October Component of the Month - Sugar Skulls

It's my turn to host the AJE component of the month challenge for October. October might be my favorite month of the year because I just love the colors of autumn, Halloween is my favorite holiday, the brisk fresh air, starting up the fireplace again, roasting marshmallows in the fire pit outside, sweaters, doing the final yard clean-up and getting a break from weeding for several months....HA!

So when I was considering what I would offer as the COM, I considered several options. I have a new black kitten in my family to match the black cat we already have. So beads with 2 black cats...very Halloween-ish. I considered an autumn tree so I could kill two birds with one stone and use it for the tree challenge a couple days ago. However, ultimately, I decided I wanted to try my hand at making sugar skulls. There are some beadmakers who create masterpieces of extremely elaborate sugar skulls and they are AMAZING! I am not good at detail because my patience level is pretty low. So I went for a more "primitive" folk art style sugar skulls.

GIVEAWAY NOW CLOSED 

I will be selecting two readers to participate in the design challenge (READ DETAILS BELOW!!!) along with several members of the Art Jewelry Elements team. If you'd like the chance to play along with us here's what you need to know...

• I will give away two sugar skull beads of my choice to two winners selected randomly from those who leave a comment on this post. Please note: your comment must include your email and blog addresses so we can contact you should you win. Comments lacking this info will not be considered.

• Please only leave a comment if you can can commit to creating a finished piece and blogging about it on the reveal date.

• The names of the two winners will be announced on Tuesday October 4th.

• the giveaway is open to participants from all countries but please be aware, components will be mailed from the US and international postage can take up to 3 weeks.
• The blog reveal will take place on Sunday October 30th.

Good luck! And happy beading. 

Fossilised Pebbles - July Component of the Month Reveal

Today I'm hosting the reveal for this months Component of the month challenge which features a selection of my fossilised pebble pendants. Please join us in our blog hop using the links below - I can't wait to see what everyone has designed.

Guests

Sandi Volpe

Claire Fabian

Alison Herrington

AJE team

Lesley Watt

Caroline Dewison

Niky Sayers

Susan Kennedy

Jen Cameron

Jenny Davies-Reazor

Lindsay Starr

Lesley
http://www.theaelements.etsy.com

August Design Challenge - Art Headpins!

New headpin design by Jen Cameron

We interrupt our regularly scheduled component of the month challenge schedule to try something new for the month of August....a headpin challenge. But not just any kind of run of the mill headpin. We're talking fancy schmancy art headpins. Have you ever wanted to try your hand at making art headpins? Or maybe you have several in your stash that you haven't used because you're saving them for a special occasion? Well, dust those puppies off because that special occasion is now.

Headpins by Sue Kennedy. Click photo to see the Etsy listing

What is an art headpin? 

Well...it's a headpin that is handcrafted by an artisan, has been manipulated in a manner that is more than just a ball end, and has the potential to be the centerpiece of a creation rather than just playing a supporting roll.

Headpins by Jen Cameron. Click link to see the listing on her website

What is the challenge?

To create your own art headpin component and/or to use one or more art headpins in a finished piece of jewelry or other creation. Headpins used can be purchased from any artisan.

Headpins by Sue Kennedy. Click the link to see the Etsy listing

Who can participate in this challenge? 

Component designers and jewelry designers, mixed media artists or anyone else who can dream up an art headpin design or a creation using an art headpin.

Headpins by Lesley Watt from several years ago. 

How do I sign up?

1. make sure you have a blog.
2. Email jennifer.glassaddictions @ gmail . com (remove spaces) by August 27th.

When is the reveal and blog hop?

August 30, 2016

This should be a really fun challenge, you should definitely join in!

Fossilised Pebbles - July COM Design Challenge and Giveaway.

So it's my turn to host AJE's July component of the month design challenge and since we're heading into holiday season I've decided to launch it early to give everyone plenty of time.

I live in the south of England very close to the World Heritage Site Jurassic coast - famous for the incredible fossils that can be found there...

http://www.dorsets.co.uk/photos/fossil-forest-jurassic-coast-103.htm

http://jurassiccoast.org/fossilfinder/

I decided to use this as the inspiration for my components and used some of my own deathbed ammonites to create these fossilised pebble pendants. They're made from stoneware clay and I've stained the 'fossil' section with various oxides to give an aged earthy look. The rest of the 'pendant has been glazed to give the smooth appearance of a weathered pebble. The AJE team will be creating jewellery pieces with these components and I will also be giving away a pendant to two of our readers who can then join us in the challenge.

