Earring Experiments

What do you think?

Busy Working

"Sun Salutation"
new glass mobile I've been working on... capturing some yoga poses in the glass panels... this mobile shows the movement between poses, from namaste to mountain, forward bends to cobra to downward facing dog... let me know what you think! (there are a few more pictures if you click the listing)

Earrings
cleaning glass bits for earrings... I've been busy creating silver ear-wires as well... I love the little green earrings, and I finally have them in stock again :)
I think everyone needs a pair of these little sprouts

Yoga Card Sets
oh my goodness - I played with Jan's printing press yesterday and printed up a kazillion little yoga ladies... I am thinking card sets. I'll post more when they are dry and the project has progressed further...

"Swell Joolery"

Webster Definition: tom·fool·ery : playful or foolish behavior

Pronunciation: \ˌtäm-ˈfül-rē, -ˈfü-lə-\

Function: noun

Date: 1812
When I was at the Seattle Museum of Art checking out the Alexander Calder exhibit, I couldn't help but notice the display of his jewelry. In the written description of his wearable artwork there was a mention of how he called these pieces "Swell Joolery". Calder had such a fun sense of humor, this made me smile. His "Swell Joolery" is not recognized or seen as often as his large installations.
I make a lot of little earrings out of the little pieces of glass left over from the larger mobiles. Glass is precious and recyclable like this. If I have little pieces left over I can melt them down onto these tiny wires and bend little kinetic works of art. Very little, very happy, very wear-able. Indeed they are examples of playful or foolish behavior.
If you are interested in owning a pair of my tom foolery - Swell Jewelry - I just listed a small collection of them in my Etsy shop!

Jewelry is Art, Art Can Be Jewelry

Jewelry is art, art can be jewelry

Alexander Calder was well known for his mobiles - but he also was a prolific jeweler. The Seattle Art Museum has an exhibit going on right now of Calder's work and there is a workshop this month exploring his line of jewelry.

This year I started making little mobile earrings, motivated by friends of mine that would hold my mini mobiles up to their ears and ask me to make them earrings. I have lots of little bits of scrap glass left over from large installations, so this is a great project! Tiny little mini glass mobiles that be worn as jewelry. I love wearing them, they are completely unusual and strange, but somehow really cute a the same time. And they dance - which makes me smile. - related post: New: Mobile Earrings

Give-Away: FREE Beachy Earrings

So the question is color... I thought I'd bring my blog readers into my process of making these little beachy glass earrings.

Pictured above are some glass bits that I've etched to look like beach glass. Click on the picture to enlarge if you would like. They are little tiny earrings I was playing around with colors... some I think are better than others... the picture shows what they will look like on earwires as well as what a bunch of colors look like once etched.

Its give-away time again on my blog here - so I thought I'd throw out a fun question: Which color do you like the best and want to wear? I will be giving away one pair of earrings to one lucky winner (I'll draw a name out of a box at the end of the month). To enter simply post a comment with your preferred color(I've numbered them in the picture below, click on the image to make it bigger) and make sure I can email you in case you win. If you do win I will send you a pair in the color that you chose! What fun. Yeah for free gifts!!!
I'll be selling these soon in my Etsy shop and in my booth at the PSM. I want to come up with some sort of fun way to display them (a glass wave with little hooks they can hang from?! hm...)
to read more about these earrings click these links for previous posts of mine:

• Earrings for Pammie
• Beachy Glass Colors

Mobile Earrings

Here are a some new mobile earrings that hit my Etsy shop today.
I've been making more and more mobile earrings - I love them!
My own little earlobes have been adoring them, and I get comments everywhere I go. People seem to really like them. I notice they are smile-makers, and that is a good sign!

DIY Displays for the Portland Saturday Market

What do you think of my hand-made earring tree? After some serious detective work (thanks Judi and Danielle for the help!), I could not find one of those photo-umbrella-tree things that I was envisioning using to display my cute new earring line... honestly Ikea, Target and Pier1 all no longer carry those wire things... so I made my own. Its a work in progress, but hey, its a display.

I also made a few hanging displays for my little Oreccini Collection, I'll take some pictures tomorrow in my booth. I used round canvases that I've had for years, and T pins, and a mirror from the craft store... pictures would explain better than words.

The Pellegrini house has been all a whirl this week, preping for the beginning of the 36th PSM season, it will be my 8th season! Cleaning all my display stuff, everything that I had in storage and all the tubs of stuff here at the house. I have officially re-packed everything and I have a few tubs and bags of inventory ready to load in the car in the morning. Whew.

Earring Images

I feel like a broken record about the images of earrings lately - but here I go again!

The other night it was really late and somehow the topic of QVC came up (Tim's grandmother is a big fan of collecting jewelry off that show). So I found that channel on TV and watched as they sold out of a couple of collections. I became curious how they photograph their earrings (hey they certainly are selling them!) and on their website it seems they use a zero white background with the two earrings on a diagonal. Clean and simple, so I Photoshoped one of my earring images to try out this look. It was pretty easy, the earrings were photographed hanging from clear fishing line, so I simply highlighted one of them and dragged in up in the frame. A little recropping so the earrings were centered again and Voila.

I still have more creative ideas for photographing these puppies (still yet to try them in water and on top of bubbly glass - but I won't have time till tomorrow to try these ideas out). At this point I have plenty of decent images to start listing them in my shop, so if you like them and want some for yourself or your valentine - I will have them in my Etsy shop asap.

Show and Tell: New Earrings

My new jewelry line is fresh and ready to hit my shop... I love these new earrings! They are so fun, and I made all sorts of varieties... I've taken so many pictures. The little green ones above are particular favorites of mine - they are made of little tiny dots of green glass dangling from a round handmade earwires. Its hard to get a good shot of earrings. I took over a hundred and there only seem to be a couple good ones:

After all those pictures, its sorta exhausting picking thru the pile... I'm not really happy yet with what I've taken... but there are some fun shots in there somewhere...

This little red set is available in my Etsy shop... soon :)

Sneak Peak: Earwires

Okay, so I am working on this whole jewelry line concept, the above picture is very misleading (but cute eh?!)... this is one of the earwire shapes I've been making... although they will look different when I am done and in the picture there are just paper dots hanging from them... but I liked the picture and I thought I'd share!

Check Out My Beer Bottle Leaf Earings

I received the most wonderful earrings in the mail today. Brian of WesternArtGlass made these beautiful leaves out of a the glass bottle from this Italian beer (pictured is his DIL in some stunning ginko beerings). I love the way Brian creates leaves with his stained glass skillz. He makes mobiles too - we did a trade :)

These little bitty beer bottle leaf earrings are just delicious. Beerings :)

Here's another example of his earrings if you feel the need to own your own :)

oak leaves made out of Belgian Triple Karmeliet

Above is a photo of my new beerings. What is really neat to me is that it is a Moretti La Rossa beer, the beerrings have the "Moretti" brand pressing from the beer bottle glass. Makes me think its may be the same type of glass that I make beads out of, Moretti glass, as far as I know all Moretti glass is a COE of 104. Neat :)