Do You Have Earrings That Match?

Last week I took some new work into one of the galleries that carry my jewelry. They chose several necklaces, among other things, and asked if I had earrings to match.

Um, not for all of the necklaces they chose. But I could in a day or so!

What better excuse to go home and play with the beads, right? This was one of the pieces I needed to coordinate with, and I was extra excited to figure out how to make earrings with the cool howlite double-holed spikes.

Luckily, I had two white spikes and two black spikes left over from the batch Cynthia sent to me. So, because to me, more is never too much, I made TWO pairs or earrings for the shop owners to chose between.

The black pair is now in the gallery. The white ones are mine, at least for the time being!  There were a lot of little pieces of copper wire that sacrificed themselves as I tried to figure out how best to work with the two holes (cross them over above the bead? loop them around? cross them behind the bead somehow?), but I'm happy with the result. Next bead show, I'm on the lookout for more double-holed beads to experiment with!

So how about you? Do you make earrings to match the necklaces and bracelets that you make?  Or do you create earrings you love and then make something else to go with them?

The Rose's Thorns, or When Donuts Go Punk

Remember these?

These two donuts were how I passed the slow moments at a show over the winter.  Couldn't quite figure out how to finish them, but at the time, I suspected that spikes might be involved in one.

It took a while to mature, but here's the finished version of the rhodonite donut:

Somehow, once the spikes grew on the donut, frilly soft finishing just wouldn't do. So rhodonite, onyx, and gunmetal chain finished it off.  I really like it!

Oh, and I finished off the malachite/lapis donut as well, but it's a completely different, non-spiky style.  And then I completely forgot to take a picture of it before it went into a local gallery. Bad, bad blogger. Maybe I'll go to the gallery and get a picture there.

A Spike In Activity (Bad Pun, Fun Beads)

A while back, the fabulous Cynthia Machata of Antiquity Travelers reached out to some bloggy friends with an offer -- would we be interested in trying to make something with some howlite spikes she'd found at her local bead store? I took her up on the offer so fast, I think my keyboard was smoking...Subtle, I was not.

So here's what arrived in the mail:

Actually, this is only a portion of what was in the package. Cynthia sent both black dyed and natural white howlite. I just forgot to take a picture of the whole pack before jumping in. Bad, bad beady swapper, I know.

I've done several necklaces with a sterling armature that I shape and then use as a framework for freeform peyote (see some of them in posts here and here). It's a fun technique that seemed well suited to these spikes. But these beauties cried out for copper.

To keep the focus on the cool spikes, I decided to keep the accent beads black and white as well. 

A lot more beading could have gone onto this frame, but less was more here.

I have two black spikes left over, lurking on my worktable. I think they're destined to be some bold earrings, but you never know what'll happen.

Want to see what Cynthia made with her spikes?  Go here. And keep your eyes open for gemstone spikes at your local bead store -- they are big fun to work with!

Daggers and Spikes

No, I'm not planning the costume I'll be wearing for the season premiere of Game of Thrones...

I'm celebrating the wonders that were contained in a tiny package that arrived from The Best Bead, all the way from the Czech Republic.

Aren't they fantastic?  I've been wanting to try out the new spike beads, and couldn't find any around here.  What did we do before the internet?!?

So in between drooling over the eye candy in the first BSBP reveal this weekend, and freaking out over finishing my pieces for the second reveal, I'll be fondling these little lovelies and plotting what they might become....