Stellar Citrus Earrings

Last year I was a little distracted and wasn’t able to blog as much as I wanted to, my apologies for being away so long.

With the New Year I have a new determination to blog at least once a week and if you feel the need to give me a push to blog more, my email address is denise@jewelrybydm.com.  I will be happy for the reminder and to hear from you.  Even if you feel like sending an email with topics you would like to see in this blog or comments on how I can make it better, it would be great to hear from you since I feel like blogging is sometimes a one way communication.

While shopping I came across these beautiful Celestial Crystal drops in yellow and just had to have them.Yellow isn’t usually a color that I use, so I wanted to add this new color into my pallet and also the new shape.  In high school my art teacher told me that I tend to balance my artwork too much and should try to add more asymmetrical shapes into my art.  Many years later I remembered what he said when I saw these crystals because they fit the bill of asymmetrical so well.  I like them so much that today I bought 2 more sets, one in blue and one in purple.

If you look closely at the orange crystal you will see that the orange has yellow mixed into it.  I found these beads in the summer while in a bead store in New York and bought a package of them along with a package of yellow beads that have a little orange in them.  I plan to make a bracelet that can be worn with these earrings.

These earrings may not end up in my Etsy store because there is a woman at work that saw the crystals when I bought them and wants first dibs, but watch for the blue and purple earrings of the same shape in the coming months.  If you want yellow ones contact me at the above email address and I will do my best to get the yellow ones for you.  Just know that there were a limited quantity of the yellow and when they are gone I’m not sure if I can get more.  They do come in lots of other colors though.

Until next week….

Denise

Challenge Week 45

Congratulations to Karin T. on winning the earring give away.  She left a really nice comment on the McLachlan Design Studio Facebook page, here it is:

"I love the April earrings because of the cute little flower in it. It is a nice new touch to your design. I would give the earrings to my friend Alyson who just had a new baby. New moms always need something to make them feel pretty!"

Last week I made some spring inspired jewelry and decided that this week I would look around New York while I walked to and from work and see what new spring colors the fashionable New Yorkers are wearing.

Usually when I walk I'm looking down at the sidewalk to make sure that I don't step in anything yuckie (yes that is a technical term). Or I'm watching to make sure that I don't get run over when crossing the street, and believe me when I say that my life has passed before my eyes more than once. So I decided to live on the wild side and observe people as I walked.  As I looked around I noticed that everyone was dressed in black, grey, beige and brown with a little white thrown in.  No more exciting colors than that. Where are the spring colors?  What's wrong with these New Yorkers?  Isn't NYC one of the fashion capitals? When the big lines put their locations on their tags and brochures they list London, Milan, Paris and New York as their places of business, the big four fashion capitals of the world. I thought, "Is NY really a fashion capital?"  Then I looked at what I was wearing, grey slacks, black top, grey sweater, black coat, black shoes and black purse with, yes, a touch of red.  Ah, ha, I found a little color. 

When I went into the office and looked around I found nothing different than what I saw on the street.  I felt like I was living in one of those black and white movies and the producers decided to only put color on the taxis. What a disappointment.  So, at least in real life no one in NYC is wearing color.  Maybe the fashion magazines are better, I'll let you know next week.

Which leads me to this week's challenge.  I call them layered earrings and although I didn't put any spring colors in them because I decided to use what I saw in the city, I used both silver and gold.

The bottom layer is black enamel with a swirl design in it, then the next layer a gold sun and the top a heart. They are fun earrings which you can wear with either silver or gold.
Next week I'll use some more spring colors ;-)

Have a great week.  If you get a chance visit my website at www.jewelrybydm.com

Challenge Week 39

Hello, and welcome back.  This week I have another piece to add to my Treasure Island Collection.

This necklace is made from Czech Beads called Blue mixed with Sand and black faceted glass beads with gold color glass seed beads. It is 18" long and has a great clasp to finish it off that is a TierraCast antique silver bali-style toggle clasp.

This is the third piece in the collection and I will be adding more each week.  I'm very excited about making a collection because there are so many different configurations of these beads swirling around in my head, and it's such a great mix and match way to go. I hope you like this collection as much as I do.

I've placed it in my Etsy store with more pictures for you to see.

See you next week.

