End Of Year AJE Earring Challenge

Welcome to the last AJE Earring Challenge Reveal.  We are so happy that you have chosen to play along with us.  I think there must be many of you who, like me, did not have new earrings every single week in 2013, but who made an effort to keep up with the challenge as best you could.  Congratulations to you!

Some of my earrings displayed in a wooden cigar box that team member, Francesca Watson gave me.

I sold a lot of earrings during my last (and only) Christmas show, so I was glad I'd made so many over the course of this past year. I hope that many of the earrings you made have found new homes too.

Two of my earring displays at a recent Christmas show.

Here are a few of the earrings that caught my eye, from the past 2 weeks.

These earring were made by Claire Fabian.  I love the ancient, rustic look she achieved on her handmade polymer components!

This next pair of earrings, by Alice Peterson features beaded beads by AJE team member Kristen Stevens and lampwork by Dancing Frog Jewelry.  The lampwork and beaded beads look spectacular together.

And finally, I want to highlight this pretty pair of earrings by Mon Urkhart. The beautiful bead-woven Forget-Me-Nots were made by Nancy Dale. I was not familiar with Nancy's work until I wrote today's blog post.  Her bead weaving is gasp-worthy!  You should visit her Etsy shop and blog.

Did some of you manage to get all 52 pairs of earrings made?  Please let us know in the comments below. Curious minds want to know!  And congratulations to all of us who took on such a big challenge.

This will be my last post for 2013.  I want to thank all our readers and my teammates for the many ways you have enriched my life this past year.  I wish you the happiest of holidays.

If you have earrings to share this week, be sure to link up for this last reveal.  Enjoy!

Linda
Linda Landig Jewelry – ArtFire 
Linda Landig Jewelry – Etsy

 

Earring Challenge reveal 22 - Weeks 45 & 46/52

Welcome to weeks 45/46 of the Earring challenge.

Hopefully you're not up too early for a Sunday morning. It's going to be a busy week with Thanksgiving and the run up to black Friday. So I think a lazy day of browsing through Pinterest is in order.

We've had some beautiful designs added to the board over the last couple of weeks, here are some of my favourites...

I thought I'd start with this pretty blue set by Kathy Lindemer of Bay Moon Design, featuring ceramics by Marsha Neal. They're ideal for winter with the cool tones of blue.

Next, I've chosen this pair from Kimmy Sayers of Silver NikNats. The lampwork is by Naos Glass and the copper shields are by Kimmy herself. Perfect for this seasons trends of armour inspired jewellery.

And Finally, this gorgeous pair from Kiersten Giles of Lune Designs. You may remember them from Keirsten's guest post where she shared how she created the copper buds, but I don't see any harm in having another look!

Thanks for reading, and thanks to everyone who's posted their designs for this fortnight's reveal.

The next reveal will be on December 8th. If you'd like to join in for the blog hop, use the linky tool below to link up your blogs.

And don't forget to keep pinning! There are just 3 more challenges before the year is over, so lets finish this off with a bang!

Earring Challenge Reveal 10 - Weeks 19 & 20/52

Welcome to the 10th reveal for the AJE challenge and I hope you all are having a fabulous Memorial Day weekend.  Please take a moment to remember all those who give their lives for our freedom.

If you're blogging about your designs then don't forget to add your link at the bottom of this post.

It must be the holiday weekend, because there weren't many earring submissions as I write this.  But I picked some that I thought were great to highlight this reveal!  The first pair are by Mon Urquhart.  While I love the lampwork beads and the swarovski hearts, I really really love her ear wires - they are fantastic!

This next pair is by Pam Sotheran.  I love the brass butterfly charms - perfect for the summer!

Next up we have Renetha Stanziano - again, I love the lampwork beads, but I really love her unique earwires!

And finally, a pair by Kimmy Sayers.  I love the color combination and the swirled eyepin she made!

Please join us in two weeks for another Earring Reveal!  And remember, keep pinning your earrings for a change to be featured on the blog!

Saturday Share:Spring Flowers...Eye Candy and Tutorial

Well, I don't know about you, but I am so ready for Spring to finally show her face!  Today, in my neck of the woods it finally is supposed to be warm and sunny.  This weekend is the noted Cherry Blossom festival in DC, but my cherry blossoms in the Maryland suburbs are definitely not festival worthy! Pretty, yes, but not quite there!

So, I decided to live vicariously by enjoying some Spring flowers created by some of my friends and colleagues and continue the Springtime tour started by Rebekah last Saturday!

Karen Totten; Sue Kennedy

Kristi Bowman; Lesley Watt

Jo Tinley; Rebekah Payne

All these wonderful components would be perfect to add to your AJE Earring Challenge creations!

Next are some gorgeous floral finished pieces...

Linda Landig; Jennifer Cameron

Jenny Davies-Reazor; Melissa Meman

Another way I have been satisfying my flower craving is to create some of my own..I have been playing with copper sheet and making some fun ones...here is one I created for my Bead Soup partner...

Here is a quick "how-to"...especially for metal newbies like me, who haven't gotten the hang of using a jewelry saw yet.

Tools/materials needed:

Copper sheet or discs - any size

set of needle files

sanding block

steel bench block

flush cutters or metal shears

texturing hammers or stamps

metal punches 

round nose pliers

dapping/punch set

patina of choice

• use straight edge and draw lines for as many petals as you would like...they don't have to be perfect...
• use metal punch and punch on the lines, making sure to be right on the edge...I usually do several passes until I get the depth I want.
• with flush cutters or shears, snip the edges off to get the basic shape you want

• repeat snipping on other side
• using needle files, start filing...the triangle one works great in the beginning.
• I like to finish with a soft sanding block...you can get them at the hardware store.  You can see mine is pretty well used!

