Chain of hearts

The beads have been calling to me quite loudly for a while, but with my thumb being stupid, the big projects on my list were still out, so I thought it needed something simple for them to be satisfied for now.
Simple usually means something familiar that I don't have to think much about - experimenting often means ripping out and several attempts - and which I can easily take a break from without risking it turning into a case for the infamous WIP drawer.

This chain of hearts was a perfect little project for that.
Earrings are not my strong suit because I often don't remember what exactly I did with the first one (experiments!) to repeat it for the second one or I'm just getting bored after the first one.
For these earrings I only made one heart at a time over the last few weeks, quick enough to not get bored or stress out my hand. 

I used pearly white seed beads in the sizes 8, 11, and 15 seed beads.
Originally, I had planned to use tiny ceramic hearts made by my friend for the bottom. I had put them in a safe place specifically for this ... Erm, does anyone know where that safe place is? I found the tiny stars, the owls, the foxes, the blueberries ... I found everything but the hearts. So I decided to try size 15 hearts for the first time and although it was a bit fiddly, I think they turned out very cute.

I have no doubt that the hearts are going to turn up in the next few days now that they are not needed immediately.
As that touch of color from the ceramic hearts was missing now, I added a silver bead embellishment instead.
Do you think I should have added tiny hearts in a completely different color?

The beach is calling

Our bi-monthly challenge mistress at the Jewelry Artisans Community has been messing with our minds. The challenge is bi-monthly, by the way, not the mistress. See how my mind is already messed up?? ;-)
Let me try this again. Every two months we have a theme challenge at JAC and the good lady chose matching earrings. Great. We all know that matching earrings can be very hit and miss for me. Nevertheless I made some, only to find that she had changed the theme to beach to make it easier for us busy people. Serves me right for skipping that one post.

Beach, beach, beach, there was the beach in Wales we never found despite the signs (I still think they were fake and just meant to lure me into a field full of cows). The only beach I really remember was the one near Bodega Bay. Such a long time ago that I was there the last time, more than 20 years!
Seagulls, weird stuff on the sand - probably algae and remains of jellyfish - sand dollars, other birds and shells ... I knew it would be shells.
Shells are so easy to use in jewelry and I had a bunch of bigger ones that I had been gifted by a co-worker. I have netted shells and crocheted around them with wire, I made them from polymer clay, but you may have noticed, I'm having a lot of fun with bead embroidery lately. Sorry if it gets boring, guys.

The hardest part was to choose one of the shells, and once I had glued it onto the backing, the next hardest part was to decide what to do with it now. Actually I thought it was pretty without adding too much to it, and as luck had it, I happened to have the perfect beads to make a bezel in the colors of the shell itself. For a moment I was tempted to just leave it like that, but then added one single row of bronze metallic beads for contrast.
Now it needed a few pearls. I know, I know, that's not original at all, but shells just scream for pearls.
My first idea was to add one row, but then my dangle addiction raised its omnipresent head and I couldn't stop myself from making a little fringe in the center.

The last decision to make was the chain. I thought about a bail, hidden or not, two bails, chain, cord, everything I didn't have, so I ordered beads for a simple beaded rope.
Voilà, here we go!
Do you think it will please the challenge mistress?

Oldies but Goodies - More dangles

We are back! The Jewelry Artisans Community Oldies but Goodies Challenge had taken a little break, but now we are back. I'm happy to say that I can show you a few beautiful pieces, and there are so many more at the original thread that I couldn't fit into the collage without making the individual pictures very small, so please have a look over at JAC!
This week's topic were "Dangles". We already did those a little less than a year ago and how many dangles can you have? Never enough, that's how many! ;-)

Last time I told you the story about a pair of dangly earrings I gave to a friend.
This time I'll tell you about the time my friend (a different one) and I got our ears pierced. First of all I should mention that we were both a bit wimpy about this. We even had an agreement that we wouldn't get our ears pierced before we were, well, old. Anything is old when you are a teenager. Then, however, my friend pushed the matter. She gave me a voucher for an ear piercing for my birthday, knowing very well that I would just give her one back for her birthday which is only eight days later!

