Happy New Year!

Back from a month long european adventure. Bryan and I traveled to Germany, Poland and Czech Republic. They were all beautiful countries and I will be excited to see how the trip comes through in our jewelry this year.

Working on some single earrings  that can be purchased individually to create a unique asymmetrical set. These are the first two I've done. There is a group doing Earring-A-Day for 2015 but don't know that I will stick to the complete 365 challenge this year. You can search on Etsy each day to see what everyone is posting and match up singles from multiple artists! Search using EAD 2015. Once I have about 7 earrings completed I will post them in my etsy shop.

ideas

Working on some earring ideas for the Plaza art fair this fall. I was looking at my calendar yesterday and realized that I only have like 14 more weeks to prepare for this!! My inventory is pretty much nil right now other than a few brooches from last years Brooch A Day challenge.

I've still been working on trying to clean my studio and get old supplies packed and donated that I'm realizing I am just not going to touch. Managed to clear off a bit more space from my bench top last night which makes me feel sooo much better.

Bryan and I have been putting together an engraving area in the studio this week as well. I'm anxious to add this new element into my pieces(and get Bryan more involved with the jewelry!) He really took to the engraving well when we were at GRS 2 weeks ago for a week long intensive class on engraving.

Are you learning any new techniques or taking fun classes/workshops this summer?  I'd love to hear about them!

Etsy Metal Challenge

This month's Etsy Metal challenge was to design a piece inspired by Alexander Calder. We were all so excited by this project that we decided there had to be another month this year that we do this theme again. After doing several sketches I finally decided on making this pair of earrings.

In this photo I show the necklace that inspired my design. I'd never really spent a lot of time looking at Calder's jewelry before and really enjoyed doing the research for this project. I could see his influence on many jewelry designers of today.

We had several members play along with this challenge. You can see their pieces on our Etsy Metal blog.