that currently is gracing our tree.

That's all that I have for this month, but this is a blog hop.  I hope you'll check out what everyone else created for a Handmade Christmas!

AE team: 

Lindsay

Jenny

Sue

Karen

Claire

Niky

Cathy

Guests: 

Sarajo

Kathy

Mary

Hope

Tammy

Evie and Beth

Divya

Merja

Sarah

Art Elements Ornament Blog Hop!

This is my second ornament blog hop of the month... I participated in on hosted by the Art Bead Scene blog earlier in the month and you can see all the entries HERE.  Now with the Art Elements challenge, I'm continuing with variations on a theme from what I made for the ABS hop and sharing more of my adventures in needle felting and bead embroidering Christmas Ornaments!

This year I decided to try my hand at making some needle felted Christmas ornaments.  I got inspired last year when I saw a blog post by my friend Diana Ptaszynski over on the Art Elements blog.  (You can see her tutorial HERE.)  I was intrigued by the idea and already had some wool roving that I had bought to felt some beads and focals...  now I just needed to collect some cookie cutters and better needles.  I gathered my supplies this fall and got busy once everything had arrived!

Here are a couple of process pictures... 

Me getting all stabby on a Christmas tree.

Some shapes felted but not embellished.

I did a little more bead embroidery on this second batch of ornaments than on the first round.  (You can see my first three attempts HERE if you missed them.)  I think my favorite might be the star!  I lucked out when I went to buy sequins that Michael's had a great multi pack of different colors and sizes as well as a package of little gold stars.  Initially I had thought that I would just needle felt the white stripes onto the candy cane, but I was worried that I wouldn't be able to achieve consistent, straight lines that way.  I decided to do sequin and seed bead stripes instead which adds more sparkle to the mix for sure!  

The only one that I'm not totally thrilled with is my little gingerbread man.  The brown that I was able to find makes him look a bit burnt and I think his expression is sort of demented.  Part of the problem is that the way I did his smile makes it look like a really toothy grin... Maybe I should have tried needle felting a little bit of white to make his eyes and smile.  Thoughts?  Suggestions? 

Thanks for stopping by to check out my second round of needle felted ornaments.  I got a big ol' tub of fun cookie cutters and I hope to make more of these guys in the future... maybe in time for next Christmas!!    This is a blog hop... you can see what everyone else created by using the links below.  

Guest Designers

Kathy Lindemer

Hope Smitheran

Denise McCabe

Paisley Lizard

Samantha Wescott

Sarajo Wentling

Divya N

Linda Newnham

Melissa Trudinger

Art Elements Team

Susan Kennedy

 Caroline Dewison

Laney Mead

Cathy Mendola

Jenny Davies-Reazor

Lesley Watt

Lindsay Starr

Claire Fabian

Niky Sayers

Wishing you all a very happy holiday season!  May it bring you peace and joy!  It will be quiet around here for a bit as I celebrate Christmas with family and friends over the long weekend.  I hope to sneak in some creative time to make new jewelry to share with you before the year is over.



Art Bead Scene Ornament Hop

Every year the Art Bead Scene blog hosts an Ornament Hop where participants are encouraged to make holiday ornaments using handmade components or beads.  While this is their 7th year, it's my first time playing along and I had a blast!

This year I decided to try my hand at making some needle felted Christmas ornaments.  I got inspired last year when I saw a blog post by my friend Diana Ptaszynski over on the Art Jewelry Elements blog.  (You can see her tutorial HERE.)  I was intrigued by the idea and already had some wool roving that I had bought to felt some beads and focals...  now I just needed to collect some cookie cutters and better needles.  I gathered my supplies this fall and got busy once everything had arrived!

Here are a couple of process pictures...  First, me getting all stabby on a Christmas Tree.  I love that, assuming the cat would let me have my lap, I could work on these while stretched out on the couch watching bad tv or movies!

After getting the tree shape all felted, I started playing with how I wanted to embellish the design.  Thanks to Heather Powers for teaching me some basic bead embroidery on the Bead Cruise a few years ago!  (She also taught me how to needle felt and lit that initial spark in me.)

Now, drumroll please, I introduce to you my very first three needle felted ornaments!  I'm pretty pleased with how I was able to felt the eyes and nose of the snowman as well as the top of the stocking.  The snowman's hat isn't quite how I'd like it, but I still think it works.  I've gotten a new set of metal cookie cutters since I did these three and I think the new snowman cutter is going to give a more distinct hat shape.  Time will tell!  I had a large gauge needle that I bought to work with deerskin leather lace that worked great for pulling the ribbon through.  My last step for the tree ornament was to felt some extra wool roving to the back to cover the threads from the embroidery.

Thanks for stopping by to see my ornaments!  I hope you'll stop by the ABS Blog HERE to see what everyone else made too.  Whatever holidays you celebrate, I hope that you have a happy and joyous holiday season!