If you'd like the chance to play along with us here's the deal...

• I will give away two pendants of my choice to two winners selected randomly from those who leave a comment on this post. Please note: your comment must include your email and blog addresses so we can contact you should you win.

• Please only leave a comment if you can can commit to creating a finished piece and blogging about it on the reveal date.

• The names of the two winners will be announce on Saturday18th June 2016.

• the giveaway is open to participants from all countries but please be aware, components will be mailed from the UK and international postage can take up to 3 weeks.

• The blog reveal will take place on Saturday 30th July.

Good luck - I'm looking forward to seeing how everyone is inspired!

Component of the Month November - The Reveal

Lichen Cabochons

I've been waiting excitedly all month for today, the reveal day of my Component of the month challenge. The AJE Team plus special guests were each given the choice of a lichen pendant or cabochon to create with and I'm bursting to see what everyone's made... I hope you'll join us in the hop!

Guests

Nicole Prince  

Kathy Lindemer

  

AJE Team

Diana Ptaszynski  

Lesley Watt  

Niky Sayers

Jenny Davies-Reazor  

Susan Kennedy  

Lindsay Starr  

Jennifer Stout Cameron

Kristen Stevens

Linda Landig

Caroline Dewison  

Component of the Month November - The Winners

Thank you to everyone who commented for the chance to win one of my lichen components.

Lichen pendants by Blueberribeads

Reading through your responses has brightened my day... I'd love everyone to be able to play along, but there are just two to give away. So without further ado, the winners for the November Component of the month challenge are...

Nicole Prince - Healing Beading

and

Kathy Lindemer - Bay Moon Design

Congratulations ladies, I will message you today for your postal addresses, and thank you again to everyone!

November Component of The Month

There is no greater inspiration than nature, and this month’s component is inspired by lichens. I love to walk in the local woods, finding these little treasures on the bark of the trees. They make me think of tiny little worlds.

Lichen

The components are made from earthenware clay and have been coloured with a combination of my own recipe glazes. I love how they came out, matt with a crusty finish.

There is a choice of a cabochon or a pendant.

Lichen cabochons

Lichen pendants

Want to play along? Here are the rules…

• I will giveaway 1 lichen cab or pendant (chosen at random) to each of the 2 winners selected randomly from those who leave a comment below this post. Your comment MUST include your EMAIL AND BLOG address so we can contact you should you win.
• Please — only leave a comment if you can commit to creating a finished piece and blogging about it on the reveal date.
• The names of the 2 winners will be announced on Sunday, November 1st, 2015.
• This giveaway is open to UK and international countries, but please be aware that these will be posted from the UK and international addresses will have longer postage times… sometimes up to 3 weeks.
• The blog reveal will take place on Thursday 26th November, 2015. 

Good luck!

September Component Of The Month Reveal

Today is the September Component Of The Month Reveal! Each of the participants received one of these pendants. 

 I can hardly wait to see what everyone created  So let's not waste another moment!  Here are the links to everyone's blogs.

Guests
Carolyn Lawson
Alice Peterson
Diana Ptaszynski

AJE Team
Susan Kennedy
Niky Sayers
Caroline Dewison
Jenny Davies-Reazor 
Linda Landig
Lindsay Starr
Kristen Stevens

~Linda
Linda Landig Jewelry

Fireflies - the AJE Themed Challenge Reveal

Example of amazing photography from Firefly Experience. 

I saw my first fireflies Sunday night while doing a 3 mile run around the neighborhood. It's been unseasonably cold and rainy this year, chasing us indoors. How appropriate just a couple days later we have the June reveal for the AJE firefly/lightning bug theme design challenge, which is open to jewelry designers AND bead/component makers.

Take a look at how this month's theme inspired our participants:

Guest Designers:
Melissa Trudinger - https://beadrecipes.wordpress.com/
Mary Detray - http://www.brassrabbitstudio.com/blog

Keren Panthaki - https://vasdea.wordpress.com
Tammy Adams - http://www.paisleylizard.com/
Veralynne Malone - www.veradesigns.blogspot.com
Terri Del Signore - http://artisticaos.blogspot.com/
Heather Powers - http://www.humblebeads.blogspot.com
Susan Delphine Delaney - https://susandolphindelaney.wordpress.com

AJE Team:
Jenny Davies-Reazor - http://www.jdaviesreazor.com/blog
Lesley Watt - http://www.thegossipinggoddess.blogspot.com
Niky Sayers - http://silverniknats.blogspot.co.uk
Caroline Dewison - http://blueberribeads.co.uk
Jen Cameron - http://www.glassaddictions.com/blog

April Component of the Month Reveal: Little Wood Hearts!

