Thursday, April 28, 2011

April Challenge - Celebrate Earth Day!

The Starving Jewelry Artists Monthly Team Challenge is a way of encouraging one another to grow as artists by stimulating our minds and our creativity to move in a new direction.
There is no voting.
There are no prizes.
There is fun, the joy of creating, and the pleasure of seeing how other jewelry artists interpret the theme.

Earth Day was April 22. This years event celebrated a billion acts of green, because the actions of individuals do matter on our small planet.

April's assignment was to make a piece of jewelry to celebrate Earth Day.
5 fearless artists rose to the challenge.

Lynne was the first to post. Her necklace, which also was entered in the Art bead Scene monthly challenge, was based on the realistic painting Finches and Bamboo from the Chinese Song Dynasty. Our island girl made an intricate glass bead with bamboo design and complemented it with natural earthy copper.

Cat made a triple pendant necklace in her trademark wire crochet style. The three pendants include a shell wrapped in blue to represent water, a leaf wrapped in green to represent plants and a pebble wrapped in brown to represent ground. The bezels are embellished with Swarovski crystals to add to the celebration.

Dawn chose recycling as her theme. She made rolled paper beads from old catalogs and hung them on copper findings. The copper wire was snatched from the scrap bucket to finish the ecofriendly and fashionable earrings. 
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Caron represented the endangered leopard in this beautiful fluid cuff made of tiny beads. There must be a million of them in there.
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My own offering to represent The FamiLee Jewels is all about recycling. The pressed penny in this ring is a "penny from Heaven"(one found on the ground.) I made it in a penny press machine at the Empire State Building. The wire in the band is recycled used electrical wire stolen out of the garbage in my husbands shop.



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Thank you to every one of you that participated. We all agree that living green is important and that there is more that we all could be doing. Let's call this exercise a step in the right direction.
Please consider joining us in May when the challenge will involve photographs.

Bonnie



The Starving Artists Mother’s Day Giveaway Event is on now, but time is running out! What are we giving away? Three gift certificates that can be used towards the purchase of jewelry from any of the participating team members! See this post for the complete list of participating shops, and to find out how to enter. The giveaway ends on May 1, so don't delay!

Featuring artisan handmade creations by the Starving Artists jewelry Team, the SATeam members create handcrafted jewelry and beads. More information about our team and its current shop owner members can be found at SATEAM.etsy.com and here on ArtFire.

7 comments:

DawninCal said...

I love your challenges, Bonnie. They are such a great way to get us thinking outside of our comfort zones and to fire the creativity.

All of the entries are wonderful.

Uh, oh...photography is up next? That is definitely a challenge in my world! *gulp*

Anonymous said...

That is an amazing selection, great designs. I admire Caron's patience.

mcstoneworks said...

Great pieces celebrating Earth Day.

Cat said...

So beautiful - this was a wonderful theme for a challenge.
I'm so in love with Caron's cuff! (So much it actually kind of rhymes ;-))

EleganceandSparkles said...

These are beautiful pieces. What a great challenge.

Caron Michelle said...

Love what Earth Day represents, beautiful creations by everyone who have certainly risen to the challenge!

Jeanne/J3Jewelry said...

Really great entries this month. I totally forgot the deadline. I will be around next month though!