Earring a Day Challenge

The Beading Daily blog inspired me to take up their January earring challenge. The idea is to create a pair of beaded earrings every day this month. I love a challenge and this one offered the added bonus of building up my inventory for an upcoming show. For the first week, I featured shades of orange-red in each earring, to celebrate Pantone’s color of the year, Tangerine Tango.

I love how these Tila Drops catch the light and add just the right amount of shimmer. The pattern is by Deborah Roberti and can be found at Bead Patterns.

If you’re not a fan of orange, you can pull it into your wardrobe in small doses by combining it with purples, greens, yellows or hot pinks.

Top row:

Rachel Nelson-Smith's two-layered Nightingale design from Bead Riffs

Desert Skies pattern by Terri Wlaschin

Diane Fitzgerald's two-dimensional triangles

Bottom row:

BeAd Infinitum's Spinning Tops

Spinner Rims by Virginia Jensen from Bead and Button, October 2009

Almond Drops, another pattern from BeAd Infinitum

Trend Setting Color

In my quest to understand color theory as it relates to jewelry design, I have read everything by Margie Deeb and am currently poring over the beaded colorways of Beverly Ash Gilbert. Pantone is another great source for finding out the up and coming colors in fashion. The undisputed leader in color forecasting announced that the 2010 Color of the Year is turquoise.

Although the designers at Pantone assure us that this is a color most people respond to favorably, it has never made my list of favorites…turquoise always transports me back to our 1950’s GE kitchen. Metal cabinets. Blue oven. Turquoise and yellow everywhere!


I decided to give this color a second look, and discovered that I like it! I paired turquoise Swarovski crystals with bronze pearls and varying shades of metallic bronze seed beads in this earring design. The pattern is by Ann Benson at Beads East. Pantone suggests this versatile shade goes well with all colors in the spectrum, translating equally well in fashion and interiors. I tried the earrings with all the dominant colors in my wardrobe: turquoise and brown (perfect, like sea meeting sand!), turquoise and red (amazing!) turquoise and black (very cool!) turquoise and any shade of green (sophisticated!) turquoise and navy (stunning!). Makes me want to redecorate my rooms…well, maybe not the kitchen!