We’re All Ears: Pretty Patchwork Earrings

This month’s inspiration for the Earrings Everyday challenge is patchwork. And while Erin suggested that we use colour and pattern as our inspiration, I went in a slightly different and more literal direction.

You see, I have these tiny little embroidery hoops I have been dying to try out in earrings. They’re just 1 inch in diameter, and super cute. In the past I have used larger (but still petite) embroidery hoops as pendants, with pretty fabrics on display. But this time, I thought I would try a tiny patchwork pattern inside the hoop — a four-patch block — using fabric with a small print on it (the fabric came with a Molly Makes magazine I picked up last year).

It was trickier than I thought to get the seams lined up, and I need to work on my “fussy cutting” so that each patch shows off enough of the pattern to balance it all out. But I think they turned out pretty well for a first attempt. And they are super light weight, despite their size (as earrings go they are quite big!)

I’m planning to try something new with these hoops too — tiny paper pieced blocks like these (there are even more on Etsy from this designer). Perhaps not quite as small as these earring hoops, but in pendants. I need to go out and get more fabric!

To see what other designers have come up with for this month’s challenge, visit the Earrings Everyday blog here and look for the linky.

Thanks Miss Erin, for pushing me to try something I’ve been thinking about for a while.

We’re All Ears: Floral February

This month’s We’re All Ears inspiration over on the Earrings Everyday blog comes from a series of mixed media collages featuring watercolour paintings with fresh flowers by Malaysian artist Limzy. Aren’t they stunning!

The first pair of earrings was inspired in part by my favourite series of books (and now TV series) Outlander (or CrossStitch as it was called in Australia and the UK) by Diana Gabaldon, about an English woman who travels back in time to the days of the last Jacobite rebellion in Scotland in the mid-1700s. Her journey back in time is triggered as she reaches to pick blue forget-me-nots at the base of a standing stone in the Scottish Highlands. They are on handmade copper earwires from Rebecca Anderson and feature Czech glass flowers and waxed linen.

The second pair is a dainty pink pair for my daughter’s best friend. It’s fun to think that over the next few years as my girls get older and start wearing earrings, I’ll be making earrings for them and their friends too! This pair is on sterling silver for sensitive young ears and again feature Czech glass flowers.

Pop over to Earrings Everyday for links to other participants in the monthly blog hop!

Birds and Berries: We’re All Ears April Challenge

It’s time for the monthly We’re All Ears challenge reveal from the Earrings Everyday blog. This month’s inspirational image is taken from the pages of a Pottery Barn catalogue, a table setting that features sweet stylized birds and a wealth of green leaves, yellow berries, olive oil and green olives.

Among my collection of beads I have some tiny brass birdies, which I wire wrapped onto tiny brass nests. I dangled some yellow and green berries, as well as some green leaves from pale yellow waxed linen. Most of the beads as well as the linen came from the most recent (to me) kit from Rebecca Anderson’s Curiosity Club.

Visit the Earrings Everyday reveal post for links to everyone else’s designs.

Tiny Flowers: We’re All Ears March Challenge

This month’s inspiration from Earrings Everyday ‘s We’re All Ears earring challenge is a sweet little pen and watercolour illustration from Beatrix Potter’s book The Tailor of Gloucester.

Pen and watercolor by Beatrix Potter
from The Tailor of Gloucester from the collection at the Tate Museum

My earrings inspired by this image feature a pair of polymer clay matchstick charms from Humblebeads, which have been painted by Heather in a tiny floral pattern that to me resembles the stitching in the picture nicely! I topped them with a pair of Czech glass flowers from the Paintbox kit I received through the Curiosity Club, and dangled them from Vintaj brass earwires. I did have ambitions to use waxed linen cord in a lovely shade of magenta instead of wire but I just couldn’t get them to look right. Best laid plans and all that! In any case, they are quite sweet.

Go here to see what everyone else has made this month!

Green dragonfly earrings: We’re All Ears February challenge

Earring-focused blog Earrings Everyday has added a monthly design challenge for its readers—the We’re All Ears challenge—which of course means making earrings.

This month’s inspiration is a gorgeously vibrant photograph starring a pair of loving damselflies on an intensely green background:

Damselflies in Love
Photo credit: National Geographic, Yeo Weng Sang

As luck would have it, around the time this picture appeared in my feed, I received some gloriously green lampwork beads from Beads and Botanicals that immediately announced their intention to take part in this challenge. To keep it simple and let the beads talk, I paired them with tiny Vintaj brass dragonflies (the closest I could get to damselflies) and an orange Swarovski crystal.

I’m very tempted to keep this pair! And I’m looking forward to seeing next month’s inspiration!

If you’re interested in seeing the other designers taking part in the earring challenge, go to today’s post on Earrings Everyday for the link-list (sadly it doesn’t work properly on WordPress.com blogs, so I can’t add it here).

Bead Soup Blog Party and other blog hops

I just signed up for the 8th Bead Soup Blog Party, the third I will participate in! I’ve got a very soft spot for this blog hop, it was the one that got me blogging in the first place (although not the first blog hop I did), and it’s certainly the biggest and best known of the jewellery design blog hops. And Lori Anderson, the founder and the organizer of the hop (believe me when I say it’s a massive effort on her part, I suspect that for the next 2-3 weeks, she and her family will eat, sleep and breathe the partnering process, and that’s a big job even when you haven’t been ill for the best part of the last 12 months), is one of the sweetest people I’ve ever met, in real life or otherwise (hoping one day it will be in real life).

Anyway, by the end of the month I should be paired up and I can finalise the bead soup, tailored to my lucky victim partner. It’s got to have a bit of Australia in it, so I’m thinking about the various bead artists I know and like down here. The big reveal isn’t until 3rd May, which sounds like a long way away, but really isn’t so far! Expect another post or two from me along the way. Click through if you want to see what I made in 2012 and 2013.

In the meantime, I have a few things to keep me busy. One of my favourite blogs, Earrings Everyday, is starting a monthly earring challenge, which is due on the 21st Feb, and I am doing Lisa Lodge‘s Winter Sparkle blog hop on the 22nd. I’ve got a good idea percolating for this month’s Art Bead Scene Monthly Challenge, which has a beautiful Paul Klee painting as its inspiration. And the 3rd Annual Challenge of Music, from the endlessly inventive Erin Prais-Hintz, is on 1st of March. I try to keep all of the upcoming blog hops listed via linked blog buttons at the top of the right hand column of this blog, while completed hops are moved down to the bottom of the column. One day I might even manage to make a page for blog hop links, does that sound useful??

I’ve also signed up to do a couple of markets in March, a school fair and a new market that hopefully will be in the right place at the right time to get some sales. More details on both of those when I have them. My regular market—The Handmade Show—doesn’t start until April, and my first show there will be in May as I’ll be away in April.

I’ll be back on the weekend with some recent designs and a new jam recipe variation!