Challenge Week 36

Last week (week 35) I made a necklace that I called Shades of Grey and when I showed it to my sister she liked it and thought that I should make earrings to go with it.  I totally agreed with her because, well, it was such a great combination of beads I just couldn’t stop at a necklace.  Who knows, I may even make a bracelet.

The centerpiece of the earrings is the rectangle mother of pearl bead topped with a grey glass pearl.  I then added 2 leaves hanging from the bottom and in-between the pearl and the rectangle.  I took a picture of the necklace and earrings together (see below).  I think that whoever purchases these, either separately or together, is going to wear them a lot.  I’ve had them on display on my workroom table and can’t stop looking at them. 

Lately I’ve seen a lot of grey in the fashion magazines.  Even Elle Décor showed several rooms done in grey with either white or another color like turquoise or blue.  If you have been reading my posts you may remember that I moved in September.  I had decided to do my living room in black and white with a hint of color, I was thinking of the blue that Martha Stuart uses a lot of, but I couldn’t find the right pieces and ended up with grey and highlights of red.  So, maybe I’m just on a grey kick and everyone is going to think that I should just get over it and that this piece isn’t as great as I think it is.  Voice your opinion, leave me some comments and let me know what you think.

See you next week. And no I’m not going to make the matching bracelet, at least not this week.  I have something in mind for Valentine’s Day to do for next time.

You can see more pictures of this item in my Etsy store.

Have a good week,

Denise

Challenge Week 31

Hi, welcome back.  Many of my winter clothes are red, I guess because it's such a warm color. With the cold weather coming I was inspired to use some warm red beads - I really love of the color red.

The beads that I used for these earrings are red, but when you look at them they look like they have black highlights. The headpins that I used are tipped with red; I think it look better that just the silver tips on other head pins.  Silver bead caps finish off the earrings, giving them a little sparkle.  You can wear these as little Christmas ear ornaments during the holiday season or just to give you a splash of color after the holidays.

Have a great week and I'll see you back here for week 32.

Denise

Challenge Week 29

It has been a while but I am back and on with the challenge.  I thought that it was only going to be a week or 2 that I wouldn't be able to write. The move took longer that I thought, actually it was delayed because of hurricane Irene, then the following 3 weeks I had family obligations.  With the move came the loss of internet connection and on and on.  Finally I'm back, with a great pair of earrings.

 The earrings that I did for this week are hoops. This is my first time making hoops and I am very pleased with how they turned out.  I used sterling plated wires and put Czech glass flowers with silver spacers to create light weight, beautiful earrings. The earrings are easy to put on, just slip one end of the hoop into your ear and then click the end in place.  Simple!

Named after the woman that gave me the idea, I call them Crystal Hoops.  I work with Crystal and she asked me to make hoops for her with clear and silver beads, so I used crystal beads for Crystal. I've also made these earrings in different colors, and you will be able to see them on my website in the near future.

Crystal says that she wears these earrings a lot because they go with everything, so I made a pair for myself and also one for the website. If you have a color that you would like in these earrings let me know and I will custom design a pair just for you.  Contact me at denise@jewelrybydm.com

It's good to be back, I hope you have a great week!

Challenge Week 21

Summer is here and it's time to add some color to your wardrobe, so for Week 21 of the jewelry challenge I thought I would use one of the summer colors in this new piece of jewelry.

Way back in week ten I made a pair of gold convertible earrings and decided that this week I would make another pair. These are antique silver star bursts on fluted ear wires. Then the inserts have blue and clear crystals on them. This way, you can wear them 3 different ways: without the beads, with the beads hanging in the front, or with the beads hanging in the back.  The picture on the left shows the beads hanging from the front.  These earrings hang 1 5/8 inches with the beads and 1 3/8 without the beads.

I was tempted to keep this pair of earrings for myself, they look so vintage because of the antique star bursts, but decided to put them on the website and share.  The last pair went fast, so don't wait if you want them.

This month I have a Christmas in July sale, all jewelry is 15% off. Just use code cijs2011 when checking out.

Challenge Week 19

Hello, welcome back to my 52 week Jewelry Challenge. This week I made a pair of earrings that I call Plumb Cute.  There was no big inspiration here, I had placed a jewelry order and when it came in there were some new silver ear wires that I had never used before, so I wanted to try them out. The plumb colored crystal tear drops are from my NY shopping trip of several months ago and I had been waiting to use them. So the two came together to make these plumb cute earrings.

The silver ear wires are different, very stylized, they are 5/8" long and when the beads are added the earring is a total of 1 3/4 inches long. The crystal plumb bead is an inverted tear drop and is topped with a bi-cone clear crystal Aurora Boreas (AB)  bead. The AB coating on the bead gives it more sparkle. The bottom bead is sterling silver and finishes off the earring nicely.

Just received some new beads in peridot, pink, tanzanite and a beautiful chrysolite that is a lighter version of peridot, so watch for some new items on my website.

Thanks for reading, I'll see you 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.

Book Review - The No Asshole Rule

This month’s book review is of the book The No Asshole Rule, Building a Civilized Workplace and Surviving One That Isn’t by Robert I. Sutton, PhD.  Now, the title may offend some, but please look past the word asshole and, if it does offend you, replace it with the word bully.  Bully mildly covers the type of person that the author is describing and you will see why he uses the word asshole. I’m sure you will be able to relate the description to someone that you have worked with or have met and had to deal with somewhere in your life.

Mr. Sutton gives tips for surviving nasty people and work places and how to deal with them. He tells how to avoid taking a job in a company where there are more jerks than not. He gives advice on how to enforce the Rule in the workplace and to change the culture of the organization so that the behavior is not tolerated.

I smiled when I got to the part where he had a self-test to see if you qualify to be one of the jerks he is writing about in his book.  I guess we all have a little dark side to us, but do we “go over to the dark side” (to borrow a phrase from Star Wars) more often than not?

At the end of the book he gives a great list of additional reading for those who want to learn more about dealing with nasty people.

As I read this book it seemed that he knew some of people that I worked with because he described them exactly. This was a very good book, I really learned a lot from it. Hopefully I won’t have to deal with another asshole, but they are out there….

Please let me know if you agree or disagree with my evaluation of this book. I’m sure that other readers would like to read your opinion too.  Or just make a comment if you want to.

Team Tuesdays

Today I start my TEAM TUESDAY blog feature where I feature one member of our Etsy NJ Team. My first feature is Tracey Rediker of Traceyknits. I love her store, she has such unique items. Here is a mini of her shop, now go check out her whole store. You should also go to her website at http://www.traceyknits.com