Good morning,

Guess what, I found my peeps!!!!  I'm participating in my first "Bead Soup."  Over 500 people are participating; can you believe it?  In the coming days I will be blogging about the experience and hope you will take the journey with me.



In a nutshell, 500 bead lovers are paired and they exchange a focal bead, an unusual clasp and various other beauties from their stash.  Once you receive your goodies you create a beautiful piece of jewelry and reveal it on the predetermined deadline.

In addition to upcoming blogs about this experience, I will tell you a little about the organizer, Ms. Lori Anderson, Jewelry Designer and author of her new book "Bead Soup".

More to come, have a great day!

Dee

AJE Earring Challenge Week 4 and ReCap

Well it is almost Week 4 of the Art Jewelry Element Earring Challenge.  I've noticed a couple of things about me that are different from my other colleagues.  First of all, I'm one of the few artists not selling my work.  I've always been afraid that making this into a Business would mean that I'm working again.  Even though my retirement has been challenging so far; I'm so happy each day when I get up and know my schedule is my own.  The other thing I've noticed is my photo's are horrible, I guess that means I need to work harder on my digital photography skills (sounds like a good goal for 2013).  With each week (thus far) I've tried to throw something new into the mix:  Week one was purely about the lampwork, Week two was to show you can make earrings using just about any technique, mine happened to be crochet.  Week three, cotton cording instead of metal and now Week four is all about the metal, bronze clay.

In future weeks, I will be exploring resin, ceramics and chain maile.  I can't wait to start working on Week 5!

Later - Dee

AJE Earring Challenge - Week 3

Good morning!  This has been a sunny but very cold week.  My old bones have been creaking and my creative spirit very difficult to locate.  Last night while I was trying desperately to sleep two earring ideas came to me.  Here is the first of two:

 

My second pair will be posted later this evening.  Check out the AJE Earring Challenge - the earrings are spectacular!  A button appears at the bottom of my blog that will take you directly to the site.  Have a great day.

Dee

I thought I would share a little about my journey towards being a jewelry designer.  After all, it is my blog :-)

I played with beads as a child, my mom said she could buy me a little vial of beads and I would string beads for hours.  I went to kindergarten at our family church and mom explained that every time arts and crafts ended each day, I would cry.  As a teenager, I remember all my wonderful art classes I had along the way….slab clay, charcoal sketches, batik, floor loom; joy pure joy.  My senior year I decided I wanted to take wood shop, but my father told me it was only for boys (it was a different time) so I signed up for Metalsmithing, Lapidary and Gem Cutting.  Mr. Hicks, my hero – the only teacher I really remember.  He introduced me to many wonderful things – jewelry design, power tools (yummy) and how to identify rocks and minerals.  Then, off to college.  I will never forget the first drawing class with our nude male model and our design teacher who gave us such elaborate assignments I spent all my money on art supplies instead of food. 

Then my life was put on pause.  I was raised with modest means and school was very expensive.  I had to go to work to make ends meet and never found my way back to school.  I retired a little over a year ago to help my mother care for my father and all of my creative juices have returned.  I can hardly keep up with my desire to create.  In a future blog I will share my horrible experiences with learning how to blog; about social networking; photographing my work, etc.

Bye for now ----- Dee

 

 

AJE Earring Challenge Week 2

Good afternoon,

Well, the sun is finally out here in Virginia!  That's the good news, it's 35 degrees and it's almost noon.  Anyway, it's time to submit my second pair of earrings for the AJE Challenge.  They will have a reveal every two weeks and the reveal for the first two weeks occurs Sunday.

One of my favorite techniques (which I haven't mastered yet) is MicoMacrame.  I say that because anyone that knows me knows I love to learn a technique as much as anything else I do in the jewelry world.  My social networking brought me to Ms. Sherri Stokely's door and it was love at first sight!  She makes the most incredible MicroMacrame and being the old hippy that I am, I can't wait to try my hand at it.  In the mean time, I've taken her inspiration and created a pair of earrings using crochet.  Not as pretty, but certainly inspired by her fabulous works of art.  Here they are:

Thank you for checking in, see you again in 2 weeks.

Dee

Week one of the Art Jewelry Elements Earring Challenge

See the blog entry made earlier this week to learn about the Art Jewelry Elements Earring Challenge.  Here is my first entry

Art Jewelry Elements Earring Challenge

It's a new year and what a better way to start the new year then participating in a jewelry challenge. 

Art Jewelry Elements: AJE Earring Challenge:

Participants will sign on for 13 weeks at a time.  We are challenging ourselves to make one pair of earrings a week.  The rules state the earring designs will feature at least one artisan component, such as a handmade charm or bead.  The artisan components may be made by me or by another artist.  Well, anyone that knows me knows my joy is learning new techniques.  My personal challenge will be to produce all of the artisan components myself.  I will be submitting wire wrap, lampwork, chain maille, metal clay, crochet and anything else that may make this challenge fun and interesting.

If you want to follow this challenge, every other Sunday we will be posting our entries to Pinterest, I will also be posting my entries to this blog.  It should prove to be challenging for me and hopefully fun for you.

Talk to everyone soon.

Dee