Imaginary Jewelry and Altered Art: February 2015

Greetings from Freddie, my green helper, the Endangered N.W. tree octopus! He says this 3 month Build a Line Challenge from B'sue Boutiques has been, and is a roller coaster! Ups and downs, tearing hair out, doing the happy dance, it's all been happening for me and the lucky 54 other wonderful jewelry designers who are doing this challenge with Brenda Sue Lansdowne--our incredibly funny, kind and generous teacher.

Are you ready for the 1st big reveal? I have a terrible fear of heights, but I jumped way out of my comfort zone and learned to do assemblage jewelry, colorizing metal and so much more. Here I have some of the pieces from the new line I've designed: Imagine the Colors of Nature. In the next month, the first of these pieces will be appearing for sale in my Etsy shop.

Yes, that IS a different theme than I blogged about last time! As anyone familiar with the creative process knows, you don't always end up with exactly what you imagined in the beginning. And as Bob Ross said, "there are no mistakes, just happy little accidents," or in my case, happy BIG accidents!

In the next two weeks I will blog more about how I created these pieces. But for now, you can see that there are 2 parts to my line: (1) The Nature Brights Line: copper, silver, gold and brass assemblage pieces and hand painted metals with: leaves and flowers, birds, dragonflies, and butterflies. Some pieces can be adjustable to brooches, many will have matching earrings as an option. (2) The Mini Cha Nature Line: incorporates the same nature elements as above, but in adjustable bracelets and mini rings with leaves, pearls, birds, mini lockets, flowers and more. I have many other colors planned--a lovely denim blue, teal, magenta, pink and much more to be seen at the final reveal!

This is my first time learning and experimenting with colors on metal and assemblage jewelry! I had so much fun using patina paints and lumiere paints with their "halo" colors and pearlescents--almost a leafing effect when you mix the colors. It took some time to figure out which colors worked well together but eventually I settled on the colorway for my line.

March 20 is our final Blog Hop and I will have surprise pieces for the rest of my new line that no one has even seen yet! On that day, you will be able to see my complete line of delicious colors and mini chas!!

I'd be delighted if you'd leave comments for me--and have fun hopping on to see the other participants' new lines by clicking on the links below. Live large and enjoy!!! <3<3<3

Visit the links below to see all the wonderful people participating in the blog hop:

Brenda Sue Lansdowne, B'sue Boutiques : Jewelry Making Outside the Box

Marcia Tuzzolino : Aurora Designs

Jann Tague : Clever Designs by Jann

Judy King : Apt to Wander Studio

Linzi Alford : Magpie in the Sky, Spoil Heap Tales

Cynthia Wainscott : Exotic Peru

Carole Carlson : Beadsophisticate

Lynn Stinten : Dragonzwench

Marica Zammit : Bead Lovelies

Catherine Shattuck : VRBrose

Michaele Collie : The Vintage Gem

Mary Craig : Jewelry Alchemy