Challenge Week 38

This week I have started a new collection called Treasure Island.  This collection started because I had ordered some Czech glass beads called “Blue and Sand mix”. You know how each monitor shows color differently, if you go to a store with TVs you will see that the picture looks a little different on each set. So I didn’t pay much attention to the color of the beads when I ordered them. Then they arrived and I realized that blue and sand mixed together make green.  This is the basics of art class.  So these beads arrived looking like the manufacturer didn’t quite mix the color completely and you can see green, sand, and brown and sometimes hints of light blue.  I like them and think they are very unique, they remind me a little of camouflage but the facets and shine of the bead bring the style of the bead upscale from the casual style of camouflage.  Then I had to decide what other beads to use with them and of course I used black and a little gold seed bead, which brings out the sand in the Czech glass.

The purpose of this new collection is so you will be able to buy different pieces of jewelry that coordinate with each other but aren’t necessarily a matched set. I’m going to make different styles of earrings or bracelets or necklaces using beads from the collection.  This way you can choose a style that you like that goes with other pieces in the collection.  This is my first attempt at a collection and I hope that you like the concept.  Leave comments, tell me what you like or dislike about have a collection.  If you like it I will make other collections too.   I was thinking about a birthday collection for each month.  What do you think of that?

The first two pieces that I made with these beads are for this week’s challenge.  I started with a bracelet and added earrings.  The bracelet will fit a 7 inch wrist and I think will go with a lot of styles and outfits.  I can see it with a black suit and gold blouse for work, or with a pair of khakis and a polo for casual.  The earrings are 1 and ¾ inch long, hanging from silver plated French hooks.  Wear them with a black or tan top and a skirt or jeans and to complete your outfit.

Next week I have a necklace planned to add to the Treasure Island collection.

You can find both of these items in my Etsy store. 

See you next week.

Denise

Challenge Week 17

In honor of Dads and Grand Dads and even male grads, week 17 challenge had to be an item for men so I made some cufflinks. I'm also getting 2 birds with one stone here (pun intended and no birds were harmed), because I'm starting a series in my newsletter on precious stones and their meanings.

First I started off with silver cufflinks with blue paua shells. They came out really nice, and I like the blue of the paua shell. Then I decided to use a tiger eye stone in my newsletter, so I made a gold pair of cuff links with tiger eye stones.

The paua shell is prized for it's beautiful, highly iridescent mother-of-pearl nacre it displays and is sometimes used to create imitation opal. It has a protective epoxy resin top to preserve the beauty of the shell. The origin of the stone that I used is New Zealand.

You can read about Tiger Eye in my newsletter, which will be coming out today. If you would like to subscribe, you can find a subscribe box at the bottom of the Home page on my website. You can also shop for gifts for Dad on my website on the Shop page.

Have a great week!  Enjoy the beautiful weather we are having and I'll see you next week.

Challenge Week 12

This has been a really long week, I started my new job on Monday and with the long commute to NYC and back each day it doesn't give me much time to do anything else. So my post had to wait until now, Sunday evening.  Once I get back into a routine I'll get back to posting on Saturday morning. So, my apologies for being late.

For week 12 of the challenge I made a beautiful pair of copper color crystal earrings, with gold accents. The large focal bead is an 8 mm Swarovski crystal checkerboard in copper color. Then I added gold spacer beads, Xilion bicone 4 mm crystals and 2mm copper beads. They hang from gold french wires.  These earrings have a lot of sparkle  to them.

It's rare that I use all gold, most of the time I either use silver or a mix of silver and gold, so this has been a bit of a challenge.  Also, using the copper color crystals is different for me, I lean towards more the blues, blacks and greens.

I hope you enjoy these earrings and will come back next week.

Challenge Week 10

On Tuesday morning I had an appointment in NY city, and after the appointment I decided to take a walk down to 6th avenue to search for a bead store that I found on the internet. This store had rave reviews, and many of the jewelry makers that I talk to say "You have to go to the city to buy beads, they have beautiful things there."  My little walk (22 blocks) took me to 3 bead stores. I thought I found something close to heaven.

As a result of my trip I found the materials for earrings for Jewelry Challenge Week 10.  These earrings are called Camelion Flowers. They are gold flowers that you can wear alone, or you can add the crystals that are hanging from a bar that goes through the center of the flower.

The crystals are by Swarovski, the colors are clear AB, Indicolite and capri blue, all 4 mm in size.

As a flower by itself the earrings hang 1 1/2 inches. With the crystals attached they are 2 inches long from the ear.

You can wear the crystals so they fall in front of the earring or in the back of the earrings.  They are very versatile and in future I may add extra bars with beads of other colors to make them even more camelion like.

Thanks for stopping by, please come back next week to see what comes off the workroom table. I would love to have your comments on these earrings if you would like to leave one.