Icicle Earrings

This month, Erin thought of the theme Frozen (no, not the movie, though she says that works too) for the We’re All Ears Challenge. With the Polar Vortex wreaking havoc on temperatures, one needs to use the snow and frost for inspiration. I live in more temperate climates, so I used the beautiful winter pictures in Erin’s post as inspiration, and made icicle-like polymer clay earrings, with a beady twist added in.

The icicle components were a lot of fun to make, and this is the most measuring I’ve done in a while. 🙂 All components steadily increase in dimension, and have a mixture of translucent clay and purplish blue clay in varying proportions. The smallest components are a 1:1 mix, whereas the largest are pure translucent clay.

The component colors looked fine by themselves, but brushing some Perfect Pearls over them took them a level higher. Even here, I used a progressive mixture of white and blue to mimic the component color gradations.

When the components were done baking, I strung them along with jump rings into two bunchy chains. One of the components chipped, and I swapped in a beaded component that I’d salvaged from an earlier project. When attached to ear wires, the icicle bunches became subtly gorgeous earrings! I loved wearing them to work earlier this week.

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This is a blog hop, and I hope you’ll join me in checking out more inspired earrings at Earrings Everyday!

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We’re All Ears – Living Coral

This month’s inspiration for the We’re All Ears challenge at Earrings Everyday is Living Coral, the Pantone Color of this Year.

Coral has its place in traditional Indian earrings, and after many trials and errors, some elements of traditional jewelry inevitably ended up in mine as well.

I first mixed some orange and a lot of pink polymer clay for the coral color. For the dangling charms, I used a wavy cutter on a coral sheet and a black-brown one. I matched up the cut edges of each colored sheet with the other, and then used elliptical shape cutters to cut out the charms. I impressed a checkered pattern on the charms, and applied Perfect Pearls for some shine.

Post bake, I added an opaque red glass bead to each charm, and some Loreal beads for movement.

Without any idea of what inspired this pair, my mom commented that the earrings look like traditional coral earrings, and that made my day!

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This is a blog hop, so please head on over to Earrings Everyday to check out the earrings that other designers have created.

Starry Earrings

I guess it’s celestial object inspiration month for me. After the tiny comet earrings that I talked about recently, I made some tiny star earrings! I ended up using leftovers from previous projects for both earring pairs, so they manage to fit the theme of the We’re All Ears Annual Use-Your-Leftovers challenge. (Thank you, Erin, for never failing to host inspiring challenges!)

For these, I used the same leftover clay from my failures in a previous project as I did for the comet charms, and salvaged components from a pair of earrings that I wasn’t wearing much.

I cut out the stars from the clay sheet using a tiny cutter. Similar to the comet charms, I embedded a large jump ring between two stars to make charms with bails. I applied some chalks on the charms for color, and experimented with smearing TLC over each star. It seemed to not smear the chalks, so I went ahead and partially covered each charm with chunky translucent glitter and Perfect Pearls. Off to the oven these went for a bake.

When the charms came out of the oven, I brushed another layer of TLC over the entire surface of each charm, and waved a heat gun over them to set the TLC.

Now all I needed to do was add each charm and a salvaged component to a jump ring, and finish it up with an ear wire! These tiny earrings look really cute, and I can’t decide if I love these or the comet ones more…

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Don’t forget to head on over to the blog hop at Earrings Everyday for more luscious earrings from stash leftovers! And hope you have a wonderful holiday season.

Black Comet Earrings

A quick post about a quick pair of earrings that I made –

I had some blackened translucent polymer clay left over from my image transfer attempts for the coasters that I made recently. I used these for a couple of charms, and made an earring pair by adding in a bunch of bead components that I’d made a while ago – now they kinda remind me of comets (albeit tiny ones! 🙂 )

For the charms, I used a small shape cutter on the clay sheet. Each charm has a ‘bail’ that is a large jump ring partially sandwiched between two shapes. I pressed a texture sheet a couple of times on the bottom half of each charm, and liberally applied white chalk on the surface. After baking the charms, I lightly sanded away the white at the top, leaving behind an ‘antiqued’ pattern on them.

For the ‘tail’ of the comet earrings, I used bead components that I’d made earlier this year. I attached a bunch of 3 components to a small jump ring, then added the charm in front of the bunch, and finally an ear wire before closing the jump ring. Done!

Hope this is a sign that my jewelry mojo is coming back… 🙂

Image Transfer: Coasters

I’ve not participated in challenges lately due to my creativity having become sluggish, but this month’s theme at Art Elements – Stars by Laney Mead, brought forth some tiny sparks in my right brain. 🙂 By the time I thought of joining, I’d already created some Diwali gel prints using the only stencil in our stash that has some star shapes in it, so I hoped other ideas would appear soon.

I considered various ideas involving beading, wire-weaving, faux soutache with polymer clay, and gel printing, but none clicked. Then, I came across some old printouts of star shaped patterns that I’d thought I’d use for image transfer jewelry using polymer clay. Since I was still woefully short of jewelry ideas, I settled on making a set of coasters instead.

