AJE Component of the month - October

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...

Monthly Winners

Lindsay Starr / Phantasm Creations

Sherri Hartman Stokey / Knot Just Macrame

Staci Louise Smith / Staci Louise Originals

AJE Blog Team

Diana Ptaszynski / Suburban Girl Studio

Susan Kennedy / Sue Beads

Caroline Dewison / BlueberriBeads

Jenny Davies-Reazor

Lesley Watt

Melissa Allford Meman

Francesca Watson

Jennifer Stout Cameron / Glass Addictions

AJE Component of the month - September

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.

I spent a good while looking at it and had multiple ideas of what to do with it. My first thought was that it looked like it belonged on the end of a piece of leather, but after holding it on my wrist, the curve looked great going over my hand. I played around for a while with chain to try and work out how to hold it in the position I wanted, then decided it needed some colour.

It looked stunning with the deep garnet red beads I pulled out of my stash, but unfortunately, they have tiny holes and wouldn't fit the wire, so I chose some deep red and gold Czech glass and made connectors. I made large copper jump rings to hold the chain and used the connectors at each join. 

After quite a lot of alterations to get everything to hang on the right place, here is my final design...

It was really hard to try and take a photo of me wearing it (you will have to imagine it being worn by a beautiful model rather than someone with man hands!) 

It's really light and comfortable to wear, and I love the look of it draped across your hand, it makes me think of medieval knights and ladies... I think reading Game of Thrones is rubbing off on me!

Thank you to Kristi for a great component, it's really unusual and has been great fun to use!

If you'd like to visit Kristi and see more of her work, you can find her shop here http://KristiBowmanDesign.Etsy.com

And to see what the rest of the team has done, follow the links!

Thanks for reading :)

Guests

SJ Designs Jewelry

Kari Asbury

Shirley Moore

AJE Team Members

Caroline Dewison

Diana Ptaszynski

Lesley Watt

Melissa Meman

Linda Landig

Kristen Stevens

Jenny Davies-Reazor
Sue Kennedy

AJE Component of the month - August

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.

The feathers were wrapped with copper wire and some antique Czech beads and used as dangles below my dreamcatcher charm. I also added a small bronze heart from TheaElements.

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 :)

Guest Artists

Karin Grosset Grange - http://ginkgoetcoquelicot.blogspot.com/

Ann Schroeder - http://beadlove.wordpress.com/

Claire Lockwood - http://www.somethingtodowithyourhands.com/

Toltec Jewels - http://www.jewelschoolfriends.com/

The AJE Team

Jen Cameron - http://www.glassaddictions.com/blog

Diana Ptaszynski - http://www.suburbangirlstudio.com

Kristen Stevens - http://kristen-beadjourney.blogspot.com/

Lesley Watt - http://www.thegossipinggoddess.blogspot.com/

Jenny Davies-Reazor - http://www.jdaviesreazor.com/blog

Francesca Watson - http://francescawatson.com/

Linda Landig - http://www.lindasbeadblog.com/

Melissa Meman - http://melissameman.blogspot.com/

Sue Kennedy - http://www.suebeads.blogspot.com/

Rebekah Payne - http://www.treewingsstudio.com/

Caroline Dewison - http://blueberribeads.blogspot.co.uk/ 

AJE Component of the Month - July

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 :)

Guest Designers

Deb Fortin - www.studiok24.blogspot.ca

Toltec Jewels - www.JewelSchoolFriends.com

Carol Briody - cbriody.blogspot.com

The AJE Team

Caroline Dewison - blueberribeads.blogspot.co.uk

Susan Kennedy - www.suebeads.blogspot.com

Melissa Meman - melissameman.blogspot.com

Jenny Davies-Reazor - www.jdaviesreazor.com/blog

Kristen Stevens - kristen-beadjourney.blogspot.com

Francesca Watson - www.francescawatson.com

AJE Component of the Month - June

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...

Guests
Ann Schroeder
 Mischelle Andrade Fanucchi
Therese Frank

AJE Members

Susan Kennedy

Diana Ptaszynski

Linda Landig

Lesley Watt
MelissaMeman

Caroline Dewison

Francesca Watson

Jenny Davies-Reazor

Rebekah Payne

Kristen Stevens

AJE Component of the month reveal - May

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.

I took some sheet copper and etched it on both sides. That way, when the bail at the top was rolled around, the etching would show.

And the reverse would be patterned as well

The cabochon was set along with an amethyst, and it was strung on to leather with copper beads.

I used the clasp I had left over from Lesley's COM last month to finish it. 

I had loads of fun designing this, and it was great to get back to some metal working. Thanks to Susan for the wonderfully inspiring component!

If you'd like to see what the rest of the AJE team and some special guests created with their components... follow the links!

Guests

Shai Williams

Erin Prais-Hintz

Kari Asbury

Carolyn Lawson

Merja Sundstrom

AJE Members

Susan Kennedy

Diana Ptaszynski

Linda Landig

Lesley Watt

Melissa Meman

Caroline Dewison

Francesca Watson

Jenny Davies-Reazor

Rebekah Payne

Keirsten Giles

Kristen Stevens

The Bead Shop Liverpool

I've been a bit quiet recently, things are getting manic here. We're doing lots of reorganising at home, which is seriously getting in the way of my making! But as part of that reorganising, I will be getting my very own studio... I'm very excited, but more about that in another post!

So shop updates won't be very regular for the next few months while I get things sorted. But if my shop's looking a little empty, and you still need a fix, you can get some blueberribeads from the Bead Shop Liverpool.

It's a great little shop on Smithdown road in Liverpool, where Vicky offers beautiful beads, findings, and tools as well as classes and lots of inspiration. I've been in there for a while now, but I thought I'd take you for a look round.

Here it is from the front. I love the architecture in Liverpool, the lines of Victorian buildings curve to the modern roads, but the actual road is much older, being mentioned in the Doomsday book in 1086. It also meets up with the famous Penny Lane junction as sung about by The Beatles!

Once inside, there's a little treasure trove of beads and other jewellery related goodies...

Seed Beads & Pearls in every colour

My little corner of ceramics

An amazing range of Czech Glass

Mmmmmm!

Findings, wire & TheaElements Bronze

Tools...

And beautiful pieces of beaded jewellery. This is Vicky's 1st place winning necklace from the British Bead Awards 2013.

And her entry to the Battle of the Beadsmith 2013. 

You can come in to the shop and learn how to make beautiful pieces like this yourself! I got my first and only lesson in here from Vicky, learning how to do bead embroidery. She's a great teacher, unfortunately though, I just don't have the patience (or the eyesight) for those annoying little seeds!

And of course you can't leave without doing a little shopping... this is my small haul from the Czech glass pick and mix... it's terrible, like sweeties!!!

Vicky's also set up a shop website, so nearly everything in the shop is available online, including some of my ceramics!

Just follow the link... http://www.thebeadshopliverpool.co.uk

If you're planning on doing some shopping online, she has a 10% discount running for the bank holiday weekend. The offer will end at 11.59pm Monday night... just use the code - bankholiday