AJE Earring Reveal Weeks 20, 21, 22

Art Jewelry Earring Challenge Reveal

Art Jewelry Elements Blog is hosting a year-long Earring Challenge.  Participants agree to create a pair of earrings, every week for a year and their earrings must include art beads.  Every other Sunday we have a blog hop to share what we have made.  Here are my designs for the past 3 weeks.  I was one week behind schedule, but I got caught up this week.

Seafoam Earrings

My earrings, today, are inspired by some of my favorite things.  The Seafoam Earrings were inspired by my love of the sea.  When I need to restore my soul, relax or just get away, I head for the ocean.  These lovely hoops were made by Marsha Neal Studio.  I dangled faceted midnight blue and smooth light blue pearls from the top.

Seafoam Earrings

Garden Idyll Earrings

I love flowers. I love creating floral arrangements and I love walking through our garden and savoring all the magnificent flowers my husband has planted.  With these earring you can even have flowers hanging from your ears!  The ceramic daisies are from Bo Hulley Beads.  I used royal blue artistic wire to accent these earrings and added 5 pretty glass flower beads that look to me like they are climbing up a garden trellis.  At the top I added a little coil of purple artistic wire and then wrapped down the blue wire loop.  I love how playful and happy the Garden Idyll Earrings are.

Garden Idyll Earrings

Evening Merlot Earrings

Um, need I say more?  Love me some wine in the evening.  The Evening Merlot Earrings feature lampwork glass beads by Beads and Botanicals, with glass headpins by Havana Beads.

Evening Merlot Earrings

Want to see more gorgeous earrings?  Head on over to Art Jewelry Elements  for links to the other Earring Reveal blog posts!  We  also have an AJE Earring Challenge Board on Pinterest.

I am always delighted to read your comments!   Hope to hear from you.

Linda

Linda Landig Jewelry – ArtFire 

Linda Landig Jewelry – Etsy

                                             

Blue Skies and Sunshine Necklace

AJE Component of the Month Reveal

Once a month Art Jewelry Elements hosts a component giveaway and reveal. May’s component was made by the talented Sue Kennedy of Sue Beads.  Members of the Art Jewelry Elements team, plus several other artists were each given one of these gorgeous lampwork glass discs that Sue made for us.

Component of the Month by Sue Beads

I received the disc at the top, with the orange center.  I was so delighted, because orange is one of my favorite colors!

Remember last month when I broke one of Jen’s lampwork glass headpins?  This month’s Component of the Month was just the opposite experience.  The necklace went together quickly and easily and I am rather pleased with it.

Blue Skies and Sunshine Necklace

I strung the necklace on orange leather cording, attaching the lampwork disc with a larks head knot. Using waxed linen cording, I dangled a flower bead below the disc.  The flower is accented with a turquoise seed bead and a tiny transparent, peach colored glass teardrop-shaped bead.

Blue Skies and Sunshine Necklace

I placed a turquoise, enameled bead by Barbara Lewis, above the glass disc, completing the pendant portion of the necklace.  The two round, orange ceramic beads were made by Bo Hulley.  The rest of the ceramic and glass beads are commercially made.

Blue Skies and Sunshine Necklace

About 17 years ago, a bead shop near my parents’ house, bought out all the glass buttons from a defunct German button factory.  I bought quite a supply of them back then at a very reasonable price.  One of the orange glass buttons worked  perfectly as a loop and button closure for this necklace.  The necklace measures about 16.5 inches long and the enamel bead will be at about collarbone length on most people.

Blue Skies and Sunshine Necklace

I made this necklace on a gorgeous spring day.  As I looked out my studio window, I noticed that the sky was a clear blue-turquoise, like the beads in the necklace.  That’s how this necklace came to be named the “Blue Skies and Sunshine” necklace!

Want to see more gorgeous  jewelry with these lampwork discs?  Head on over to Art Jewelry Elements  for links to the other Component of the Month blog posts!  

P.S. My blog has a new template!  Did you notice?  Its a cleaner, more modern format.  I’m still working on the heading banner and I need to update my blog roll, but I’m liking it.  How about you?

