Keep reading to see the in-focus designs.
Welcome to reveal day for the first annual Bead Peeps Swap ‘n’ Hop. This is a combination jewelry design challenge and blog hop, hostessed by Linda Anderson of Cherry On Top Designs.
Bead Peeps is a group of jewelry hobbyists, artists, and designers on Facebook. The Swap ‘n’ Hop is an event where some of us in that group signed up to swap artisan jewelry components, make jewelry with them, and then share what we’ve made on our blogs. Continue reading
When I was a child, I made arts and crafts things to give to my mom for Mother’s Day. I can’t remember most of them, but I know she treasured and kept them all. There were hand-made cards, macaroni necklaces, macrame plant hangers, crochet pot holders, and misshapen pottery, to name a few.
When I got a little older, I stopped making gifts and began buying them. I don’t know why I thought taking my allowance to the department store to choose a pair of slippers or mass-produced earrings was better than giving handmade. That was also the period in my life when I preferred fast food to home cooking. So, clearly, my judgement was questionable. Continue reading
Art Credit: Beth Miller Petricoin.
I recently had a new logo designed for Paisley Lizard. It’s fabulous. And now I can’t decide which fonts to use with it on my website banners and business cards.
There are too many choices. There are so many typefaces, and then there are color choices and special effects in infinite combinations. How do I decide? Continue reading
This is my first, and hopefully not last, Blu Mudd jewelry design challenge. The way it works is, Moriah Betterly, the artisan behind Blu Mudd, creates components, jewelry designers use them, and the designs are shared on Facebook where a winning design is chosen by popular vote.
Every participating jewelry designer uses the same Blu Mudd components, plus any beads or other components of their choosing. The components for this challenge were a seagull head-shaped pendant, a branch connector, and nest connector. Continue reading
When I saw that Art Jewelry Elements (AJE) was doing a theme challenge for March, and anyone could join in, I got busy designing. The theme for the challenge is March Hares.
To participate, artists needed to design a jewelry component or finished piece of jewelry featuring hares, or rabbits. The AJE team created some amazing rabbit components, and we were also free to use or make a component of our own. Continue reading
Have you ever looked deeply into the eyes of a dragonfly? Martin Amm, the photographer whose macro photos of dew-drop covered dragonflies were chosen for this month’s We’re All Ears earring design challenge, gets you up close and personal with them. And they are truly things of beauty – the photos and the eyes.
Like most insects, dragonflies have multifaceted compound eyes. However, whereas most insects have a few thousand per eye (like around 6,000 in the common housefly), dragonflies have as many as 30,000 facets, or ommatidia, per eye. Ommatidia. What a fun word. Continue reading
Welcome to the third and final blog hop for the B’sue Boutiques Build a Line design challenge. My classmates and I are revealing the jewelry lines we set out to design, and sharing some things we’ve learned along the way, from each other, and from our instructor, Brenda Sue (aka B’sue) Lansdowne of B’sue Boutiques.
If you recall from Part 1 of my posts about this journey, I set out to create a line of “Elemental Lizards” with one necklace for each of the five elements. In Part 2, I showed you the mixed media pendant focals and accent beads I had created, but no finished jewelry designs. (I was saving them for today.) Continue reading
The teaser photo of what I sent my partner.
Phase Two of the first Bead Peeps Swap ‘n’ Hop is completed. My partner and I have exchanged the beads and other components we will be using to design jewelry for this challenge.
Now that we’ve sent and received our respective goodies, I can show you what we each will be working with for this jewelry design challenge and blog hop. Continue reading
Baby barn owl bead by Jetta Bug Jewelry. Photo credit: Rejetta Sellers.
I would like to introduce you to one of my favorite jewelry component artists, Rejetta Sellers of Jetta Bug Jewelry. I am positively addicted to her handcrafted beads.
Rejetta is a genius with polymer clay, sculpting whimsical versions of birds and woodland creatures in amazing detail. All scaled down to the size of beads and charms that can be used in jewelry. She also sculpts flowers, bird houses, feathers and more. Continue reading
The theme for February’s challenge on the Self-Representing Artists in Jewelry Design blog was patinas. Hooray for weathered, worn, and distressed!
A patina is a thin layer that forms on the surface of metals, wood, and stone through age, wear, or exposure to the elements. If you don’t have years to wait for just the right aged effect, you can speed up the process with chemicals and heat, or fake it with pigments. Continue reading