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

                                             

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

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

AJE Earring Reveal Week 7-8/52

Art Jewelry Earring Challenge Reveal

Love earrings?  I do.  So I joined the Art Jewelry Elements 2013 Earring Challenge.  To meet this challenge, participants create a pair of earrings, every week, that features artisan beads or components.  Every other Sunday we join up at Art Jewelry Elements for a blog hop featuring everyone’s earrings.

Emerald Paisley Earrings – Week 7

Copper and emerald-green are such a gorgeous color combination!  For this pair of earrings I started copper paisley headpins by Kristi Bowman Designs.  I love the deep, swirling texture on these headpins and the graceful leaf shape!

Emerald Paisley Earrings

I topped the headpins with amazing lampwork beads by Beads and Botanicals.  Check out the layers of colors in these beauties.  A few little accents of Greek ceramic, fire polish glass and copper were all that was needed to complete these earrings.  They are already across the country in a new home.

close up view

Spring Heather Earrings – Week 8

I love the rich depth of color in the Spring Heather Earrings.     The distinctive disc beads (by Beads and Botanicals)  give these earrings a great artistic flair.  The violet centers are domed and glassy and the black that is near the center is also shiny.  However the outer edge of black is etched and the contrast is really cool.

Spring Heather Earrings

I decided to try out some new wire-working ideas with these earrings.  Each earring is strung on one 6 inch piece of patin’ed brass wire.  I looped on the disc first, then brought a decorative swirl of brass up across the face of the round bead.  The other end of the wire extends straight up from the top bead and forms the ear wire.  Usually ear wires are added on to the dangle at the end, but in this pair of earrings, it is integral to the whole design.  I had fun making these.  The Spring Heather Earrings are available in my Etsy shop.

Spring Heather Earrings

Want to see more gorgeous earrings?  Head on over to the Art Jewelry Elements blog for links to the other Earring Challenge participants!  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

Minty Sweet Necklace

AJE Component of the Month Reveal

Once a month Art Jewelry Elements hosts a component giveaway and reveal.  February’s components were made by the talented Francesca Watson of Francesca Watson Designs.  Each member of the Art Jewelry Elements team, plus five other artists were given an enameled piece that Francesca had made for us.

I received a minty green enameled piece.  I love it because Francesca did multiple firings; adding several layers of color.  It adds so much interest and depth to the piece.  She also added 3 fine silver “pebbles” which are such a pretty accent.

I received the green one on the right.

You may remember that in January and the beginning of February, I was taking an online wire working class from Kerry Bogert.  She had a new project for us, every day for 30 days.  Like many of the students, I didn’t have to the time, then, to keep up with all 30 projects, but I am slowly working through the projects, as time permits, now.  So I decided that, for this necklace, I would make one of the cool bails that Kerry taught us.  I have to say that I am just tickled pink with how it turned out!  Thank you Kerry!

Minty Sweet Necklace

I discovered that Francesca’s enamel matched beautifully with some faceted free-form chrysoprase that I had.  I placed 2 of the chrysoprase beads near the pendant.  Then I added 4 etched lampwork beads by Beads and Botanicals, that also have wonderful layers of color.

Minty Sweet Necklace

I sprinkled in 2 smoky brown and 10 transparent green Czech faceted glass beads and some copper spacers.  The necklace finishes with patinated solid brass chain and a lobster claw style clasp.  I’ll be adding the Minty Sweet Necklace to my shop later this afternoon.

Minty Sweet Necklace

Hop on over to  Art Jewelry Elements and discover what everyone else has created with their gorgeous enameled focal beads!

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

Linda

Linda Landig Jewelry