Yay! I’ve been very crafty lately and I finally had some time to take pics. They are not finished yet, of course. I still need to add the bails and chains to these pendants.

These are clay pendants with images decoupaged on top. I sanded the edges to round the corners and I used resin to seal the images so they are nice and shiny and water resistant:

The white clay is the best stuff ever. Its Fimo clay with glitter already mixed in. It’s very forgiving. I’ve only ever used Sculpey and honestly, I like the Fimo better. It seems to sand nicely too compared to Sculpey and I think I will use it from now on. The red and pink clay is also Fimo with glitter.

Then I also made some straight resin pendants with candy, glitter, and alphabet beads. I know, its way over done these days, but I love them:

I still need to sand the edges of the resin pieces.

I have TONS more pendants. Like at least 100 or more. I did a lot of wood pendants with retro images, etc. too. Can’t wait to finally add chains to all of them and take photos. I hate the fact that there are only 24 hours in one day.

( http://www.craftster.org/forum/index.php?topic=303559 )

I am the queen of procrastination, but not because I am lazy. I just do too much. My husband thinks I should be cloned. I voted for hiring robots. Anyway, I bought this book a looooooooooooooong time ago:

and I never did anything with it other than decorate my new bookshelf. Its the greatest little book containing patterns for making your own stuffed animals. My 3 year old daughter found it 2 weeks ago when she was making a mess and begged me to make her something out of it. She picked an animal named “Pinkie”. Well, after 2 weeks of me feeling horrible for not making it, I decided to go ahead and do it last night when my husband stole my computer to catch up on episodes of Lost.

Pinkie is sewn completely by hand out of the wrong kind of felt. But thats okay, I really don’t think she has a long life expectancy anyway. I plan to make more…. someday. With the right kind of materials.

Back:

I’m sure I will be inundating you with journals in the upcoming months. I have a ton of ideas.

x-posted at craftster

I haven’t been very crafty lately, so I finally sat down long enough to produce a handmade journal.

I really love books and have wanted to make them for a while. I finally bought a binding system, although I would love to explore more traditional methods of bookbinding (I have some instruction books on the way). I can tell though that most of my books will use this kind of binding because I don’t have a lot of time on my hands for sewing pages together, etc.

I used chipboard, scrapbooking paper, and my xyron sticker machine for the covers and then I laminated them. The inside has a few pages here and there from a vintage children’s book. I added a white label on that first page with the stripes in order to put your name or the title, etc. and then I broke out some of my buttons and jewelry-making supplies to embellish the cover:

Inside front cover and first page:



Random pages inside:



This is the inside of the back cover:



Back:





It measures 4 x 6, but this was just a test and I’d rather make them bigger from now on.

Changes I’ll make next next time include not laminating the covers and making sure the binding wire is centered (notice it doesn’t start at the very top but ends at the very bottom? yes, I am picky.) Also, I cut the inside pages down to size by hand and it was so time consuming. I’ll probably buy paper pre-cut next time.

x-posted at craftster

6 months ago, I posted some Bamboo Tile Pendants I made with vintage children’s book images:





The traffic to my site because of those has been overwhelming. With the traffic comes “How do I do….” questions, the biggest being “How the heck do you make the little wire thingy on the top?!?!”

So I made a little tutorial and tried the best I could to explain. I am getting a video camera soon and would love to make video tuts for all sorts of things. The camera I have now would be no good for that sort of thing. Feel free to ask me any questions and please bear with my pathetic little “illustrations”.



















See a close-up of this to get a better idea:

So my sister-in-law’s birthday was three months ago. Yes, THREE MONTHS AGO, which is when I started this purse. But then one thing came up after another and I didn’t get to finish it until yesterday. I am giving it to her tomorrow, in birthday wrapping, not xmas wrapping, because I got her something else for xmas. I feel like a tool, but hopefully she’ll love the purse and she’ll forgive me!