Don’t see too many stars? That’s because I ran out of prints…

 

The ‘sure’ idea

I wanted colorful bases for my coasters, and instead of spending time and the little energy I had on Skinner blends, I brushed a variety of chalks on plain, unbaked circular clay sheets. (Now that was fun. :)) I transferred the star pattern image onto a sheet of translucent clay, intending to adhere it face-down on a coaster base so I could bake the whole setup and then sand+buff the translucent surface. However, before I could place the translucent sheet on the circle, the sheet just tore apart. Argh, the horror!

Since I’d transferred images onto clay before, I’d been pretty sure that this would work, and now I didn’t have enough copies of the star prints left to form a ‘proper set’ of 4, so I opted to just use a different pattern for each coaster instead.

An alternative

The translucent clay just didn’t want to work with image transfers, so I started looking for alternatives. Liquid polymer clay can be used as a medium for the transfer – but surprisingly, it didn’t produce great results on my unbaked sample bases or baked ones. Then my sis suggested transparent matte gel, and it worked brilliantly! So I applied the gel on my baked coaster bases and stuck the paper on it pattern-side down, and waited for the gel to set completely. I then got the paper soaking wet and gently rubbed it away from the base, leaving the pattern behind.

Finally!

As usual, things just had to work a bit differently on the final pieces than on the samples. 🙂 The ‘gently’ part turned out to be difficult, and I rubbed away the pattern at a few places on two of the coasters. By the time I was on my second piece, I noticed that the pattern would appear pretty vibrant and clear while wet, even if traces of paper showed up everywhere while dry. So for my last two pieces, I decided to just leave all of that stubborn trace paper be, and waited for the pieces to dry fully. Then I poured some resin over the coasters, and voila! Vibrant, patterned coasters, just the way I want. They’re still curing as I write this post, so I haven’t tested them yet; I hope they work well and last a long time.

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I was pretty sure I won’t have anything done for this challenge, and even though only one of the patterns has any resemblance to stars, I hope this little something is still better than nothing. Thank you, Laney, for the heavenly theme! I’m looking forward to seeing what the other guests and the Art Elements team have come up with; let’s go blog hopping!

Guests:  Jill • Divya • Alysen • Kathy • Tammy • Cat • Samantha • Anita (you’re here) • Karin • Sarajo • Rozantia • Kimberly

AE Team: Jen • Jenny • Niky • Laney • Claire • Cathy • Marsha • Caroline • Susan • Lesley

Crackled Earrings

I finally used a couple of lentil-shaped hollow beads from the bunch of items that I’d created almost a year ago using crackled veneer. And what a charming pair of earrings they make!

For these earrings, I tied strips from two different fabrics to a large jump ring that I passed through the top of the crackled beads.

There was still something missing though, so I made two bead rings, each from around 40 non-uniform 11/0 seed beads. I added each ring behind the fabric for some intrigue.

The fabric is not very drapey and it sticks out, so I used a tiny bit of E6000 to adhere the ends of the black strips to the bead below, while leaving the peach strips be.

Since I used beads that I made earlier, it felt like I finished in a jiffy. As if to compensate, I ended up adding the earring findings only after a day or two. 😉

That’s it really, this assembly project was a total no-hassle one. I love these earrings since they look good, are extremely lightweight, and are fun to wear.

Ode to Autumn Earrings | We’re All Ears Challenge

This month’s We’re All Ears Challenge at Earrings Everyday is all about Autumn. And of course, that means leaf shaped charms! 🙂 I used polymer clay, alcohol inks and Perfect Pearls for mine.

The charms

On a yellow-tinged white sheet of polymer clay, I stamped leafy textures from a texture sheet, from which I cut out leaf shapes using a cutter. I also rolled up a snake, and from its pieces, added tiny stalks to the tops of these leaves. I then dripped alcohol inks – sunset, flamingo and watermelon colors – onto the sheets, ensuring they got into all the niches. Using a Q-tip, I removed some ink from the raised surfaces.

After the ink dried, I brushed gold colored Perfect Pearls into the lower half of the charms, again, ensuring that it went into the recesses.

I pressed lightly textured sheets to the back of the charms for better finishing, since the alcohol ink was messily smeared over the back too. After smoothing surfaces and edges and poking tiny holes at the top, off went the charms into the oven for a 25-minute bake.

After the baking, I lightly sanded the raised surfaces to remove more of the alcohol inks and the Perfect Pearls, leaving a colorful canvas of autumn colors and golden shine!

The earrings

I used a length of red wire to match the color scheme of the charms. For each earring, I strung a pre-wired gold loreal seed bead to the wire, placing it near the hole at the top of the leaf, and wound the wire around the leaf’s stalk. I finished the winding with an eye loop. Addition of an earring finding completed the assembly.

I love how much fun these earrings were to make, and how much fun they are to wear!

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Do head on over to the reveal and blog hop at Earrings Everyday to see a plethora of autumn themed earrings from talented artists!