Checker Huggie Earrings, Definitely Ska

While I was on on roll making huggie earrings, I went with a bunch of checker options. Checker is basically a baseline in my own wardrobe so it's nice to have the go-to black and white ones along with some colors depending on what I'm feeling like that day. The original black and white ones I was wear sold over the holidays so I had to start with a new pair of those.

Black and White Checker Huggie Earrings

My obsession with checker melds somewhere within my love of ska or "two-tone" music and love of nice even numbers, particularly multiples of 4. You may notice these are all 8 beads wide, the checkers in 4s. It's just very satisfying for me to work this way. 

Black and Blue Checker Huggie Earrings

I'm getting into whatever colors inspire me. Orange has been on the forefront for the last year: 

Black and Orange Checker Huggie Earrings

Purple is a staple in my life along with checkers: 

Black and Faceted Purple Huggie Earrings

I also made a pair of lime green and black ones, but Bruce has been playing on my table in the studio and I think he must have hid them somewhere on me. I have been digging around for them hoping to get them posted (or make a new pair) but alas, I'll just have to wait for them to turn up in a studio cleaning session. I am on to beading other things to send to the Crooked Tree Arts Center Shop in Traverse City.

Pantone Color of 2024: Peach Fuzz Bracelet and Huggie Earrings

I usually like to do something with the Pantone Color of the year when it comes out, this year is Peach Fuzz, which doesn't feel very exciting for me but I like how it's being paired with lavender so I decided to try it out on some jewelry. 

I made these a couple of months ago and just couldn't get back into the colors. When I think of pastels along side my artwork it just doesn't fit and they tend to end up in my jewelry stock for a long time. When the artist is uninspired, it tends to show. So I stopped after this bracelet and earrings. Maybe something else will come to me, but my bead palette seems to have already moved on from these colors. (See: Golden Boundary Bangle) Oh well, I tried. 

The last 2 years' colors were much more fun for me, 2023 was Viva Magenta and 2022 was Very Peri. 

I will admit that taking the photos and editing them for this post is making me like this set a bit more. I'll also blame the season changing. It's finally starting to get green and bright, I'm noticing more people wearing these colors in particular as the sunshine begins to promise us summer. Maybe, just maybe I'll try again if these colors call again.

4 Pod Earrings for Brave New World Reception

Sometimes I miss planning outfits for work and I definitely miss the automatic jewelry design and color inspiration that comes with thinking about what I should wear to dress up for work or something important. Now that my day job has me happily at a "working warehouse" I no longer have to make sure I'm wearing and looking a certain "brand." So I was excited about going through my closet to put together something for this important exhibit reception. I hadn't showed this many pieces in one place in a very long time and I was honored to be invited to show with this noteworthy group of fiber artists.

 The first step for this outfit was the shoes that I had finally decided to bite the bullet and purchase. I had been looking at them for months. I love John Fluevog shoes but I rarely have a reason to get dressed up anymore, still, I needed the Daisy Monster Mash in my collection when they went on sale. These were perfect for the "Brave New World: Fiber Art in the 21st Century" exhibit that I had a number of pieces showing at. The shoes got lots of attention along with the art.

Then do I wear a skirt or pants? The reception was over an hour away and was going to be an all day event so I opted for dress pants leftover from my days at Talbots and a favorite lavender tank with pattern details that went well with the pants from White House Black Market. I always prefer to have a tank or tee on and then I can layer it with a sweater/cardigan/zip hoodie if it gets cold.  The reception was on a warmish day and we had so many people attend that it got hot in the gallery.

So I had about a week to create a "statement" piece of jewelry. Only enough time for earrings, but at the very least big earrings I decided I should be able to put together. Besides, I didn't have a set of triple pod earrings in this color range yet. 

As I started beading pods, I let them talk to me as to how they wanted to be organized. Only three pods didn't seem to be suiting the layout with my chosen beads so a fourth pod was added to create an earring that flares nicely at the bottom half of the design.  These are currently, as of this post, available on my website for sale HERE.