I did the rainbow and hearts by hand with felt:





The circle thingy is a little contraption I made to hold the Deery Lou mirror I made her with my button machine. I also made her another mirror so she can swap them out.





This is a crappy picture of the inside because my camera was being weird, but its lined with red fabric that has tiny white hearts on it. The closure is a long strip of velcro and there is a pocket for a pen, etc. I don’t really prefer velcro, but I totally forgot about the closure til the last minute and ended up having to do it by hand. I’d prefer a nice zipper or snap next time.





Then I made her a coin purse with comic book fabric, which is lined with the same fabric as the purse.








Also, at the last minute, I made her this pendant:





I’m just glad I finally finished it. I am also making her a little monster plushie as we speak and hopefully it will come out like I plan (my projects rarely do!).





x-posted at craftster

I had an old skirt that didn’t fit and a skull shirt from the toddler section, so I made a new purse:

my craftster post

I’m making a purse for my sister-in-laws b-day (its a LATE gift!) but there’s lots of hand-sewing involved. I can’t wait to post its because its already lookin’ really cute.

Jeff says I have found my calling. I have been playing around… creating/editing music when I am supposed to be getting orders out and answering the tons of freakin’ emails I get. He thinks my music would make good “movie music”. I decided to post my latest creation here, but I made a little video to go with it. The art for the video came from the web.

Click here (and turn up your volume!!!!!!!!):

(this is a .wmv file which opens in a different window due to various issues from embedding video in Firefox. if you have any problems viewing it, you can download it by right-clicking here and selecting “save as”.)

So whenever I have a lot of work to do, I find other “important” things to do. Its 5 a.m. and I’m still awake. The kids are sleeping and I LOVE this time to myself, even if it means I’ll feel like crap after getting a few hours of sleep. A little while ago, I made another soldered glass pendant, but this time I used those glass marbles used for floral displays, etc…





I’m excited because I’ve never soldered anything round before and I only burned myself three times. The pain is fine with me. I will suffer for my art!

[ x-posted at Craftster ]

Finally… something crafty! After all, this is supposed to be a craft blog, not a blog where I profess my love and wish to grow a wiener.

I made some cute necklace pendants out of bamboo tiles and children’s book images:

So how in the hell do you make these damn things……

Easy! I wish I had time to do a nice tutorial with pictures and all that good stuff….

1. Get some tiles, dominos, or wood shapes from etsy, ebay, michaels, hobby lobby, etc.

2. Cut some images to the right sizes for your tiles.

3. Get some decoupage glue. I used Aleene’s Instant Decoupage Glue this time with much better results.

4. Brush some glue onto the top of the tile and place your image on top. You have to work fast when you do this because this particular glue seems to dry faster than Mod Podge glue.

5. Important!!—- Make sure that you press your image down onto the glued tile tightly. You don’t want any bubbles or raised areas on the edges of the image. You want the image completely flat against the tile. This glue is thinner though and doesn’t make your image as soggy as Mod Podge does, so bubbles are less likely. (Geez, I sound like an Aleene’s Rep. or something. I swear, I am not affiliated!)

6. Wait around 5 minutes for it to dry completely and then brush more glue on top of the image.

7. Again, wait for it to dry and keep adding more coats of glue to the image until you are satisfied, letting it dry between coats. I put around 4 or 5 coats because I knew I was going to coat them with resin eventually and wanted to make sure the resin did not ruin the image. You can stop here if you wish. I coated mine with resin because I didn’t like seeing the brush stroke lines you will get from the glue. I am anal about these things.

8. I used a different kind of resin than usual. I usually use Easy Cast resin, but this time I used Decorators Solution. I just followed the directions for mixing it, but instead of pouring it on, I brushed gobs of it on and pushed it around with the brush until the top was completely covered with a thick coat. Let them dry for 24 hours and they’re finished! I put them in the oven (don’t turn it on!) to keep them dust-free for the 24 hours.

(Edit: I have posted a new tutorial for the wire wrapping done on the top of the pendants.

x-posted on craftster