52 Earrings – Complete

Tags

52 earrings, bead, challenge, earring, new year, polymer clay, style

At the start of 2012 I signed up for the 52 Earrings Challenge on Flickr. The idea was to make a pair of earrings every week for a year. Here is a thumbnail summary of what I did:

While I did manage to make more than 52 pairs of earrings, some were a bit late (or I would make the earrings and forget to upload them). At one point I stalled trying to think of a new style of earring to make until I decided that anything was better than nothing.

This caused me to realise something – for a few years now I have been waiting for “my style” to become evident, but when I work I keep trying to make things different to avoid sameness. Perhaps and artist’s “style” DEPENDS on an element of sameness, so I am preventing mine from developing?

All in all it was an enjoyable and worthwhile challenge. I particularly enjoyed the themes, and I would have liked to have made more of my earrings to fit them. Perhaps in 2013 I will challenge myself to make earrings for the themes I skipped?

Happy New Year! Whishing you all enjoyable and worthwile challenges for 2013.

October earrings in November

Tags

52 earrings, ABS challenge, blue, circle, copper, earring, green, polymer clay, revolve, teal

I started making a pair of earrings for the ABS October monthly challenge inspired by the painting “Revolving” by Kirt Schwitters. I loved the painterly colours and the geometry of the repeating circles.

ABS Inspiration painting
“Revolving” (1919) by Kirt Schwitters

My idea was to make something similar to an earlier pair of earrings but using the colours of the painting and creating a circular shape. Unfortunately the earrings stalled because the blobby tail made them look like digits or inverted commas. They completely lost the geometry and elegance of the inspiration painting.

It wasn’t until after the challenge deadline had passed that it occurred to me to cut off the tail (which I’ve kept for another pair of earrings). It’s amazing what a big difference something so simple can make.

The earrings are actually more exciting when worn as they (quite fittingly) revolve and reveal flashes of the copper colour on the other side.

52 Earrings Remojonation

Tags

52 earrings, bead, challenge, earring, earrings, handmade, malachite, polymer clay

So my blog has been pretty quiet as I’ve been feeling too exhausted to make anything new. I have been most distressed at missing the 52 Earrings Challenge as each week I’ve been reminded that yet again I’ve failed.

For some reason it felt like cheating to simply put beads onto a headpin to make earrings, so I was stalling. Finally on Wednesday I decided that it was better to make SOMETHING even if it wasn’t astoundingly innovative. It turns out that I have only missed 5 weeks of the Earring challenge, and I was able to make more than enough to catch up.

It feels good to have caught up, and hopefully I can keep up for the remaining 8 pairs of earrings. What? Only 8 weeks till the end of the year! 😮

Retro Earrings

Tags

52 earrings, earring, faux, fordite, multi coloured, polymer clay, retro

This week’s theme for the 52 Earrings challenge is “Retro”. I initially thought 60s and 70s, but as the following theme is “Flower Power” I decided to go back further to the 1950s. So I thought of big red plastic earrings… automobiles… and fordite.

Fordite then cross pollinated with a pair of vintage wooden earrings, a touch of the 80’s gave a curve to the squares and I used earrwires instead of clip ons…

Faux fordite retro earrings.

52 Earrings – Half and Half

Tags

52 earrings, circle, earring, green, half, mokume gane, pendant, polymer clay, purple

We are nearly halfway through the 52 Earrings challenge (oops that means half the year gone too!), so the theme for week 25 is “Half”*.

This week I made two pairs of earrings in contrasting colours to co-ordinate with a double sided slide pendant. The earrings are each half a circle, and you can wear the pair that matches the pendant, or mix it up and have one of each.

I’m pleased with the mokume gane surface on the yellow-green side, but I think the purple side was a bit too well blended so most of the interesting surface was sanded off. I have some ideas to jazz it up so you may see these guys again…

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* There are only themes for the odd number weeks (therefore not week 26).

June ABS Challenge and Frida Kahlo

Tags

52 earrings, earrings, miscarriage, pendant, polymer clay, spiral, van alphen, wire

Again this month’s ABS challenge piece cross-pollinated with this week’s 52 Earrings theme – Frida Kahlo. When she was young Frida was in a tram crash which left her in constant pain and unable to have children. This particularly affected me as last weekend I had a miscarriage myself – I was only 8 weeks pregnant so it was not as bad as Frida’s experience, but it did mean when I saw this month’s inspiration piece I saw emptiness and loneliness.

ABS inspiration painting
“Nighthawks” (1942) by Edward Hopper

“Henry Ford Hospital” (1932) by Frida Kahlo

The focal bead is polymer clay inspired by the architecture of the curved diner window and the view through the window to the street behind. It is open and empty. The wire spirals are links of DNA chains – broken and missing. The ribbon is blood.