Mixed Stitches Curve Bangle (Experimental)

This piece started with my desire to get a curved St. Petersburg chain into my bangle design.  In it, not just attached to it. I started sketching and doodling, but at the end of the day I don't have a specific method of integrating these two ideas so I had to start making pieces.

First I didn't know what I wanted the middle accent bead of the curved pieces to be so I started there.  I knew I wanted to use the navy blue 15/0's as the main color and just started stitching rows with the different accent beads I had chosen.

I picked a middle faceted seed bead for the navy St. Petersburg chain and proceeded to start making short strips of it.  I had figured how much arching it could possibly take in this size and about the right length.  I also figured only 4 total would fit within the bangle structure I was planning, 2 on each side. This was way more planning than I usually like to do with my beading but I really really needed this design idea to get out of my head and into an actual form. I didn't know if it would "work" or not.

I tried to keep the bangles designs for the outside parts easy and not too busy. Working a kind-of blended horizontal stripe in the colors of the dress I was matching, I prepared these pieces separately. Eventually it was pieced together and its...ok.  I stopped before I got to filling in the whole piece with beads (which was my original plan). Leaving it open allowed for the St. Petersburg Chain arches to try to hold their own. If I kept beading and filled it in the chain would have gotten lost and there would have been no point putting in all the extra effort to make it in this way. I think. I could be wrong. 

It was as finished as I thought it should be. I let it sit, I wore it to Abigail's wedding layered with some other beaded pieces. It's fine but I'm not in love with it. I thought it had the potential to be a piece I could submit to exhibits but it's not there and the design kind-of fell flat for me. Sometimes our ideas are much more glorious in our minds and the reality isn't as exciting. I'm perfectly fine with not-exciting though. I think it's going to grow on me a bit more and it could be that start to something else in the future. It is time to move on to another project with different colors. I think I've been looking a blends of blues and purples for too long now and they're wearing on me. Onward and upward.

Open Circle Chain Earrings

 

Open Circle Chain Multi Fade Earrings .33in W x 2.5in H x 1in D

Do you ever finish a piece, take a few photos and think "those are even more amazing then I realized"? I have been loving the earrings in the above and below photographs. They go with my entire wardrobe (black, purple, muted greens) and are my current favorite go-to earrings. They are 2.5 inches long and because they are glass seed beads they are very lightweight which is important. I know I need lightweight in my ears these days but I still want to wear statement pieces.  I made this dark and moody multi colored set sometime after the holidays and I am just now getting around to getting photos and posting. 

I was dragging my feet on posting about these Circle Chain earrings because I have been wanting to make more but I keep getting distracted with other projects. Then the inspiration hit me to try out St. Petersburg Chain Stitch side by side with peyote (more to come as this idea brews more). So I set off on the below earrings:

Open Circle Chain St. Petersburg Earrings .33in W x 2.5in H x 1in D

This navy/purple/lavender set has a peyote stitch circle (mini bangle?) with a St. Petersburg chain loop.  The way I stitch St. Petersburg Chain it doesn't have the same kind of structure as its below circle.  I think this adds a nice little change in the shape and swing of this design. 

When I am coming up on teaching specific stitches it makes me think about other ways I can apply them, so these earrings are a little bit prompted by the St. Petersburg Chain Stitch Bracelet class that I am teaching with the Midwest Weaver's Conference in June.  Check out their classes and registration HERE. I still have plenty of room in both of my classes (I'm also teaching the Russian Leaf Stitch)

Then I got back to checkers. 

I made this first checker style earring in a color fade which I wore the NYE that we got engaged. I can't seem to part with that set just yet, I wear the earrings all the time and get tons of compliments. I had been meaning to make more so below is the first set that will be available for purchase.

Open Circle Chain Checker Earrings .5in W x 3in H x 1in D

Speaking of being able to purchase; I will have my jewelry at a 1-day Pop-up show at Gutman Gallery. It's on Saturday, March 18th and my pop-up will be in conjunction with a ceramic artist named Kris Cravens. I look forward to seeing and selling, I haven't done so since December. 

