Month of Earrings Challenge Finished

Yeah! The month of earrings challenge has finished and I completed it!

The goal was - starting February 1st, to make 30 pairs of earrings by April 1st - that averages out as making one earring a day!

Here are all the earrings - and the link to my Month of Earrings Set on Flickr for a closer look at all 30 pairs and the Month of Earrings Challenge Group on Flickr where you can see everyone who took part.

Here is a breakdown of the earrings:

A. Materials used:

• 19 were made of (at least in part) silver clay

• 2 were made of bronze clay

• 8 were made of hand colored anodized aluminum

• 2 were made of (at least in part) polymer clay

• 1  included resin

 Garden Seat

 B. Subjects created:

• 8 were birds
• 7 were animals
• 8 were flowers/trees
• 4 were patterns/shapes
• 1 was cooking utensils
• 1 was toys
• 1 was "anyone can" figures

C: Types of earrings

• 26 pairs utilized ear wires
• 3 pairs utilized ear threads
• 1 pair utilized ear posts/studs

 Break out of your shell

D: Mirrored pairs

• i5 pairs were roughly mirror images between each earrings
• 15 pairs were not intended to be mirror/matching earrings but each one with it's own character!

 My achievements from the challenge:

1. created 30 pairs of earrings in 2 months
2. created 2 new series of earrings - a) dangly leg animals and b) hand colored anodized earrings
3. initiated another caption competition from my dangly leg birds
4. tried a new media - coloring anodized aluminum
5. tried a new media - polymer clay
6. initiated a poll on my blog which got lots of votes for the next species of choice for a dangly leg animal.  The octopus was selected and they ended up being Nate and Kate, my #30 pair of earrings.
7. Saw lots of other great earrings through other members of the group
8. Got to know the work of some new jewelry artists who were also in the challenge

Flowers feed the soul

My favorite of all the 30 I made are Humphrey and Trisha - and I wear them a lot. Next favorite are Nate and Kate.

Humphrey and Trisha Lovebirds

If I did it again, I think I'd work on trying more styles of earrings, using less ear wires!

The whole challenge idea was Vicki Hallmark's with some encouragement from a few of us.  So thanks Vicki. As you can tell - I got a lot from it and loved it!

So do you have a favorite of the 30 pairs?

I start a new challenge today too....a very different one......but more of that later!

Octopodes Nate and Kate!

If you regularly read my blog, you may remember that a couple of weeks ago I put up a poll to ask you what dangly leg animal I should make next in my collection.  I had done dogs, cats, sheep, birds, penguins, "anyone"....etc.

I foolishly selected a variety of animals that, in hindsight, maybe I should have considered more carefully!  Anyhow - the winner was the Octopus!

Thus I have made octopodes Nate and Tate as earrings with lots of dangly legs! (FYI, the plural for octopus can be either octopuses, octopi or octopodes! )

And so here are Nate and Kate.  Do you get their names?  Yes, could have been Ollie and Olivia but that seemed a little obvious.  So it is Nate = N-8 or N-eight and Kate = K-8 or K-eight as in "oct"??? A little obtuse? I do hope so!!!!

I want to sit on top!

Actually, Nate and Kate were easier to make than I had envisaged - and their legs really do dangle and jiggle well and make a sweet little ringing sound if they move a lot!  Hope you like them - especially if you voted for the octopus!

Yes, Kate is the one with the wider hips!  Nate looks so much more like a male!  You can tell they are quite the playful couple of octopodes!

Keep a green tree in your heart....

"Keep a green tree in your heart and perhaps a singing bird will come."

Isn't that a nice quote!   It's a Chinese proverb.  I used it to create a pair of earrings for my month of earrings challenge...which is ending all too soon.....

As the month of earrings is a challenge - in that we have to produce 30 pairs of earrings by April 1st - I thought I'd an extra bit of challenge and use it as an opportunity to try new things!!  So I decided to do some carving for these earrings.   I've done only a little before so carved onto a speedball mat/pad and then used that to impress the silver clay in.

Once fired, the green tree was colored with hand tinted resins.

One of the big benefits I see from using this type of carving is that you could then make quite a few copies of the earrings.  Hmmmm, maybe this isn't such a benefit for me as I so much prefer one of a kind or just two of any design!!! ...but it was good to try and I'd do better next time :=D

Anyone can do tricks! - Olympic earrings!

These earrings were inspired by a comment made a couple of years ago by my elderly mother-in-law.

My husband had been talking to her on the phone and she had said she had been watching the olympics on television, so he asked her which sport she had been watching. Her reply was "it was people doing tricks"!

We had to assume it was gymnastics!  I'm not sure the olympians would have been flattered to hear that they do "tricks" - but it did conjur up a lovely image.

And so - my little "anyone" figure, is doing "tricks"!

As my mother in law frequently makes interesting statements, we thought of starting a blog in her honor, calling it "mum's the word" and listing her classic phrases!!!  

Anyhow, hope you like my strong anyone's who have been working out hard.  Perfect earrings for gymnasts, yoga lovers, and any tricksters out there!!

They are part of my Month of earrings challenge - #22.

Break out of your shell!

It's time to break out of your shell!