So we went off together. To be honest, I don't remember ever asking my mother if this was okay, but I must have because I don't think they would have done it otherwise. We had already picked our "medical" - as in non-allergic - post earrings, just tiny bezel set rhinestones that came in all kinds of colors. Mine were a light blue.
We dealt with this very responsibly. We had the little bottle with the disinfecting fluid and cleaned both our ear lobes and our earrings every day. We turned the posts in our ears to make sure the hole wouldn't close in on them. Yeah, that was sold to us as a real danger then, and we imagined how the earrings would be stuck in our ears forever, aaaaaaah!
Then after a month when we were "officially" allowed to remove the posts, we went to a shop to buy real earrings, real meaning crazy, modern, long, flashy, dangly! I miss that shop. They had clothes and fashion jewelry, and I often tried on stuff there that I would never have been able to buy. It's funny because even then I wasn't big on fashion. I remember them having a pair of purple jeans that I loved so much, but I couldn't afford them.

Enough talk now, though, time for some pictures. A drumroll please!

1 The Crafty Chimp
2 Jewelry Art by Dawn
3 MC Stoneworks
4 Togan
5 RioRita
6 Bijou Bead Boutique
7 Cat's Wire

P.S. For your amusement I thought I'd show you some of the earrings I used to wear in the olden days, just the dangly ones. Of course these are not by far all of those I used to have or maybe still have in a drawer. Some of them are just leftover parts, often one of them is missing or they lost their earwires - I probably have the biggest collection of single earrings in the world ;-) - but they don't take up much space in my little earring memory box.
What's funny is that I still remember where I got most of them or I know a story connected to them, for example where I lost the second one. I'm surprised myself that quite a few are sterling silver, probably I threw the broken cheap ones out a long time ago.
And honestly, who wouldn't want to wear a pair of silver lobsters in their ears? ;-)

P.P.S. Unbelievable. I thought I had imagined still having one of my first earrings, but here it is, 40 years old.

 

Tackle that stash - Dangly earrings

Ouch, has it really been over a month that I have been here last time?
Granted, I did spend a lot of time with a personal project, bead loomed portraits of my siblings and me (one still missing) which I am not allowed to show.

I did find the time for a small stash tackler, though.
This mix of little semiprecious drops had been in my stash for about ten years. I had used a few of them, but forgot about the rest until I happened to find in a drawer - yes, I know, me and my drawers - just a few days ago. That baggie had been wandering from here to there, and now it ended up on the little table next to my computer chair (that was supposed to hold only my old laptop, but also became a spot for things that wait to be moved to their final destination, books, DVDs, CDs etc.).
Ten years of travelling are enough ;-) I spontaneously decided to wrap the stones up in copper which I gave a light patina and to put them on a chain.
I love dangly earrings!

Oldies but Goodies - Dangles

Last Saturday I told you a story about my friend and myself going to the local office supply store and buying sealing wax and stamps.
Today I'll tell you a story about one of our jewelry stores that took place around the same time, in the late 70s.
That store was called "Jewelry Chest" and, honestly, once I was grown up enough I felt a little sorry for the staff there. The "Jewelry Chest" had a sister store called "Jewelry Safe", an ordinary jewelry store. Ordinary at least to us teenagers. They sold the real stuff, gold, gemstones, watches, way out of our budget.

The "Jewelry Chest", however, had little trinkets and decorations, from small animals carved from quartz to what we would call boho jewelry today, affordable silver pieces and more. It was heaven for us teenagers. I'm surprised I never stuck to that window with my nose because I couldn't resist it. Of course we bought friendship rings there (there may be another Saturday story in there) or we went just in to browse a little which I can't remember ever being discouraged, by the way, no matter if we bought something or not.

One day I finally had the money to buy a special birthday gift for one of my friends, a pair of dangly earrings from sterling silver (much of the silver jewelry still was 835 instead of the 925 at that time) that cost me incredible 32 DM. That was a lot of money for me back then, but my friend's family had always been so nice to me. They even took me with them for a vacation once, so I wanted to show that I appreciated it.
I had been so excited about these earrings. I had to go there all the time to see if they were still there. I loved them so much that I couldn't imagine anyone else not loving them. There was one little silver ball with two more little silver balls dangling from it on chains. Nothing that unusual, you may think now, but apparently I have always had a thing for dangles!
To present them in style I knitted a doll with yellow yarn braids and stuck the earrings in the head at the spots where the ears would be.
The birthday came and guess what. My friend didn't seem excited at all. She barely even looked at them. I don't know why, I really don't remember anymore if that was a style of earrings she never wore and if I had simply chosen what I liked instead of what she might have wanted. Then again I was only 13 and not always very wise. Okay, I'm still not always very wise, but maybe a little more than 40 years ago.
I wasn't mad at her, by the way. Maybe I regretted that I couldn't take the earrings back to keep them myself, but I never forgot that feeling when I walked out of the store to look into the little paper bag, and it's a good memory.

