Whirlpool of Imagination

Tired Feet

Phew - it's been a long week capped off by standing all day at my craft fair. And age is a funny thing - I used to be able to stand all day, no problem. Now, after standing today, I'll wake up tomorrow leaning like the Tower of Pisa as my back plots its revenge for the day. But I know its coming so the ice pack is ready!

I did take some pictures today of my set up. It's not my best (I'll tell you the story tomorrow) but I thought on the fly and it came out good enough. I haven't uploaded them yet so I have a quick pic from earlier in the week. I took a break from craft fair stuff to take a basics jewelry class. The little I know about making jewelry I figured out on my own. As a result, I wasn't always doing things the right way. I decided to take this quick class as a way of learning the absolute basics and then I figure I can be off and running after that.

In the class, in the midst of learning closures and such, the instructor had us make a bracelet and earrings. These weren't supposed to planned out, in fact we weren't supposed to "design" them at all. It just so happened that my hands seemed to want to do minor designing even while seeming not to.

Here is my no design bracelet and earrings. You can see on the bracelet I would have chosen the small beads a little more closely and the design of the flower beads better if given the chance but it just so happened that the bracelet would be a perfect size for Meghan and she'll be looking at the big picture (oooh, a bracelet) rather than the individual beads so its a win-win situation. My starting clasp wasn't crimped as close as it could have which is why the chain has a slightly crooked look to it but hey, its my first bracelet so I'm cutting myself some slack.

And on that note, the next thing I have to give myself is some sleep. There were several late nights this week and really not enough sleep. I'm about to change that by heading off. Have a great night!

I need to wear yellow?

Last week our elementary school held its book fair. In years past, the fair was run by Scholastic in the school's library. This year the PTO teamed up with Barnes and Noble and held the book fair there. They asked for parent volunteers to work shifts as greeters and wrappers. I signed up for a spot and they asked us to wear the school colors. Our colors and black and yellow. The black I have covered - I have tons of black clothes items. But yellow? I don't own a single piece of yellow in my wardrobe. Rather than go shopping (although a fun choice), I decided to make something yellow to liven up the black.

I first threw together a yellow and black ribbon ponytail holder. It was cute but not enough. Since I went with a black top and black pants, I decided to make a pin to have a little pop of color. And fortutiously, one of the more recent Splitcoast tutorials was on paper pins. I don't have a melting pot (yet) so I knew I'd have to melt the embossing powder by hand and made the pin less dimensional that I would have otherwise.

Here's the finished pin. I stamped the flower (Stampin' Up) four times. I colored two of the four in with copic and prismacolor markers. The other two were just to give the colored layers more thickness.

I cut out all four of the stamped images. I adhered each of the colored images onto a non-colored image. I then layered the two colored images to give the flower more petal points.

From there it's all about the embossing. I inked the whole thing with Versamark and dumped UTEE powder all over it. I melted that layer with my heat gun and while still hot, poured more UTEE on and remelted. I repeated this a few more times until the top glaze was the way I wanted. I then hot glued a pin back onto the back of the flower and one yellow embellishment made my outfit complete. I found this project really fun and want to try more. I think this flower would be cute for the Christmas season so that's my plan for next week - make some pins. (And maybe a trip to the store for a melting pot might be in order - don't tell, okay?)

A quick (and fun) earring project

My daughter Meghan is a girly girl. On any given day, at 7 years old, she is much more put together than I am. Her clothes are girly, her hair is just so and now that she has pierced ears, the earrings need to match. I am not good at making jewelry whatsoever but I thought Meg and I could give an easy earring project a try.

There are lots of places online to get beads, jewelry findings, etc. Take a few minutes to do a Google search and you'll come up with lots of choices. We happen to have a bead store in town so Meg and I got the added pleasure of being able to shop together. She picked out exactly what she wanted and the store was helpful in making sure we had everything we needed.

You really only need a few items to have a cute pair of earrings. Here is what we used. We have 2 pumpkin charms to go with our Halloween theme, 4 Swarovski crystals, 2 head pins and 2 sterling silver ear wires.

There are various different types of ways to put the earrings in your ears. Meg just decided that these were the wires she wanted to use.

                           

This was the fun part for Meghan. She was able to construct the earrings all by herself. On the head pin, she strung a crystal, the bead and another crystal. That's all there is to it.

We used the crystals to kind of anchor the bead to the head pin better so it wouldn't slide as much as the hole in the crystals is narrower than the bead. I'm not sure if I explained it properly, but take my word for it, it fits better.

The jack-o-lantern bead was slightly smaller than a couple of other ones we did, so we then cut just a tad off of the head pin wire. Then, using our pliers, we bent the wire to a 90 degree angle to the top crystal.

Somewhere in my crafting area, I know I have the proper tools. For the life of me though, they are in such a safe place, that I cannot find them.

The beauty of being an all around crafter is that if I don't have the exact tool I need, odds are I'll have something that will work.

Remember a few years back when wire was all the rage. All of a sudden everyone was going to put cute little wire "things" all over their scrapbook pages and on their cards. I thought I would too. Have you ever seen a card of mine where I used wire??? I have exactly ONE design where I used wire and that was about 4 years ago.

But this little tool has been sitting in my tool box all that time and voila, I was able to use it for Meg's earrings.

After you bend the wire to 90 degrees you take the end of it and start turning it into a circle. Since I'm am so not a natural at that process, it took me some time and as you'll see with the pumpkin earrings, it's not perfectly pretty. But does Meg care? Nope - the earrings are cute and I made it so they will not come apart. It may not be pretty but it works. And when you're showing off the cute little earrings you and your mom made to all your second grade friends, it really doesn't matter if they are perfect.

And here is the finished project, in Meghan's ears. She had such fun doing these and we enjoyed working on the project together. After doing three different pairs, we're getting better at making the loops.

By the time, we get to cute little earrings for Christmas, I bet we'll have it down pat.

These are the little pink ghosts we made. They have clear crystals above and below them.

And here are my personal favorites, the black cats. As you can see, Meg chose orange crystals for these.

And there is our little mother/daughter jewelry project. It's very basic but a perfect project to try when just starting out. We experienced success without getting frustrated and that success has whet our appetite for more projects.

If you happen to have any tips or suggestions for me, I would love to hear them. I'm hoping to give more projects a try and would welcome any words of wisdom!