Art Jewelry Elements Earring Challenge!

2012 has been MOSTLY made up of me signing up for blog challenges, and creating jewelry mainly for that. So in December, I decided that I had learned a LOT from all the challenges and now needed to step back a bit and create based on my own mood and speed and all that.

Come January, what do I do? I sign up for not one but two challenges! Yup, am nothing if not a flake! But let me explain. The reason I signed up for both of these is that they will discipline me into doing something once a week. Regularly, with focus and all that. (More on that focus coming in the next post). I am nothing if not a big excuse factory as well! 

But challenges are good things, so lets move on.

The first one I signed up for was the Focus on Life - its a photography challenge, so am still not quite breaking that promise (yup, told ya, excuse factory! Big one!)

The second one is the Art Jewelry Elements Earring Challenge. 

The idea is to create at least one pair of earrings each week, using art elements. These could be made by me (yeah, sure, as if), or some other awesome artisan. The have broken it up into quarters so its not a year long commitment if you think that's too much to handle.

I have collected a fair amount of artbeads in the last year to last me the first 13 weeks. So am good there...since I never buy supplies only for a challenge. I always, always, always use my stash.

First one up, is this pair of earrings. The art element in here is hard to miss! The beautiful polymer clay butterfly wings!

These are made by Donovan Klaaren. I know him through his wife, Jessica Klaaren, who runs the shop Cellar Door Jewels on etsy. Jessica is an awesome jewelry designer herself, and Donovan primarily made these for her. He posted some pictures of his work on Facebook, and I coaxed him into letting me have some of them too! 

Jessica has made some really pretty earrings with these wings. So I had to make sure they were not copies of what she did. She mostly used coordinating beads in her work, so I decided to use a monarch butterfly instead. I did add a small AB swarovski bead which actually has a lot of the colors in the wings.

Yup, am loving it! The earrings are available in my etsy store here:

Purple Yellow Butterfly Wings Earrings

Here's how I styled it...

Preppy Purple! by kashmira-patel

I also made a necklace with wings from the Klaarens.

Isn't he amazing! I have never seen work like this before, so am really glad he agreed to let me buy some of them.

This necklace is also listed in my etsy store: Butterfly Wings And Shells Necklace

Two Acrobats with a Dog!

Yeah, I know, strange name for a blog post...for those of you not familiar with the Art Bead Scene Blog.

The ABS is, in their own words, "Art Bead Scene is an interactive blog with the goal of uniting bead artists of all materials and the jewelry designers who use art beads in their work."

They host a monthly design challenge, where they put up a painting as inspiration. The challenge is open to jewelry artists, fiber artists, collage artists, etc. Basically, anywhere that beads can be used. Entries have to be based on the inspiration provided, and MUST have at least ONE art bead used. An Art Bead is a bead, charm, button or finding made by an 'independant artist'.
Do follow that link up there and find out more about ABS. They do a lot more than the monthly challenges!


I have been wanting to enter these challenges for a long time. Every month, I would religiously look up what the inspiration is, what beads I can use, I even come up with ideas, but for one reason or another, end up not doing anything. Was able to get in this time! And early on too!

The inspiration painting for this month is Pablo Picaso's Two Acrobats and a Dog

The ABS folks explained a bit about the painting: "painted right in the middle of his Rose Period. This was the time when Picasso was slowly coming out of the severe depression that marked his Blue Period, and the colors Picasso used here signify that recovery"

I like this...end of the darkness and the beginning of a new rosy dawn is what it says to me. So I picked the lightest shade of blue...aqua, brass to signify the browns, and copper to signify the rose colors.

And then I looked at the painting again to see what else jumped out at me, and it was the diamond pattern on the older boy's clothes.

I had the perfect ingredients for the colors and the shapes I picked :-)

Diamond shaped, aqua beads, handmade copper charms by Kristi Bowman, and antique brass seed beads and came up with this darling pair of earrings.

And this one just because I like how the ambience is like the wee hours of dawn...like Picasso coming out of his depression...stepping into a rosy day!