So why have I told you that story at all? Kudos to you if you made it all the way through. Dangles were this week's topic at the Jewelry Artisans Community Oldies but Goodies Challenge, just what I like :-D
I hope you will, too.

1 and 8 The Crafty Chimp
2 and 7 Jewelry Art by Dawn
3 and 5 MC Stoneworks
4 and 6 Cat's Wire

Tackle that stash - More dangly earrings

I love dangly earrings, have I told you that before? ;-) Yeah, yeah, I know I have.
What coincidence that I found a pair of lampwork cabochons that practically begged to be earrings in my stash.
The golden wire knit settings and the shimmering golden AB cubes that dangle from them are a beautiful contrast to the organic colors and patterns of the cabs, and the rows of tiny black onyx beads are a special accent.

Tackle that stash - Earrings with movement

Welcome back to "Tackle that stash"!
As a matter of fact this time I didn't not only tackle the stash, but also a second problem that I - and not just I - have. WIPs - works in progress. Those WIPs are driving me insane. There are those that are missing that last little spark that you just can't find. Or those that have a problem you haven't solved yet or that can only be solved by frogging. How about those that didn't work out the way you thought they would, but somewhere deep within you still know/feel/hope you can save them? Not to forget about those you have forgotten - how very paradox, isn't it?

This pair of earrings used to be almost every kind of WIP.
First it was a pair of earrings that I wasn't very happy about because it was missing something.
Then it was a pair of earrings that I started ripping up because I hadn't solved the problem of the missing something.
When I gave up on the thought of saving them, I ripped until I had two blue disks left and then I forgot about those. I have this vicious bowl eating that kind of stripped down WIPs ... and coins ... and paper clips ... and single earwires ... and had I mentioned the stripped down WIPs?

Well, I found them, and I gave them a silver edging, but they did need more than that, so I went through my stash drawers and found all the wonderful dagger beads I have which were just perfect. Finally I found the silver beads for that little shine in the middle - and voilà!
I know they look a little as if they were inspired by a dreamcatcher, but actually they were not. I just love dangles!

You can find them in my shop now, and looking at all the daggers I still have, it doesn't seem impossible there will be more color variations eventually.

Movement

Surpriiiiiiise! It's me! Alive ... kind of, the heat isn't helping. Kicking ... sure, mostly things that won't hurt my foot, but help me to let out some of the frustration. Determined ... as heck!

Moving? Hm.

Actually movement is this months's Jewelry Artisans Community blog carnival theme.

Things are moving eternally. Planets, stars, rivers, animals - not my cats at the moment, they are mostly passing out from the heat - cars and socks. Not sure what kind of movement socks prefer, but they must move or I wouldn't have ended up with one white and one black one after folding laundry.

I'm moving sometimes, if not the whole me, then at least my hands ;-) Typing, looming, crocheting, knitting.

I'm sure you noticed the very clever bridge I created for myself to get to the jewelry.

I have never really thought that much about movement in jewelry before. Spontaneously I think of spinner rings, then those gold clown/harlequin pendants with the movable arms and legs that were so popular, no idea if they still are, I'm not a big fan of clowns. Maybe you remember my teddy pendant, also with movable arms and legs.

For me it's mostly about dangles, I guess. I have always been fascinated by dangling earrings. I remember when I was about 12 or so. A shop had new clip-on earrings, but finally not the bulky ones that you could only wear with a costume and made you feel old, like at least 25. No, there was the clip-on part, a long chain hanging from it and charms. Ah, they were so expensive for a young girl, 15 DM back then, I'll never forget that, but one pair I had to have, with tiny four-leaf clovers.

Then when I got my ears pierced, there was no stopping me. When packing up things I found a few of my "treasures" from that early time and except for a few pair of hoops they were all the dangly kind.

And then there came the bead looming and the little dangles on the chain I used for the closures on my cuffs. Lampwork, Swarovski crystals, no way I could leave one without a dangle.

What really took the prize however was when I learned to make brick stitch extensions, so perfect to hang something from them. I'll let the following pictures speak for themselves and just tell you to be scared or excited - there are new designs shaping in my head already.

Bleeding Hearts

Bollywood Bells

I vill bite you

 Also take a look at the other JAC members' posts and their take on "movement"! I'll add more links as I get them.

Bead Sophisticate

Islandgirl's Insights
N Valentine Studio
Violetmoon's Corner 
J3 Jewelry