Good morning and thanks for stopping by! I’ve been even more quiet than usual recently as I’ve been getting the power plugged in to my studio. I’m pleased to say it’s all done now and I can see what I’m doing… hooray!  Normal bad blog posting will resume shortly!

This months Component of the month was supplied by Karen Totten of Starry Road Studios. A wonderful spiral fossil disc. I was thrilled to receive the blue/green disc just left of centre.

It sat on my desk for quite a while, I couldn’t decide what to make with it. My first thought was to create a bracelet with other large disc components, but there was nothing quite right in my stash. Then out of the blue, some Canadian friends were in the UK and came for a visit. They brought me a gift of some jade beads which were perfect!

I know Karen loves tribal designs, so I wanted to try my hand at something along those lines. I took some copper, bashed and patinated it, then went crazy with my new vintaj hole making tool (it’s amazing, everyone should have one… much easier than messing about drilling!)

I originally wanted to connect the component to the back piece with copper wire, but failed miserably, it just wouldn’t bend properly… so the disc was lashed on with thin leather.

I quite like how it turned out!

Below the component I added some czech tile beads and bronze coated crystal points wrapped with copper wire.

And added the graduated Jade stones for the necklace.

I didn’t manage to patinate the copper below, and I think I might darken the leather a little too, but it’s very nearly what I was hoping to achieve.

Thanks to Karen for her wonderful component, I’ve had great fun designing around it!

And to see what the rest of the team and guests did with theirs… follow the links…

Here I am again a month later, having not blogged even once since the last COM. The days are flying by and all of a sudden it’s Autumn.

This month, we got beautiful components from Kristi Bowman-Gruel.

They are all copper metal clay, the top row using the new white copper clay. My component was a surprise and I was thrilled to receive one of the new white pieces.

This month it’s team member Rebekah’s turn to provide us all with a component for designing. And what a beautiful one she sent! Rebekah makes amazing polymer beads… her sleepy critters are world famous, but that’s not all she makes. This month we were treated to either a large single, or smaller pair of hand painted leather feather charms.

I chose a pair of purple feathers that were labelled as earring charms, but as soon as I saw them I knew they would be perfect alongside one of my porcelain dreamcatcher beads.

For the necklace part of the design, I chose some ceramic beads I made ages ago, but never used as I really liked them so they went in my stash. The colours gave it just the feel I wanted for the design. In between those were more Czech seeds, a chunk of amethyst and a chunk of citrine. The ceramic bead on the right is part of a Lotus set by Gaea.

To attach the leather, I chose a ceramic oak leaf from TheaElements with a glass donut on the opposite side for the closure. I was going to attach some sort of clasp, but I really like the look of the leather just tied to the glass!

Thank you to Rebekah for a beautiful component, and if you’d like to see more of her work, you can visit her shop here… Tree Wings Studio

If you’d like to see what everyone else chose and made… follow the links 🙂

Another month has flown by and it’s COM reveal day!

Things are getting slightly more organised in the new studio and I’m enjoying getting back to making.

This month, we were treated to a beautiful dichroic glass cabochon from Francesca Watson.

Just look at all of those beauties! There’s something about dichroic glass that really gets me so I jumped at the chance to play.

Francesca works in a range of mediums and her work is stunning… check it out here http://francescawatson.com

This is the cab I chose… I remembered to take a picture!!!!

So I got to work on sketching out some ideas. The cab is larger than anything I have worked with before, and everything I came up with as a pendant design seemed too big. So I decided to make a brooch. I cut some porcelain flowers and fired them unglazed, made some silver headpins and dug out my box of seed beads.

I glued the cab on to some stiff stuff and bezelled around it with size 11 & 15 seeds in green.

Once the beadwork was finished, I put the flowers on the headpins, folded the tops so that they were secure and formed a loop on the opposite end for securing them to the brooch. They were sewn in and a brooch fitting glued on. The back was finished with some ultra suede.

I’ve had great fun working with my cab and would like to say a big thank you to Francesca for her beautiful component!

