A friend of mine just returned from a wonderful getaway to a resort, just south of Cancun, in Playa del Carmen, Mexico. We visited Playa, (as the locals call it) about 15 years ago, when it was just a sleepy fishing village, with a touch of tourist activity clustered near the beach. My friend says there is now a mall, shopping centers and tons of resorts and restaurants. Frankly, I'm glad I got to see the area in its more "natural" state.
Nevertheless, she and her middle school aged son had a wonderful two weeks of relaxing, exploring
Tulum and swimming in a
cenote.
When my friend described her trip to me today, I remembered how vividly turquoise the Caribbean waters are. The lampwork beads in my new earrings are Caribbean turquoise too. I love the unusual "drip shape" of these beads and the touches of purple and white on the lower edges. The beads were made by one of my favorite lampwork artists Julie Burgard of
Outwest Beads.
I decided to play up the purple touches by suspending the lampwork glass from purple leather cord, which I topped with lavender Czech glass flowers and handmade brass ear wires.
We may not be able to lounge on a white sand beach or splash in warm turquoise waters, but we can wear a little getaway dream on our ears. The Caribbean Getaway earrings are available
in my shop.
Hope you are having sunny days, wherever you live. I'll be back here in a week. Till then -
Our color palette for today: blush, cream, pearl, coal. 
I don't design often with pearls because so many of them are too "clean" to suit my preferred aesthetic: grungy, organic, old-looking. So when I came across this strand of wonky etched Tibetan pearls in Tucson this year, I snatched them up. They have the perfect mix of soft pearliness and aged texture---yum! 
When designing around these, I wanted to utilize beads with a matte finish to balance out the smoothness of the pearl. I went with barrels of fossilized stegadon bone (I know!) and two wee ivory colored lampwork glass beads from Karen Elmquist, fashioned to resemble old bone beads. Add in some pitchy black filigree bead caps and cheeky little wire spirals at the bottoms, and I don't think you'd ever miss the fact that the design is so simple. 
Ever feel like you're taking a cop-out easy route with one of your designs? But you really don't care because the end result turns out so perfectly that you wouldn't change a thing? 
To be honest, it's almost more difficult to reign yourself in when designing. At least for me, anyways. Plus, I always try to be sensitive to the wearability of pieces. It's one thing to create a masterpiece for a gallery or a competition, but it's another thing to make pieces that people are able to wear and love every day of their lives. That's the miraculous thing about creating art---every artist has unique goals for their work. There's never a wrong or a right answer. It just is. And that's a beautiful thing. 
Earlier this summer I wrote about how I had bought a bike and was beginning my cycling journey in an effort to combat this "jeweler's ass" that I've mysteriously managed to amass *cough*...
So in the vein of "spinning", here's a glowy little pair of spinners that I created several weeks ago. These feature a pair of lampwork glass Basha beads from her "blue black" series. I speared them on hand forged copper and wire wrapped them just-so, allowing them to rotate freely on their spindles, throwing light every time you move your head. 
