Tuesday, April 24, 2012

More Earrings (and a dash of complaint)

First, the complaint. Is anyone else hating the new Blogger interface as much as I am? What a cruel and unusual form of punishment this is. There I was, cruising along perfectly happy with my old familiar comfortable interface (which, I might add, took me many years of painful learning to figure out all the kinks and peculiarities) and POOF! Along comes this new crap which, besides giving me a headache from too much white space on the screen, seems hellbent on turning all my pictures sideways AND wants to force me to use Google Chrome. No, I say. Just NO! Fight the power!

Stupid Google. (oh, and if you have any doubt about the power of Google, the first time I typed the above complaint, the entire thing disappeared from the screen and I had to re-type it from memory. The Google is diabolical)

Anyway, on to the earrings (before they disappear, too.)

The muse seems hellbent on earrings and earrings only for right now. Much like Google, she is diabolical. I tried making a bracelet over the weekend and wow...is it ever FUGLY. It's already occupying center stage in the re-do area, but it will have to wait. I can already tell that any attempt to re-do it at this point will only result in more wasted time, material and tears.



In the meantime, I got earrings. I'm still working my way through these banded, heat-treated agate teardrops. This pair has swirls of brown and cream and even some pale blue. I added faceted smoky quartz for some sparkle and to play off the brown tones and then found a strand of Czech glass melon beads that had the same color scheme (although they have a touch of green, too, in the right light) and added a couple of those. I'm running through the tail end of my stash of Bali vermeil quickly, but the gold just looks so rich with this color scheme, I couldn't resist using it. Most of my vermeil was bought years and years ago when I first started designing and it was much more affordable. I don't know if I'll be able to replace it when it's gone what with prices being so high now.



I went a little crazy on Etsy buying up so many of Kristi Bowman's awesome copper designs. Now, I'm thrilled to start pairing them up with some of my lampwork stash for some great finished pieces. These etched beads from Outwest have such great colors in them - purples, greens, etc. and they really pick up the play of color in the copper, too.



Purples and lavenders seem to pair especially well with the copper so I grabbed this pair of swirly beads from Bee Boo. I added some Chinese crystals for extra sparkle because the swirls on the lampwork have some sparkly goldstone in them.



These hoop components called for something extra special so I grabbed these beautiful glowing kyanite tubes and some Chinese crystals for extra sparkle.



Last, but not least, some more of the agate teardrops. I used blue/brown ceramic flower components from Karen Totten and, once again, smoky quartz and vermeil. Now, let's see if the new interface will actually let me post this without eating it or turning it sideways. KJ

8 comments:

KristiBowmanDesign said...

I agree about Blogger/Google so annoying!! I love what you did with my copper!! Outwest, Bee Boo and Kyanite all go brilliantly with them!

KristiBowmanDesign said...

Oh and if you're on Flickr I'd love to have you add these to my group! http://www.flickr.com/groups/1717469@N22/

Linda Younkman said...

Unless it has changed just very recently you can still get to the old blogger interface. There is a little geer looking thing on the right and if you click there is an option for the old interface. I love all of your earrings. My favorites are the hoop with the kyanite. Kristi does such great work it's hard not to go overboard.

TesoriTrovati said...

Frickin' frackin' Google! I hate HATE hate this new interface. I can't find anything, I have to scroll and scroll and scroll to see things, and it is all on separate pages. Add to that the fact that I have at least three blogs to go to and you end up with a mess. Thanks for nothing, Google. You are off my list of favorite sites. There are other search engines in the sea (and other blogging platforms) and this is making me seriously looks at my options.

But thanks for calming me down with some pretties, Miss Kelly! I love that banded agate. Both of them are so nice. And all of Kristi's pieces are crush-worthy!
Enjoy the day!
Erin

Sharyl said...

Lovely earrings, as usual! You've used some components I'm familiar with but put them together with others in all new ways!

Regarding the new version of Blogger, I just keep wondering if/when they ANNOUNCE these changes. I can manage to get 2-3 copies of every single message posted to my blog quickly filling my email, but no word of warning from Blogger they are changing the system! I'm doing okay with changes, just takes me a while to find how to do things, but I already use Google Chrome as it's the only browser that seems to work for me. I am getting horizontal lines appearing in odd places on the screen.

Last night ArtFire did an upgrade too. I finally found an announcement regarding an upgrade in their help files, but until then was wondering why the content layout was all mixed around, why inactive items (such as those sold or holiday items I had removed from view) were all over my screens, where the featured items have gone to!

I'm not sure why these folks can't send one simple email to let you know a big change is coming and when! (Sorry my gripe was longer than my compliment. Really SHOULD have been the other way around!) :-)

SummersStudio said...

Earrings are always good and these are lovely.

SueBeads said...

I too am annoyed with blogger - were they bought by facebook or something???? Love your earrings!

Karolen said...

Beautiful earrings!!