December Challenge - Stars

Each month members of the Jewelry Artisans Community participate in a monthly challenge in order to, well, challenge ourselves and our skills.  Taking ourselves out of our comfort zones and working in unfamiliar areas makes us better craftspeople and artists.  It also opens our minds to new techniques and ideas that we can put to use in future jewelry designs.  Plus, it's fun!

Our December challenge was "stars".  Stars are a symbol of Christmas but they are also symbols for many other things.  Sailors use them to navigate, stories are told that ancient people believed they were relatives or friends who had passed into the next life, stars represent astrological signs and astronomers search among the constellations for new planets.

Cat of Cat's Wire created this lovely star using a wire crochet technique and incorporated dozens of beautiful crystals into her design:

Carina of Violetmoon submitted this sweet little star by encasing a star bead in a wire wrapped star shaped cage:

Carina also made this experimental tag which has all sorts of possibilities:

For my own entry, I created a star out of copper wire.  This first prototype is a bit sloppy, but I like the concept and plan to work more on this to perfect the design.

We didn't have a lot of entries in December because it's such a busy month for people, but what we lacked in quantity, we made up with creativity!