•  Using texturing hammers of your choice and steel bench block, add whatever texture  you like.  Alternatively, you can stamp designs, use brass design plates, run it through a rolling mill...I use my Big Shot! 
• For the center, I used my center punch and made a bunch of divots
• I usually dome mine at this point, and use my round nose pliers to curve the petals
• These are center punched, antiqued with LOS and tumbled for a nice sheen.  

As you can see, there are all sorts of variations you can do with these...I hope you will give it a try.  I promise to keep practicing with my jewelry saw and will share that progress with you at a later date!  I am anxiously awaiting Melissa Cable's new book "Metal Jewelry in Bloom" to learn some new flower techniques! You can read a great review by our own Jen Cameron here.

Thanks for reading!  Happy Spring!

Melissa Meman

Melismatic Art Jewelry

Art. Life. Love.

Earring Challenge Reveal 5 (weeks 9-10/52)

Welcome to the fifth reveal for the AJE Earring Challenge! First of all, thank you to all of you who have taken part either through the Linky tool at the bottom of the reveal posts or through pinning your creations to the Pinterest board. And congratulations to those of you who have pinned your creations each week especially!

It wasn't easy choosing earrings to show you today,  so I decided to choose designs with one of my favourite colours - turquoise/aqua. Afterall, turquoise has got some green in it, hasn't it, and it is St Patrick's Day! Each person pinning their creations on the Pinterest board must use at least one quality handmade component in their earring design and state who made that component.

Brass findings, homemade polymer headpins and carnelian chips by Janel Goolsby

copper mermaid earrings made by Salmik (Silja Støvring)

flower beads and ear wires by Sue Beads

Bloom Where Your Planted by peachtreeks (Alice Peterson)

Elaine Ray ceramic beads, decorated flat jumprings, peanut seed beads and Thai Silver beads by Julie Panusis

That's all for this reveal! All pins added after the below button will be considered for reveal 6 on 31st March.

Jo Tinley
Daisychain Designs 

 

Earring Challenge Reveal 4 (weeks 7-8/52)

Welcome back to another edition of show and tell from the AJE Earring Challenge Pinterest board from the last two weeks. Each person pinning their creations on the Pinterest board must use at least one quality handmade component in their earring design and state who made that component. While it is really difficult to pick just a few favorites from two whole weeks of earrings, here are the ones I decided to highlight:

Earrings by Kym Hunter using lampwork by Ellen Dooley.

Earrings by Janel Goolsby using her own polymer clay headpins.

Earrings by Silja Stoevring with etched, fire patinated, forged copper.

Earrings by Tari Kahrs, lampwork by Radiant mind, ceramic tubes by Scorched Earth.

Earrings and lampwork beads by Susan Kennedy, ceramic hearts by Marla James.

That's all the eye candy for this week! Keep creating those earrings. All pins added after the below button will be considered for reveal 5, happening March 17.

Show us the earrings you made using handmade art components the last two weeks by linking up below.

-Jen Cameron
Glass Addictions

Pantone Spring 2013 Color Forecast

The Pantone Color Institute produces authoritative quarterly color forecasts. Their forecasts predict which colors will be on trend in fashion, graphics and industry for the upcoming season.

The ten colors you see below will be the hot women's fashion colors for spring 2013. There are 3 shades of green, 2 shades of blue and then 5 other colors.  It's fun to think about mixing and matching these colors with what is already in your closet.  Most of us can't run out and get a new wardrobe to match whatever is "in" at the moment, but it's easy to update an older outfit just by adding jewelry or other accessories in the spring 2013 colors.

                                                          Source: enchantingevents.wordpress.com via Ritu on Pinterest

I thought it would be fun to highlight some finished jewelry as well as some art beads and components that match these trending colors.

This lovely Dusk Blue bracelet bar by Karen Totten of Starry Road Studio would look great with jeans. When designing the bracelet, you could accent the focal with Monaco Blue and maybe a little pop of Emerald or even Nectarine!

If you know me, then you know that I love the color orange in all its variations, which is why I love the Nectarine color in this spring's palette.  Here's a bracelet by Melissa Merman of Melismatic Art Jewelry that I would be wearing all the time!

From Jenny Davies-Reazor comes this Woodland Fairy Forest Sprite focal.  This delightful pendant picks up on the deep Monaco Blue and accents it with the fairy wings in Tender Shoots.  I can see this being strung with some serpentine or aventurine and sodalite, can't you?

These tiny winged heart charms from Tree Wings Studio combine Pantone's Nectarine (or a shade close to it) and Poppy Red colors.  They would make perfect Valentine's Day earrings.

Lastly, I'll share a pair of my earrings, that I made with ceramic components from Marti's Buttons and Beads.  These African Violet colored earrings are accented with Lemon Zest highlights.  This color combination always makes me think of the purple irises I raised as a child and that, in turn, always makes me smile.

There are colors I haven't touched on yet.  If you'd like to see more art jewelry and art jewelry elements in the Pantone colors for spring, let me know in the comments.  If there is an interest, I'll do a follow up post next time.

Just a reminder, the first AJE Earring Challenge reveal will by this Sunday, Jan. 20th!

Linda

Linda Landig Jewelry