Showing posts with label olive. Show all posts
Showing posts with label olive. Show all posts

Friday, August 31, 2012

OLIVE My Earring Club Members!


It's the end of the month...which means that my next month's creations for the earrings-of-the-month club gals goes in the mail today.

Having won a recipe contest through We Olive, I roped some friends into joining me and my family at the Paso Robles Olive Festival, an all-day celebration of all things olives. We sipped olive oils, bent olive branches into crowns, spooned olive jam onto olive oil crisps, slathered olive oil lotion onto sun-baked skin, and cooled off with olive oil ice cream – topped with balsamic vinegar. What we didn’t do, that I thought we would: taste olives. You know, the actual fruit. I envisioned tubs of green, almond-shaped cerignola; slightly wrinkled, almost midnight gaeta olives; and the green picholine to the purplish liguria all swimming in their pools of delicious brine.

So, while dreaming of olives, I decided to make that the theme for this month’s Earrings-of-the-Month selection: Olives!

The earrings are made with eco-friendly olive-shaped acai seeds handwired with sterling silver, lava beads, and hematite. Here’s what my vendor writes about their acai beads: “Our beads are made in our small workshop in South America. The workshop is clean and workers receive a fair wage so everybody's happy! Plus collecting and selling seeds creates income for the indigenous people. Without this income, the rainforest is often destroyed to provide for a more agrarian society.”

Monday, August 13, 2012

Olive Love

I recently won an olive oil recipe contest - check out my Malfatti di Ricotta e Bietola (dumplings with chard and cheese) - and, as part of my prize, get to attend the Paso Robles Olive Festival this weekend. I get some other fun perks, including access to the We Olive! VIP tent, wine, beer, a gift certificate, and tickets to the growers' dinner! Woohoo. I love olives.

So, naturally, I had to make some jewelry to wear - to the festival, during my interview...and just to get in the olive mood.

I used a sterling silver olive leaf as the focal point, dangling a deep purple, kalamata-shaped recycled glass bead from the finding. Then I handwired rough garnet nuggets - wrinkled like the gaeta olives - with watermelon tourmaline slabs - with colors of green picholine to the purplish liguria.

The matching earrings have garnets and watermelon tourmaline as well. Can't wait till Saturday!