I've mentioned before that we have lots of birdhouses on our property but my favorite is the bluebird nesting box that has a little camera installed in it, linked through to a small television.  Through the camera we can watch the whole nest building, egg laying, hatching, feeding etc processes of bluebirds - day and night - and hear them too.  It's fascinating to see all the different stages - but also a little sad on some occasions.

I highly recommend getting one of these birdhouse cameras.  You'll love it. But from all the birds we've watched, one always sticks in my head.  One year I was watching this newly hatched bluebird and he just had this bit of egg shell on his head and it wouldn't seem to come off. It was just like the cartoons and he looked so sweet.  Sorry the photo below showing him isn't very clear.  He wriggled around but his little shell "hat" just stuck on him.  I think eventually he got it off when mummy came back to the nesting box.

In honor of this special little bird, I made some "break out of your shell" earrings.  Suitable for shy people who want to break out of their shell, Easter egg lovers, bird lovers and more!  Yes, little feet sticking out of egg shells!

Hope they make you smile like my little birdie did in the nest box!

 

These are #17 in my month of earrings challenge.  Time to create more ear threads instead of just dangly ear wires!

Waddle and Toboggan - new penguin friends

Two more introductions today - here are Waddle and Toboggan - cute little penguins:

You can call them Wad and Tob - as I know you'll make friends with them quickly enough.....They love to snuggle up together when it gets really cold....

Other times, they keep a watchful eye out....looking this way....

and then that way.....

making sure there are no predators around.....Phew - it's all clear, so they can just hang out for a while!

Don't you just love their little webbed feet that move as they hang out - yes - like they are waddling!!!

(Month of earrings # 15)

Month of earrings update

Here are some more earrings that I've included in my "month of earrings" challenge - these are # 10, 11, 13 and 14 (the lime green ones I thought were too similar to another pair so I didn't count them as another entry!).

 

The top row are "lavender fields" and "lavender essence" and the bottom row are "the colors of freshness" - turquoise, aquamarine and lime green. 

In the "month of earrings" group on flickr, there are now 115 photos of earrings made by participants in the challenge so far!  It's a good collection. The goal is for each of us to make 30 pairs by April 1st. As it is the 23rd Feb today, in theory we should have made 11 1/2 pairs of earrings to far! Yeah - I'm ahead of the game...at the moment.....

Dog-eared!

Feeling a little dog-eared?  Then this is the pair of earrings for you!  You'll look dog-eared - with dogs in your ears - but you'll no longer feel dog-eared!!!

Two happy best friends to dangle and wiggle their legs from your ears!

They have cute little faces, floppy ears, and little sticky up tails! Your perfect easy-to-keep pet that'll blow those dog-eared feelings away!

Yes, these are #12 in my month of earrings challenge!  (I haven't shown you #10 and #11 yet...but I will! )  "Dog-eared" will be up on my site soon on the "playful" page.

So what do YOU think are the doggies names?

A garden seat

Earrings # 8 and # 9 of my Month of Earrings challenge - a blue garden seat and a green garden seat.

Sweet little bird silhouettes, nestled in the garden plants...taking a seat.  Different birds on each one.

The earrings are very slightly domed.  They are made from colored anodized aluminum.  In this process, the color becomes part of the metal surface layer so can't be scratched off.

Which color do you prefer?

A Month of Earrings

I joined a "challenge" at the beginning of the month.  It is to make 30 pairs of earrings by April 1st....that means you make on average, one earring a day throughout February and March.  I thought it would be good to join in - because I tend to make more necklaces than earrings and also because I have very few pairs of earrings myself!

You've seen some of my first 6 entries so far, in other posts, but I'll collate them all here.....and show you the new ones as they come along in future posts.

As I have only 6 pairs so far  and it's the 15th, I need to finish off a few more that have just come out of the kiln to keep up to date!

You'll notice that a couple of them are a different style for me.  They are created by coloring anodized aluminum.  I'll explain more later in another post....

There are 15 of us in the challenge and you can see all the earrings so far on our flickr group here.  If you fancy joining in - you still can.....you've only got 15 days to catch up :-)

Love Birds - Humphrey and Trisha

Thought you'd like to meet my two new birdie friends - Humphrey and Trisha.


They are very much in love as you can tell....

So you know they will be looking forward to Valentine's Day......They are so much in love that you frequently hear them calling each other "my darling" and "my love"...forgoing "Humphrey" and "Trisha". They are just two darlings....

But surely, now and again they must get a little annoyed with each other and fall out and....maybe that's when the "Humphrey" and "Trisha" can be heard:


But I guess they always like to hang out together, regardless....

OK. I confess. These two little birdies are named after some friends of ours! 5 years ago when we were travelling to the Galapagos Island, we met two British couples on the boat. One couple were called Humphrey and Trisha! They are quintessentially British! It's just wonderful......and that's right, Humphrey always refers to Trisha as " darling" or "my love"!!!

We had a wonderful time with them while travelling and I sort of wondered whether these terms of affection would rub off on John...but no! However Humphrey generously extended the terms to include me too - and I did the same for him!!

And we still do! We meet up once a year with the darlings when we go back to England and catch up on what we've all been doing and where we've been travelling!!

Here's to good friends!

Humphrey and Trisha