New Picture Jasper Earrings

It is not uncommon for me to go to a trade show and pick up some gemstones in interesting shapes or colors that I am eager to make something out of. Unfortunately the time I have to create never seems to match the number of projects I have grabbed goodies for. This has been true for some teardrop shapes made out of a few different gemstones that I have been meaning to make earrings out of. Fairly recently I finally carved out some time to design two new pair of picture jasper earrings that incorporated some of these teardrops.

The first thing I did was to unstring all of the picture jasper teardrops and see what I had that I thought paired up well. I found two pair that I wanted to start with. I then pulled out my other picture jasper strands in various shapes and sizes and picked beads that had similar color and character to each teardrop pair. Antiqued brass plated findings complemented the darker teardrops while I thought gold plated findings worked better with the lighter colored ones. I made jointed dangle earrings out of each matched pair of teardrop picture jasper beads. They are currently listed in my EDCCollective Etsy shop in my earrings section.

Artist Spotlight - MykoLyna

I was excited to find out that this artisan would be at the Happy Holidays Gift Market in December of last year. I first saw her and her lovely seed bead jewelry several years ago at Funky Finds in Fort Worth where I purchased a lovely black and gold beaded necklace. (That necklace can be seen in the "Design This" post in which I describe having earrings made to match the necklace.)

Since I was also vending at the gift market, I had to wait until someone could watch my booth for me but eventually I was able to get a look at what Galyna had to offer. She had lots of pretty pieces as before. One pair of silver and golden earrings in particular spoke to me. The only problem is that I don't have pierced ears so I would have had to change out her ear wires for the hinged screw back earrings I like. While I was examining the earrings to see how easy that would have been, Galyna suggested that it might be better to have her make a new pair not already attached to ear wires. I would then be able to attach my clips to the loop at the top of a new pair without having to deconstruct the pair that were already made. There were benefits to her suggestion so I told her I would be happy to go with it. I went ahead and paid for my new earrings and Galyna shipped them to me when she had recreated the ones I had ordered.

If you want to see Galyna's lovely handmade jewelry in person check out her 2016 show schedule.