I am always delighted to read your comments!   Hope to hear from you.

Linda

Linda Landig Jewelry – ArtFire 

Linda Landig Jewelry – Etsy  

AJE Earring Reveal Week 19/52

Art Jewelry Earring Challenge Reveal

Art Jewelry Elements Blog is hosting an Earring Challenge this year.  To meet the challenge, participants agree to create a pair of earrings, every week for a year and their earrings must include art beads.  Every other Sunday we have a blog hop to share what we have made.  Here is my design for last week.  I’m one pair of earrings behind schedule, but I’ll get caught up next week.

My Garden Earrings

My husband is an amazing gardener and I love walking through our yard and admiring everything that is in bloom.  Right now we have irises, rhododendrons, azaleas, lavender, clematis and lots of beauties that I don’t know the names of.  Today’s earrings, the 19th pair of this year’s challenge, were made after a leisurely walk through our garden.

My Garden Earrings

The flower dangles are silver plated and have tiny crystals in their centers,  I topped the flowers with gorgeous lampwork glass beads from Beads and Botanicals.  These beads have swirls of pink, raspberry, gold and orange, with a contrasting black lower section.  The beads have been gently faceted to catch the light and they have a trailing of fine silver accenting the sides.

My Garden Earrings

I placed pink Swarovski crystals above and beneath the lampwork beads, with pretty sterling silver bead caps at the bottom too.  I think the My Garden Earrings represent our garden well.

My Garden Earrings

The My Garden Earrings are available in my Etsy shop.

 

Want to see more gorgeous earrings?  Head on over to Art Jewelry Elements  for links to the other Earring Reveal blog posts!  We  also have an AJE Earring Challenge Board on Pinterest.

I am always delighted to read your comments!   Hope to hear from you.

Linda

Linda Landig Jewelry – ArtFire 

Linda Landig Jewelry – Etsy

                                             

AJE Earring Reveal Weeks 16-17/52

Art Jewelry Earring Challenge Reveal

Love earrings?  I do.  So I joined the Art Jewelry Elements 2013 Earring Challenge.  To meet the challenge, participants must create a pair of earrings every week for a year.  The earrings must contain at least one art bead.  Every other Sunday we have a blog hop to share what we have made.  Here are my designs for the past two weeks.

Ammonite Impression  Earrings

Last weekend I helped  Kristi Bowman with her booth at the Whole Bead Show in Lynnwood, WA.  Spending the weekend with Kristi  inspired me to make more earrings with her copper components.  I made the Ammonite Impression Earrings last Saturday evening, while staying at Kristi’s house.  I used some of Kristi’s deeply textured copper components and a yummy pair of sage green lampwork beads that I bought from Lara Lutrick, one of our booth neighbors at the bead show.

Kristi’s home studio is great fun to poke around in.  She has several different sizes of fossilized ammonites that she uses to make impressions in copper metal clay.  One ammonite is so large it takes two hands to hold it and I’m guessing that it must weigh over 5 lbs.!

Starfish Earrings

My second pair of earrings also features Kristi’s copper, this time in the form of starfish headpins.  When Kristi torch patina’d these, the copper turned a subtle mauve color, which is unusual and very pretty.  On Monday I went to the Bead Factory in Tacoma, with my childhood buddy, Lee Anne, of  Baubles Handcrafted Jewelry.  I found the perfect match for the headpins there.  The beads are the same mauve color as the headpins, and they are made of shell, so they continue the ocean theme.  I could hardly wait to get home and see what the shell beads looked like with the headpins.  They were perfect!  I love it when things all  fall into place, as though they were just meant to be!

Want to see more gorgeous earrings?  Head on over to Art Jewelry Elements  for links to the other Earring Reveal blog posts!  We  also have an AJE Earring Challenge Board on Pinterest.

I am always delighted to read your comments!   Hope to hear from you.