If you’d like to see what the rest of the team and guests have made… follow the links 🙂

Francesca Watson – www.francescawatson.com

Here we are again, another month has flown by. I’ve not had much time for making recently as we’re doing a lot of work around the house and garden, which means most of my supplies have been put in to storage.

This month, I managed to retrieve a few bits and bobs to create something with my beautiful Art Jewelry Elements COM from Linda Landig.

Linda has recently jumped in to the addictive world of ceramics and produced her first clay components. As well as her ceramics, Linda also creates beautiful jewellery and you can find her work here – LindaLandigJewelry

Here are some of the components we chose from…

I picked this beautiful rose pink and blue floral pendant to design with. (I’m not explaining myself for forgetting to photograph them before I start any more… you’re probably used to it by now!)

I was limited to what I could get to to create my design, but I found seed beads, Czech glass and crimp wire and put them together to create a simple but pretty necklace.

The leaves and flowers fell together on my mat and I loved how they looked, so started with that as the base for the design.

The beaded berries are made from magatama drops and seed beads.

I would have preferred an antique bronze clasp on the necklace, and bronze wire for the pendant (which I will swap over when I get my supplies back) But for now it has a brushed steel toggle and silver wire.

I’d like to say a great big thank you to Linda for her beautiful component, I’ve had great fun designing with it, and I’ve also found that limiting yourself can be a good exercise!

If you’d like to see what the rest of the team received and what they created, click on the links…

Another month and another COM reveal is ready.. it’s going to be Christmas at this rate!

This month we were treated to a choice of beautiful components from Sue Kennedy of SueBeads

We could pick a glass cabochon…

Or a pretty set of glass chicklet beads…

I went for a cabochon in a stunning brown caramel glass with a tint of purple. Of course I forgot to take a photograph as I do every month!

When I picked it, I imagined it set in copper with etching, something in purple to bring out the hints of colour in the glass and a rolled bail.

I tried a different technique for resist on this piece. I use stop out fluid quite often for painting designs on to copper, but with this piece I tried stamping the design on. It’s not quite as sharp as using vinyl resist, but I like the grainy effect it’s given this pattern.

Guests

AJE Members

This month we were treated to one of Lesley Watt of TheaElements beautiful button clasps. They’re really cute and dinky and the perfect finish to any number of designs. I decided this time to keep my ideas simple, and I’ve had this half brewing in my head for a while, so when the clasp arrived I knew this was the time to create it.

I like beads, well… that’s a bit of an understatement… I love them! I’ve tried making them from virtually every material you can think of, and have loved them since my Grandma introduced me to her button tin one Summer holiday. I would lay them out in order of favourites, and have hours of fun. Creating this bracelet gave me that same feeling of being a child again, and choosing things just because I like them.

This bracelet contains some of my favourite treasures and is finished off wonderfully with the addition of Lesley’s clasp.

With February being a short month, we’re a little bit late for the reveal. But this month it was Melissa Meman’s turn to provide the component. Melissa makes stunning enamelled copper pendants and charm’s amongst other things, and she chose fluttering hearts for this months challenge. If you’d like to see more of her work, you can find it here https://www.etsy.com/uk/shop/MelismaticArtJewelry

This is the pretty pink heart I received to design with. I love the texture of the raised dots of enamel! My heart had 3 holes, one in each corner, and I originally had the idea to rivet it on to a cuff, then I changed my mind and was going to make a brooch, but eventually after jingling around my stash, I decided on a necklace.

I wrapped Czech beads and fluorite with bronze wire and attached them to some beautiful hand dyed silk for an extra splash of colour. I didn’t use a clasp, as it ended up as a long necklace, so can be slipped over your head. The silk is lovely and soft against your skin.

Thanks to Melissa for a beautiful component, it was great fun to work with! And if you’d like to see what the rest of the AJE Team and guests made with their hearts, you can visit them using the links below!

Guests…
Lori Bowring Michaud 
Kathy Lindemer
Kim Bender 

AJE Team…
Melissa Meman
Jenny Davies-Reazor
Rebekah Payne
Caroline Dewison
Kristen Stevens
Keirsten Giles
Sue Kennedy