Remember these little heart beads?

I'm so happy that we chose my little hearts for April's CoM challenge… and now today, we finally get to see what lovely creations everyone dreamed up!

Come join us on the tour!

Guests

Karin Grosset Grange

Carol Briody

Rebecca Anderson

Ann Schroeder

AJE Team

Rebekah Payne

Jenny Davies-Reazor

Caroline Dewison

Susan Kennedy

Diana Ptaszynski

Kristen Stevens

Niky Sayers

Lindsay Starr

Rebekah Payne

Blog: treewingsstudio.com
Shop: treewingsstudio.etsy.com

April CoM Winners!

We have winners!!!

Karin G 

Carol Briody

Rebecca

and…
Ann Schroeder 

 One more name fell out so I thought, why not? Let's have 4 giveaway winners!

Congratulations ladies—I'm so excited to see what you each make with my little heart beads!

And thank you to all who commented!

Rebekah Payne

Blog: treewingsstudio.com

Shop: treewingsstudio.etsy.com

February 2015 Component of the Month Reveal

Hi and welcome to the February Component of the Month Challenge/Blog Hop! I had the honor of providing the components for this month, and I chose to create metal clay pieces. After getting a kiln last year, I have been playing with copper and white copper metal clay and am really loving it. For this COM, I decided to carve a rubber stamp and used it as a starting point for all the pieces. It all started with this drawing...

As much as I loved the dots around the design, the carving tool wouldn't really work for them. For the metal clay pieces with extra holes, I used a drill bit while the clay was leather dry.

I hope you will go and show some love to those who have created designs using them!
Here are the participants.

Guest Participants:

Michelle Mach
Patty Miller
Divya N

AJE team:

Jenny Davies-Reazor
Susan Kennedy
Melissa Meman
Rebekah Payne
Lindsay Starr
Kristen Stevens
Francesca Watson
Lesley Watt

February Component of the month by Melissa Meman

I am so desperate for winter to be OVER. While snowfall hasn't been as bad for us as last year, I've been cold since October. So when I got Melissa's February component of the month in the mail a few days ago, I immediately thought summer. I got one of these gorgeous carved flowers, but in white copper. I think it could also be a sun, depending on how you choose to look at it.

I've been considering what I want to put with it, and my murrini addiction has been well documented over the last couple years. So I immediately thought about what murrini matches my idea of summer. 

Here's a brand new mix called Pansy Garden from Lori and Kim (my personal drug dealers murrini suppliers).

But I would have to place another order to get this mix (and that would be wonderful tragic). And I just placed an order like a week ago and got these yummy murrini:

and 

Or even use my "go to" favorite mix used in these beads:

Of the 500 murrini mixes I've bought over the last few years, probably half will showcase the type of summer palette I really want. 

I'm also thinking about using some seed beads, which is totally unusual for me. Also maybe some leather. Matching murrini to seeds already in my stash might be the best method so I don't have to order any....

I've also been working on perfecting the lightbulb link from Cindy Wimmer's Missing Link book (which I really love). I'm getting closer, but trying to decide how long I prefer the "bulb" portion of the link. Yeah, I'm being a bit OCD about the whole thing. 

Maybe I'll sprinkle a lightbulb or two into the design as well. I don't know. But I'm super excited to make the beads, finish it up, and WEAR it. I'm hoping it will inspire Mother Nature to hurry spring and summer along.

In the meantime, if you would like to play along with the February component of the month, it looks like Melissa has a few pieces left in her shop. 

How are you coping with the weather? (Or maybe this is the best time of the year for you?) 

February COM...Metal Clay!

Hi all, it is time to show off the component of the month for February 2015!  I have the honor of providing this month's component. After polling the group, I decided to do some metal clay.

I am new to the medium, but as I talked about in previous posts, love it and strive to find my voice with it!

These are all copper, using the same original carved stamping by me.  The dots around certain designs are actually holes through the design, hard to see in the photo!

Three (3) of you will win components in copper, or white copper, not shown here, to create a design and bring your own unique spin to them, You will then participate in our Component of the Month blog hop!

Leave a comment on this post to win a chance to receive components of my choice and blog about your creative experience! You must have an active blog to participate.  Comments should include blog name and an email to contact you.

I will choose participants on Monday, 1/26/15!

Organizing Art Beads, How I Reached Hoarder Status, and January Component of the Month Challenge

In early December I bought this organizational storage cart at Joann Fabrics at 60% off specifically for organizing my art bead components in the shallow top drawers (I haven't done anything with the deeper drawers yet).