Linda

Linda Landig Jewelry – ArtFire 

Linda Landig Jewelry – Etsy

                                             

Periwinkle Surprise

AJE Component of the Month Reveal

Once a month Art Jewelry Elements hosts a component giveaway and reveal.  March’s component was made by the talented Jennifer Cameron of Jen Cameron Designs.  Members of the Art Jewelry Elements team, plus three other artists were given 2 gorgeous glass head pins that Jen made for us.

These are basically a long thin copper wire with a ball of handmade glass at the end.  I was so excited to be able to use these with a gorgeous floral pendant that I’d been hoarding for a couple of years.  My idea was to thread the head pins through the holes at the top of the pendant and make wrapped loops above the pendant, so it could be attached to a necklace.  The first head pin turned out just like I had imagined it!

I was so excited about this that I decided to show the whole process step by step, when I wired on the 2nd head pin.

So far, so good…..

I was going strong up to this point, but you see that wire that is sticking straight up?  The next step was to wrap it around the area just below the loop.  But it just wouldn’t wrap tightly or lay smoothly, no matter what I did.  So I carefully unwound it and tried again…and again…and again……..until:

Wreckage!  I just about cried.  I loved this pendant.  What followed were a few choice words that I’m not going to print here!

Here are the mangled bits of the trouble-maker head pin..  I carefully unwrapped it, but most of the wire was damaged beyond use and just broke off.  I was left with about an inch or so of useable wire; enough to make a small wrapped loop.

My next step was to cut off the nicely wrapped head pin, but I wasn’t careful enough about where I clipped the wire and I ended up accidentally clipping it in a way that cut off almost the whole head pin!  More choice words……

This is all I had left, in the end.  Sigh.  The head pin on the left had to be tossed.  I trimmed and tweaked the wire a bit on the other one and decided I could still use it as an accent dangle.  So I started over and here’s what I came up with.

Periwinkle Surprise

I named the necklace Periwinkle Surprise, because the result was not what I had planned at first.

Periwinkle Surprise

I must say that Jen’s head pin looks very pretty with this ceramic pendant by White Clover Kiln.

Periwinkle Surprise

I finished the necklace with a gorgeous Czech glass button and loop closure.

Periwinkle Surprise

The moral of the story?  I used to have a friend who told me:  ”If at first you don’t succeed….you’re about average!”

P.S.  When I told Jen about my head pin disaster, she sent me this picture, via Facebook!  Just had to share it!

Winebulance!

Want to see more gorgeous head pin jewelry?  Head on over to Art Jewelry Elements  for links to the other Component of the Month blog posts!  

I am always delighted to read your comments!   Hope to hear from you.

Linda

Linda Landig Jewelry – ArtFire 

Linda Landig Jewelry – Etsy  

AJE Earring Reveal Weeks 14-15/52

Art Jewelry Earring Challenge Reveal

Love earrings?  I do.  So I joined the Art Jewelry Elements 2013 Earring Challenge.  To meet the challenge, participants must create a pair of earrings every week for a year.  The earrings must contain at least one art bead.  Every other Sunday we have a blog hop to share what we have made.  Here are my designs for the past two weeks.

April Bloom Earrings

Next weekend I am going to help  Kristi Bowman with her booth at the Whole Bead Show in Lynnwood, WA.  Naturally, I’ll want to wear jewelry that features Kristi’s awesome metal clay components.  On Friday I wrote a post for the Art Jewelry Elements blog about a necklace I designed with a bronze clay butterfly pendant that Kristi made.  So yesterday I made a pair of coordinating earrings.

April Bloom Earrings

The April Bloom Earrings feature textured bronze clay flowers by Kristi Bowman Design. I paired Kristi’s bronze flowers with Czech glass, Swarovski crystals, seed beads and brass.

April Bloom Earrings

Here are the earrings with the coordinating necklace.

April Bloom Earring, with the Fly Away Necklace

Diamond Delight Earrings

My second pair of earrings also feature bronze flowers by Kristi, but in a little bit different style.