“Gone” by Cate van Alphen

Matching earrings

I didn’t actually want a memento of the miscarriage, but this is what came to me. “Playing with polymer” (as I call it) is keeping me distracted, so I’m not about to tell the muse to go away and come back with something better. Perhaps when I am ready, I will dismantle it.

80s Remake

Tags

52 earrings, 80s, bead, earring, polymer clay, wire

If Hollywood can do it, so can I… For this week’s 52 Earrings challenge I have remade a pair of earrings I originally made for an 80s fancy dress party. I made the earrings to co-ordinate with a top I had, and while I was pleased with the pattern on the oversized disks the design had a major flaw which I only noticed when I saw pictures of the party…

The disks were attached to the earwires with thread through a loop of black seed beads and a pink polymer bead. The problem was that they kept rotating and facing the wrong way.

My solution was to make a new disk with an earing post embedded in it and link the two with wire. Hopefully this will prevent the 360° rotation.

I actually started this remake back in week 14 (it’s now week 22) with pink dots and wire, which really didn’t work for these earrings at all and became a separate pair. It’s taken me this long to get black wire and try again.

52 Earrings – Sea

Tags

52 earrings, blue, earring, earwires, foam, sea, sead beads, shell

This week’s theme for the 52 Earrings Challenge is “Sea”. I have used cornucopia shaped shells and created a flow of foamy sea blue yarn encrusted with pearls and glass sead beads. The earwires are handmade using bronze coloured niobium wire and feature tiny shell shaped spirals.

“Sea” earrings by Cate van Alphen

Art Bead Scene Challenge – May

Tags

52 earrings, Art Bead Scene, bead, challenge, earring, MAY ABS, necklace, polymer clay

After missing the Art Bead Scene Monthly Challenge last month… AGAIN… I was determined to complete it this month, and I have! The idea of the challenge is to create a piece (jewellery or otherwise) incorporating at least one art bead inspired by a given piece of art.

Italian’s House at Monmarte by Maurice Utrillo
Oil on panel, 53 x 76 cm

I was most drawn to the piece of sky at the back with the contrast of the dusky sky and the dark green trees. I decided to make a hollow doughnut pendant and “paint” the trees on with polymer clay giving an impasto effect.

For stringing the pendant, I made green beads in the same colours as the trees, but I also wanted to make some reference to the architectural element of the inspiration painting. I had planned to make textured white cubes until it occurred to me that they would look like sugar cubes! At this point there was some cross pollination between the 52 Earrings Challenge (this week’s theme is “Faux”) and the idea of “ivory” squares came to me. Ivory beads seemed appropriate to me given the era of the painting.

The turquoise colour of the cord in the earrings came back to the necklace in the form of stone beads I salvaged from an old necklace. These picked up the blue colour of the sky and lightened the green shades which were rather heavy against the ivory.

Unfortunately I could not use the same cord to string the necklace as I did for the earrings as the holes in the stone beads were too small. I used gold ribbon instead which picked up the touches of yellow ochre in the trees. While I am happy with both the earrings and necklace separately I am not quite sure they make a SET – they are clearly related, but perhaps there is just a hint of sibling conflict?

April Challenges

Tags

52 earrings, beads, challenge, coloured pencil, earring, Gdansk, google maps, polymer clay, texture, travel, van alphen, Virtual Paintout

Or should this post be titled “Where did April go?” or “Things I didn’t make”?

I was very excited to discover the Virtual Paintout this month. The idea is that every month a new location is selected and you “walk” around the area using Google street view and find inspiration to paint. April’s destination was Gdansk in Poland. What a wonderful idea – it had never occurred to me before to use Google maps to be an armchair tourist! I started off a bit like a car-chasing-dog who has suddenly caught a bus – I didn’t know how to take it all in and I started clicking randomly all over the map (with not much success). Then I decided to pick a hotel and travel from there. I found a delightful house with a door intriguingly ajar. It looked so invitingly cool inside and  baking hot outside. Here is the location if you’d like to have a look around for yourself.

Doors open in Gdansk by Cate van Alphen

It’s been years since I did any drawing and I found it required a surprising amount of concentration, but I did enjoy myself (although next time perhaps I’ll choose something quicker to work with than coloured pencil and I’ll select an image which actually includes the focal point!).

“BUT WHERE’S THE POLYMER CLAY?” I hear you cry. Disappointingly nearly all of it is still in my head. I did manage to start on some texture stamps, but not any of the exciting things I had planned to make using them.

Then there are the architecturally inspired beads from the Royal Road I haven’t started yet…

I had a wonderful idea for the Art Bead Scene Challenge, but alas, on Saturday the 28th I discovered the deadline was the 25th!

Still, watch this space, some of these ideas may make an appearance eventually – one of the major culprits for my missing the challenge times is a bead that has been sitting in my “in progress” bucket for YEARS which suddenly demanded to be finished, and has grown up into something quite interesting. Sometimes these things have their own timescales.

Amazingly I HAVE managed to keep up with the 52 earrings challenge.