SJ Designs February Challenge

Every month over at Sarajo Wentling's blog SJDesigns, her husband Eric gives her a photograph he took as a challenge in her jewelry making.  This month's turned out to be a perfect and needed pick-me-up!  At the beginning of February, we had snow drops blooming and daffodils starting to look like they were thinking about blooming.  Sarajo blogged about Eric's photo here and I thought how nice to just continue into spring with some new jewelry designs.  

Eric Wentling

After a mild winter, I was looking forward to planting the gardens and getting ready for warmer weather.  Ha.  Mother Nature had a different plan.  We got several snowstorms - in fact, we had two weeks of snowstorm after snowstorm after snowstorm!  Unusual for this area.  Today is the first day the snow is mostly gone, however .... and there always seems to be a however .... another round of snow is likely for tomorrow night into Friday morning.  I thought that just going with the flow and doing some winter themed beading might make it seem more like the beginning of winter - it didn't work.  So I put up Eric's photo and started looking through the spring and flower themed beads I've been working on.

First I put together this pair of earrings from ceramic yellow and peach daisy-like and leaf beads, green glass, and bone beads.  These remind me of sitting in daisy strewn grass putting together crowns with my granddaughter .... (insert big smile here).  Lately it seems niobium ear wires are the only ones that my ears can take for more than an hour or two - I used copper colored ones and copper headpins.

I actually had inspiration and time for another piece this month!  After coming in from inspecting the lavender (not even thinking about blooming yet), I made this lavender based bracelet from two sprig molded ceramic beads, a ceramic leaf bead, copper beads, fluorite, and some bluish-green jade rondelles I found in a box and don't even remember getting.  They're an unusual color so I'm glad the label telling me they're jade was still on the string!

After being so inspired by working this spring theme, I spent the rest of the morning creating some new flower beads!  The ceramic beads I used today are currently up in the shop at stoneypointstudio.com and the new beads will be out in a few weeks.

Be sure to stop by Sarajo's blog and see what everyone else created.  I'll give you a hint - you'll see a gorgeous marigold pendant!

Happy Creating!  Deborah