Diamond Delight Earrings

The glass triangle-shaped glass beads are highlighted with crosshatching bronze/brass colored metallic stripes.  The intersecting lines create a diamond in the middle, which inspired me to call these the Diamond Delight earrings.  I topped the glass beads with 4 mm serpentine rounds.

Diamond Delight Earrings

Want to see more gorgeous earrings?  Head on over to Art Jewelry Elements  for links to the other Earring Reveal blog posts!  We  also have an AJE Earring Challenge Board on Pinterest.

I am always delighted to read your comments!   Hope to hear from you.

Linda

Linda Landig Jewelry – ArtFire 

Linda Landig Jewelry – Etsy

                                             

Forest Lodge Bracelet

AJE Component of the Month Reveal

Once a month Art Jewelry Elements hosts a component giveaway and reveal.  March’s components were made by the talented Jo Tinley of Daisy Chain Extra.  Each member of the Art Jewelry Elements team, plus five other artists were given a copper lentil bead that Jo had made for us.  To read more about how Jo made these copper beads, go to Making Hollow Beads.

The beads had different surface textures, as you can see from the pictures.  The bead I received had a textured surface created by the rounded end of a ball peen hammer.

I love the copper beads, but I ran into a couple of challenges while creating my bracelet.  Although challenges can be a bit frustrating, I kind of like the way the problem solving process makes me think more creatively.  I knew I wanted to pair Jo’s copper lentil bead with other flat or lentil shaped beads, but it took a bit of searching to find beads that would not over-power Jo’s bead in terms of color or size.  I finally found a Kazuri bead that was a perfect fit.

Forest Lodge Bracelet

The greater challenge was that I wanted to have multiple strands of glass seed beads in the back of the bracelet.  My plan was to use 5 strands of beading wire.  I wanted the wires to be separated when they ran through the seed beads, but to be strung all together when running through the larger beads.  Nice idea, but it didn’t work.

Forest Lodge Bracelet

It turned out that the copper lentil would only accept one strand of beading wire.  So I needed to figure out a way to taper the number of threads going through the lentil, without letting the mechanics of the transition be visible.  I worked this out by crimping all 5 strands and then  trimming the strands down to one  and hiding the crimps under the solid turquoise beads.  I finished the bracelet with a spiral brass hook I made. I’m  pleased with how it all turned out.

Forest Lodge Bracelet

I named this piece the “Forest Lodge Bracelet” because last week my husband and I took a day trip to the magnificent Lake Quinault Lodge.  Nestled in the woods on the shores of Lake Quinault, this traditional lodge was built in 1926.  Everything about it exudes tranquility and relaxation.  It seemed like the perfect way to name the bracelet!

Lake Quinault Lodge

Lake Quinault Lodge

I really enjoyed designing with Jo’s handmade copper bead and I’d encourage you to check out both her component shop, Daisychain Extra, as well as her jewelry shop, Daisychain Jewellery.  Now go have fun discovering what the other jewelry designers have created with these copper lentil beads!  Just click on the picture below to get links to the other participating blogs.

I am always delighted to read your comments!  Hope to hear from you.

Linda

Linda Landig Jewelry – ArtFire 

Linda Landig Jewelry – Etsy

 

AJE Earring Reveal Weeks #11/52

Art Jewelry Earring Challenge Reveal

Love earrings?  I do.  So I joined the Art Jewelry Elements 2013 Earring Challenge.  To meet the challenge, participants must create a pair of earrings every week for a year.  The earrings must contain at least one art bead.  Every other Sunday we have a blog hop to share what we have made.  Here are my designs for the past two weeks.

Copper Heart Earrings

When Art Jewelry Elements team member, Jo Tinley, sent me her Component of the Month bead, she included a bonus gift of two cute copper heart charms she made.  It is amazing to me that she can saw such tiny shapes out of copper, with such precision.  Having done that, she textured them, punched the holes and patina’ed them in a rich reddish/brown color.  I wired her hearts onto lampwork glass triangles by Unicorne Beads.  The tappering shapes of the hearts, echos the tappering shapes of the triangles.  Somehow that repeating line element is very pleasing to me.

