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!!

Art Elements Theme of the Month: Stars

This month Laney Mead over at the Art Elements blog chose the theme of "Stars" for the theme of the month.  At first glance, the theme seems pretty specific, but she left it open for a broader approach.

My first design plays on the star of the ocean... the starfish!  I had gotten the idea to put a bunch of Unicorn Beads drops along my bracelet chain (instead of a different type of bead I've been using) from one of my fellow Inspired by Nature retreat goers.  I thought that these turquoise with white, cream, and black had a beach feel and coordinated nicely with the two-holed starfish bead from Heather Powers of Humblebeads.  I added a fun shell charm and some Czech glass beads to the clasp side of the bracelet to finish things off.

I remembered that I had some Twinkiedinky charms that I bought a while back.  They have a quote on them from Mary Poppins by P.L. Travers...  "You can't expect two stars to drop in the same field in the same lifetime."  So the star theme plays out here in words instead of shapes or images, but I've been waiting for an excuse to play with these!

Lastly, I ended up making one Christmas ornament with a star pattern across a heart shape.  I used a borrowed rubber stamped image as the resist for this salt water etched copper.  I added the little dots around the border by hand with a Sharpie.  That one sold at last Sunday's Holiday Market but the other 4 are still available.  :)  I plan to work on another round of these ornaments this week.

This is a blog hop!  Take some time to see what starry creations that everyone else created!

Guest Artists

Jill

Divya

Alysen 

Kathy 

Tammy 

Cat 

Samantha

Anita

Karin

Sarajo - you are here

Rosantia

Kimberly

Art Elements Team

Jen 

Jenny  

Niky 

Laney 

Claire 

Cathy 

Marsha 

Caroline

Susan

Lesley

Honey Do List November 2018

Wow!  I don't know about you, but the time sort of got away from me this month between Thanksgiving and preparations for my first brewery show of the holiday season.  That's why I'm getting this posted a bit later in the day than I had hoped.  

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:

I wanted to use a shot from our trip to the Czech Republic for this month's challenge.  I took a lot of cool architectural shots, but most are pretty lacking in color--something I feel like we need for this kind of challenge.  I thought this art nouveau mural would be fun and full of colors and interesting motifs.  

This was just one of the lovely buildings we saw on our trip in August.  (I swear, one day I'm going to get my pictures off my phone!  Until then, I highly encourage you to check out my husbands blog chronicling our journey.  Here's a link to the first post for Beerploma HERE!)  I love this inspiration photo but really didn't have much in my art bead stash that really worked for it.  Luckily for me Anne Gardanne of Gardanne Beads had a show recently and I snagged not one but two things that ended up being perfect!  (Full disclosure, I bought WAY more than these two things.)

First up I made a pair of earrings with some decal pieces that had a great floral motif.  The colors are more pastel than the inspiration but I think they fit the inspiration.  I paired Anne's lovely enamel work with some faceted prehnite rounds and some tiny pink Czech glass flowers topped with green crystals.

I'm so amazingly happy with the necklace that I made with the cool semi-circle pendant that I snapped up.  Both the colors and the floral/leafy pattern are just perfect, if I do say so myself!  I made links with Czech glass and some dumortierite rounds and finished things off with a pretty brass clasp with a small glass rondelle decorating the toggle side.

An InLinkz Link-up

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Inspired by Reading: The Rules of Magic

I'm a little bit behind on posting my creation for the October installation of the Inspired by Reading Book Club... mostly because I've been crazy busy with shows and travel.  Better late than never, but this is a super short post!

The October selection was The Rules of Magic by Alice Hoffman which is a prequel to her super popular Practical Magic.  While I enjoyed reading the story of the Owens family and how each of the children dealt with the ramifications of the family curse, my creation was more inspired by the cover of the book.  The cover really plays on the time period of the book... the 1960s... and I took my cue from that. 

I was in a frenzy of painting with my Vintaj patina paints and added color to these sweet little daisy or sunflower charms.  I'm super happy with how my paint job turned out with just a tiny hint of bronze on the stem and leaves as well as the center of the happy yellow flowers. 

Sorry for the brevity of this post... but there's so much on my plate right now and I'm zipping off to tackle the next 20 things on my ever-growing to do list!  Enjoy the day!

Inspiration for the November 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:

I wanted to use a shot from our trip to the Czech Republic for this month's challenge.  I took a lot of cool architectural shots, but most are pretty lacking in color--something I feel like we need for this kind of challenge.  I thought this art nouveau mural would be fun and full of colors and interesting motifs.  

The reveal date will be Monday, November 26th so you've got the long Thanksgiving weekend to work on something if you need it.  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 November 26th 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!