"Open Circle Chain" still feels like a mouthful for the name of these earrings. I had a few responses on my social media about ideas for names of these babies and this variation settled in the best in my mind. I think I'll be able to remember it to reference regularly.

CCFF Bangle in Fall 2022 Color Fade

This bangle design started with the Capital City Film Festival Design for the 2018 year.  The design is on one of my favorite tee shirts from volunteering for CCFF. The dress that I wore to the Opening Night event was a black and white with similar angles and lines so I had created this bangle to go with it in black and white. The first bangle design can be seen HERE.

I don't often revisit designs but I wanted to play with color fades with black and I needed a break from checkers (just a short break) and this was perfect to go back to.

I had pulled a bunch of colors in late summer and these were some of the delicas that I still had set aside. I really love every color blended together in this variation. The individual seed beads are a mix of metallic, matte, cut, color lined...the coolest ones are a clear green glass with a plum color lining the hole of the beads which give them a really unique effect.

Of course I made some earrings to match and the set is ready to go. It made it's debut at Midnight Madness in Ann Arbor last Friday night and got a few Oooos and Ahhhhs. The Pac-Man Bangle was by far the most frequently picked up piece though. 

I'm going to post the earrings and the bangle for sale in my Website Shop soon also. 

 

Fall/Winter Jewelry at Lansing Art Gallery

 

A few weeks ago, I dropped a fresh color pallet of jewelry off to the Lansing Art Gallery for their Michigan Made Holiday Show. I've been working on pieces for our wedding so much that I didn't realize how badly I needed a color change. As much as I will always default back to purple and green, I was really excited to pack up a whole bunch of new bead colors. I gathered and had to thin down beads for the train ride to Chicago for our honeymoon. I didn't get as much beading done in those 6 days that I thought I would. Which is good, because it means I was not stressed about producing and I was enjoying our honeymoon moments. 

I started with this wide St. Petersburg Chain bracelet, just to get my colors lined up and see how I liked them together. It has some fall colors but still includes plenty of pops of brights that I've been enjoying working with.

Leaf Clasp Bracelet

5-Leaf Daphne Necklace Variation

This necklace can be worn off-center or with the leaves in the middle.

Tiny pod earrings

Hints of muted turquoise are running rampant through my beading right now. I'm sure I'll get tired of it soon. The weather has started to change and I'm feeling like crawling into yarns with my weaving and knitting. If you'd like to shop this collection, they will be at the Opening Reception for the 2022 Michigan Made Holiday Art Market; Thursday November 10, 5-8pm.  I'll be by that night too!

Fishnet Stained Glass Bangle Bracelet

I'm always inspired by fashion; it flows so easily into my process of creating new designs for my jewelry. I have so many clothes and should be buying more but every once in a while a fresh dress for an event is nice to get.  Lately I've been picking up some great pieces on Poshmark that are really inexpensive. (Like 2 dresses for our wedding for under $100 for the two of them...seriously).  I was so excited that the Capital City Film Fest is back on this year that I purchased a dress I've been eyeing in a color I rarely wear; red. It still has purple in it (my go-to color), but it feels like it's mainly red.

I have been leaning into styling more punk rock looks and decided that this dress would be fun with a pair of fishnets and my new tall purple John Fluevog boots. Planning this outfit led to what jewelry I might make to go with it. Fishnet. I have been integrating fishnet tights into my regular non-work wardrobe a bit more lately.  I decided it's time to try to work fishnet patterns into beads. 

I decided that the fishnet should be the feature and I haven't done a fun bead mix in a while. So once the dress came in the mail, I took it into the studio and matched some colors to mix together. 

This is the first bangle I made with this base idea. It didn't turn out quite how I wanted it to.  It's not very fishnet-looking. Bryan suggested that it looks more like stained glass and I agree.  So I'm working on another one and I'll decide next week which one to wear. I'm simplifying the idea on the second version of this bangle, but I may ultimately need to dumb it down to just 2 colors. Boring to bead but can often looks very sharp. Like my Classic Cuff Bangle bracelet, all the white got so boring to bead but I absolutely love how the piece turned out at the end of the day.