Copper Heart Earrings

Copper Heart Earrings

Copper Heart Earrings

The Copper Heart Earrings are available in my Etsy shop.

Where Are Earrings #12?

Um, Earrings #12 are designed in my head, but I haven’t actually made them yet.  If I can get them done on Sunday, I will add them here.  I just ran out of time!  This is Spring Break week for the student teachers that I supervise for the University of Washington, so I’m hoping to use my extra free time to catch up on some jewelry projects and take a couple of day trips with Mr. L.

Wishing each of you a Happy Easter and a lovely springtime!

(This is an old pottery bunny that we saw in a museum in Oaxaca, Mexico, last November).

Happy Easter!

I am always delighted to read your comments!   Hope to hear from you.

Linda

Linda Landig Jewelry

On Broadway

 Tuesday News Day

Welcome to News Day Tuesday -  the day for jewelry updates and snippets of life

On Broadway

The Broadway Center For The Performing Arts is hosting a fundraising auction, in support of providing performing arts opportunities for young people, in Tacoma, WA.  The person in charge of the auction visited Catwalk Gallery, saw my work there and asked if I could contribute an item to the auction.

All proceeds from Star Chefs on Broadway support a stellar cause: The largest arts in education program in Washington State, serving 35,000 students and teachers per year. For most of these kids, the Broadway Center is their only arts experience of any kind. Many face a tough mix of economic need, cultural barriers, geographic and social isolation. No child is ever turned away because of the inability to pay. This year, with your help, we’ll raise more than $300,000 through silent and live auctions to help these kids access vital arts education programs, from school matinée performances to youth violence prevention programs, and from original touring shows celebrating the legacy of Martin Luther King Jr. to year round classes and workshops.

 

Here’s the necklace that I designed for the Broadway Center’s auction.  The necklace features lampwork glass by Beads and Botanicals and Genea Beads, plus ceramic beads from Gaea.

Sea Love Necklace

Bunny Love

I was lucky enough to snag a bunny pendant from Nancy Schindler of  Round Rabbit Extra!  Nancy’s work is so sought after that the moment she posts something new, it sells out.  I just happened to be at the right place at the right time!

I love bunnies – not just at Easter –  but all year round.  Who can resist their so-soft fur, wiggly noses, and bunny ears?  Melt.  I had a German professor in college that had a pet bunny that was trained to use a kitty litter box.  So therefore the bunny didn’t need to be caged.  She just hopped all around his house.  I thought it was so cool!

Bunny Love Necklace

I am always delighted to read your comments!  Hope to hear from you.

Linda

Linda Landig Jewelry – ArtFire 

Linda Landig Jewelry – Etsy

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      

AJE Earring Reveal Weeks 9-10/52

Art Jewelry Earring Challenge Reveal

Love earrings?  I do.  So I joined the Art Jewelry Elements 2013 Earring Challenge.  To meet the challenge, participants must create a pair of earrings every week for a year.  The earrings must contain at least one art bead.  Every other Sunday we have a blog hop to share what we have made.  Here are my designs for the past two weeks.

Hibiscus Earrings

Kristi Bowman, who is well-known for her awesome copper components, is branching out to include polymer clay components as well.  A couple of AJE team members snagged some of her first creations.  I was so excited to receive these gorgeous hibiscus flowers!  Aren’t they awesome?  I can’t wait to see what else Kristi comes up with!

Hibiscus Earrings

Squiggle Earrings

This pair of earrings features ceramic oblong dangles by Marla’s Mud.  I love the layers of color that she infused these components with.  I wanted to pull out the blue tones, so I topped the ceramic with some etched sodalite stones.  Then I created a pair of textured, brass wire squiggles to hang down the front of the ceramic pieces.

Now I suggest that you click here to go to the AJE blog, where you’ll find links to all the other Art Jewelry Earring participants.  So much beauty and inspiration to enjoy there today!  Have fun!

I am always delighted to read your comments!   Hope to hear from you.

Linda

Linda Landig Jewelry