Earring Giveaway for my Facebook Fans!

Hi ladies! I'm trying to follow the Facebook rules, and decided to have our next giveaway here on my blog!
Metals are so hot right now..from copper to silver to antiqued brass to vintage finish. I wanted to give you a choice to customize a pair of earrings, so here we go! The winner, chosen by random.org will be able to customize the charms of her choice, crystal color (from a selection) and ear wire choices will be nickel free copper, nickel free silver plate, or sterling silver. All you have to do is comment on this post, and let me know what color crystals you think would go best with your choice of charms. That's it! We'll keep this open for several days to give everyone a chance to pop over and comment. Feel free to invite friends!

Charms-from left to right-antique copper, large silver starfish, small silver starfish.

The pendant is complete!

After bonding and trimming soft, repurposed black suede to the back, I attached the two layers with one row of brick stitch with bronze delicas. The bail loop is also made of these. I'm thrilled with the way it turned out, and I hope Marie (skyejewels.com) will be, too. I really like the way the bronze tones pick up the deep browns in the shell. The pendant measures between 2 1/4" and 2 1/2". What a fun project-I can't wait to receive more tiles and try my hand at an embroidered bracelet! Thanks for following this interesting journey-I've enjoyed the ride!

Almost there...

I decided to add a final ring of root beer seed beads for a glimmer of gold. Now, the backing has been trimmed and touched up. It's time to finish this pendant.

Almost there-or am I?

I'm liking where this is going. I think I've struck a balance between enhancing Marie-Noel's tile and totally going overboard. Is it done? I'm not sure. The next step is trimming, bonding on the leather backing and constructing the bail. I really love the asymmetry at the bottom, which is 3 taupe green fresh water pearls, and although it's difficult to see in the photo, there is a little brown edge of size 15 seed beads that surround the pearls. It might be a good idea to enhance that a bit more. That's an idea that needs to percolate. I'm pretty sure the edging will be done with deep gold metal 15 seed beads that I've had for a bunch of years. How do you think it's going so far?

Collaboration-I'm on the way, finally!

Yep-this is much better. The Lacy's is again Sharpie colored, deep green. Note to self-pick up a brown Sharpie. I used deep gray metallic AB seed beads to construct the bezel. This is much more like what I had in mind. I am seeing at this point that the beautiful tile needs to be enhanged, not not overpowered by the beading. BTW, the tile is 1 1/2" in diameter, and beading can get big in a hurry.

A New Collaboration Begins!

I was lucky enough to meet Marie-Noel Voyer-Cramp (Skyejewels.etsy.com for finished jewelry, Moreskyejewels.etsy.com for tiles) on Facebook. I love her ephemera tiles with beautiful digital art, and I suggested to her that we collaborate-her tiles, my bead embroidery, just to see what I could come up with. She mailed me a few tiles from Calgary, Alberta, CA and I was thrilled when they arrived here on the coast of NC-how beautiful they are! Here's the first attempt at a pretty pendant. Glued down onto Lacy's Stiff Stuff, I colored the background (black was my first choice) and you can see the roughed out shape with a little more color testing in the corner. I started with gray seed beads to surround the tile with peyote stitch, and as I was beading, I happened to notice that my fingers were black Sharpie stained, and I wasn't digging where I was headed. Now what?

A Fresh Start at ArtFire-new look, new opportunities! Thanks, Beadaholique.com and ArtFire!

Beadaholique.com recently asked jewelry designers to submit a photo of their work using Beadaholique components and I was fortunate to win one of their prizes, a PRO account at ArtFire, a wonderfully unique online marketplace for handcrafted ART! So, a big THANKS!! to Beadaholique and ArtFire for providing me and 9 other lucky winners with a free for life ArtFire studio! I have always loved to shop at Beadaholique.com for their reasonably priced and beautiful selection of fresh water pearls. My winning submission used a multitude of their peacock pearls in various sizes. They have expanded their line greatly since I first started shopping there, and I would recommend them to any beader. Their shipping is uber-fast and customer service is unparalelled.