Stacked Earrings Challenge #2 ...

... with beads from Claire Lockwood

In January I asked four jewelry designer friends (Rebecca Anderson, Leah Curtis, Claire Lockwood and Heidi Post) if they wanted to join me in a small stacked earrings challenge. The reason being simply because I was longing for some inspiration around stacked earrings. I wanted it to be a small and intimate kind of thing. If you want to read more about the background and see the result of round #1 here's the link. All of us thought it was so nice so we decided to continue, and take turns sending each other small bead sets. This is round #2. Welcome!

Claire sent a fun and inspiring set of beads very much right down my alley. I was particularly attracted to part of the color scheme of pale beige-greens and pinks. And as you will see I used those colors a lot in my earrings. From my own stash I picked more beads that would match and fit into the same color category. In three of my designs I also added an attractive hyacinth type red. 

Group picture of the 6 earrings I made. I followed the original rules and used three beads from Claire's lot in all of them apart from the ones furthest to the right, which only contain two of Claire's beads. They are also the only ones which contain Art Beads.

The first pair I made. With only beads from Clair's lot. I added the oxidized copper wire and the ear hooks.

Claire sent two pairs of buttons. I don't often use buttons in my own jewelry, although I really like when others do. I want the buttons to not look so much as buttons as simply just beautiful components that add something to the design. I decided to give it a go and chose to build a design from the button pair with two holes. You see them (white) at the top. From Claire's lot comes also the transparent kind of icy looking large holed glass spacer beads. As do the pale pale green-beige round bone beads. The pink-brownish coin beads are two holed ones. The red facetted beads are vintage Swarovski ones with a very beautiful sparkle to them. The overall look is bohemic/rustic, but with a touch of class at the bottom.

In Claire's lot the green and whithe plastic beads where the ones that first caught my eyes. So pretty and special. I combined them with the green leaves and the milky cream spacer beads.

Three beads are from Claire, except the hyacinth red faceted ones and the pale green-grey matte washers. Lots of messy wire wrapping :-).

These earrings are really long, as you can see in the group picture above. Not heavy at all however. I picked some beads from my own stash that resembled ones from Clair lot, as I started to run out of ones that I was really inspired by and wanted to use. The fantastic magenta and grey-silvery patterned polymer clay beads are a recent acquisition, made by Claire Maunsell of StillPointWorks, a favorite Art Bead maker of mine.

The white flowers, the grey wooden rounds and the small silvery beads are from Claire's lot. White flowers stacked on brass wheel/snowflake spacers and patinated bone discs. These are very sweet and I've already worn them myself a couple of times.

Thank you so much Claire for a very fun round with very inspiring beads! 

Check out all participants here:

Rebecca Anderson - SongBead

Leah Curtis - Beady Eyed Bunny

Claire Lockwood - Something To Do With Your Hands

Heidi Post - Ex Post Facto

Malin de Koning - Beading By Malin de Koning

Next inspirer out for round #3 will be Leah Curtis.

All the earrings in this post are for sale. Please let me know if you are interested in any of them. malindekoning[at]hotmail.com

All my best,

Malin