Immediately after getting this storage container, I started filling it up. I had so many treasures from Bead Fest that were still sitting in baggies in my studio and difficult to find, it was just sad. I decided to separate the components by my AJE team from everyone else. And oh. my. gosh. I've reached hoarder status.

This is the top drawer, completely filled with AJE goodies. 

Embarrassing as this is, the good news is we're having a "Use your AJE stash" design challenge this month. While there is no way I could use ALL this in one month, I will be attempting to use more than one component. 

Do you have components by any of the 14 AJE teammates in your stash? (see the list of current team members to the right) It's time to get them out and use them! Just make sure you let us know you want to be part of the blog hop on January 31st by commenting with your blog address below. 

Goodbye to another year!

I've finished my Christmas shopping and the tree is cut and ready for decorating. It's so hard to believe that this year is nearly over! My mind has been filled with ideas, new hopes and plans for the coming year. And of course, reflection on the year that's quickly flying away…

"Joyfulness" My first ever cuff bracelet featuring Jenny's polymer mixed-media focal. I loved creating the layout of the scattered beads and stitching each one in place.

It's been a great year for me—so much better than I had dreamed in a lot of ways! It's been another fabulous year with AJE—I feel honored to be a part of this talented group of inspiring ladies! And it's been such a joy to connect with all you awesomely supportive readers.

"A Love for Autumn" This necklace is my very favorite necklace of the year! I used Melissa's enameled heart, but I gave it a little twist and turned it backwards to create a heart-shaped leaf for an autumn inspired necklace.

One of the things that I've loved most about 2014 was getting back into jewelry making. I had mostly abandoned it for bead-making, but this year I used writing tutorials for AJE and the wonderfully inspiring CoM challenges to push me to create more jewelry. And more and more jewelry! In fact, believe it or not, I've very nearly depleted my entire stash of beads and supplies. I sure hope 2015 will bring me a bigger jewelry supply budget… along with a good sprinkling of art beads to keep me inspired!

I had so much fun writing tutorials for you all! It gave me a good excuse to dig deeper into my little bead stash and create new things.

"Fly with Painted Wings" I really love Kristen's beaded beads!

My goal for jewelry creating this year was to spend as much time as I needed (sometimes that meant I was very late to a challenge reveal!) to make it something that I totally loved—to really develop my voice in my jewelry making. Lots of wire wrapping, working with various fibers and leather… and always trying to dream up new ways to use a component. Looking through my bulging jewelry box I feel that I did just that and I'm so happy!

"Wings of Gold" Caroline's stunning gold moth was quite a challenge for me—probably one of the largest focals I've ever used, but I'm so very pleased with the results.

"A Countryside Spring" This necklace is a relatively simple design, so simple in fact that the only work that is my own is the stringing and arranging of beads. The star of the show is Lesley's button clasp which paired up beautifully with my sister Bethanne's rose pendant and my mom's fabric covered bead cord—it's all about the art jewelry elements!

"Sweet Flower Dreams" Sue's sweet little chicklets were another fun challenge! For this bracelet, I pushed myself to create without any wire or metal components and supplies.

That bulging jewelry box also makes me wonder if I keep too much! I have such a hard time parting with my jewelry, especially when it's become the home of a long coveted art bead from an artist I really admire. With my own bead-making I always keep it in my mind that the bead I am crafting is meant for someone else and I very rarely get attached to a bead I make… but jewelry making is totally different.

"Wood Fern" I am so very thrilled to be one of the first owners of Linda's new ceramic lovelies! I tied it all together with a scrumptious batik ribbon from Karen and added a little creek-pebble for a necklace that will always remind me of the woods that surround my home.

"Crimson Raven" My leather feather paired up with few speckle beads and a couple black rustic beads from Lesley. There's something so fun about using mismatched elements!

"Star Burst" More beaded beads from Kristen!

Still a few more lovelies to inspire in the new year…

All made by the AJE team!

Do I have plans for the new year? You bet! Nothing too big, a couple wild dreams and some realistic goals, but mostly I hope I just get to keep on doing what I love. I'm excited to see where that all will lead me next! And I'm looking forward to sharing in all the new adventures with you all!

I hope you enjoyed this little peek into my jewelry box at some of my jewelry creations from 2014 featuring AJE components. Thank you to my AJE teammates for making all these inspiring lovelies!

Happy Holidays to you all and wishes for a most wonderful and creative New Year!

Rebekah Payne

Tree Wings Studio