Sunday, May 6, 2012

Designer Crafts Connection - First Monday

Our theme for this month is Quick'n EZ jewelry, or a variation thereof.  We allow a lot of leeway for personal creativity and truth be told, having a monthly theme is only to provide a little structure to our First Monday posts.  

I'm not known as a jewelry designer, but I enjoy making jewelry pieces.  It's nice to do something different every once in a while and recently I even had a piece published in Bead Design Studio magazine.  My sister, on the other hand makes beautiful sea glass jewelry.   These are some of her designs:





I love the way she also includes small pieces of decorative pottery. 

Here's the necklace that was in the magazine with matching earrings.




Believe it or not the earrings really were Quick'n EZ to make.  It was just a matter of threading beads onto a head pin, making a simple loop at the top then adding earring wires.  Here are some step by steps I created for a Bead Landing booklet a couple of years ago which show you how:

1.  Thread beads onto the head pin then bend the end at a right angle.

 

2.  Use round nose needle nose pliers to curl the end into a loop.
 

  

Let's not forget jewelry for the little girls in our lives.  My granddaughter has been an avid fan of Disney Princesses, Tinkerbell and now "Hello Kitty" is all the rage.   I received some "Hello Kitty" and hot pink Duck tape a few months ago and thought it would be fun to re-cycle a soda can into a set of special bracelets for her.


Believe me, it doesn't get any easier than this.  I used scissors to cut the soda can into rings then covered them with duck tape.  Make sure to cover all the edges since the aluminum can be pretty sharp.  I used Velcro® for the closures.  All little (and big) girls love bling, so I added strips of Bella Bling Black Border lines adhesive jewels from Ruby Rock-It.  You can also cut rings from plastic drink bottles for the bracelets; be sure to look for the ones that don't have ridges. 

For more jewelry ideas be sure to hop forward through the Designer Crafts Connection webring wherever you see this logo in the sidebar.

 

Members of this group are designers in the Arts & Crafts and Gift industries.  We're not necessarily professional bloggers, we're professional designers, but enjoy sharing projects and techniques to promote crafts through our blogs.  Many of us are designer members of the Craft & Hobby Association (CHA) which is a trade association and we work with manufacturers to develop products and design projects that we hope will inspire you to craft.  Each one of us has our own style of crafting and we work in many different mediums, so be sure to hop around to see a wide variety of ideas sure to amaze and inspire!

Check back with us on May 12th when we will be featuring projects designed with products from Impress Arts!  Enjoy!  Y'all come back now............

Yours truly,
Julie :) 


5 comments:

  1. Love the mom & little girl jewelry!
    And your sister's sea glass pieces were so dainty & feminine. Simply lovely!
    Veronica

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  2. So sweet Julie and delicate! Very pretty!

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  3. Love your post Julie! Your sister's sea glass jewelry leaves me longing for some beach time. Congrats on having some jewelry pieces featured in the mag! love them

    www.mel-designs.typepad.com

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  4. Love your sister's bracelets, so delicate and pretty! Your published pieces are amazing, very pretty. I love, love the Hello Kitty bracelets and can't wait to try your technique for my 6 y/o grand daughter. Thanks for sharing.
    -Molly

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  5. What fun! Your sister's sea glass (and pottery shard) jewelry is lovely - and using the can as a base for your Duck tape bracelets is shear genious!

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