Tattoo earrings, and fun with Patera

I made these earrings a couple of days ago and I really like them - they look adorable on. They are not all that long, but they swing around just enough, as far as I'm concerned. Enough to be a bit eye-catching, I guess you'd say, without being so big they bother me.

I'm having a terrible time getting decent pictures of any of my pendants, but here's one:

This is one of the first ones I did with diamond glaze. I like it despite its imperfections - the resin is wavy and dips in the middle and kind of slops over the edges a bit. But it still looks cute, and that's what matters, right? It's a little over an inch wide - I think it came on a fancier chain, actually, and I decided it was too formal for this piece and went with plain old bead chain. I'll use the fancy one for something else!

(Added: if you click on the link below the next picture, you can see what I was calling the "fancy" chain - the one with the sort of vine motif.)

This next one is an especially bad picture, so I apologize in advance, but at least you can see the pieces:

These are little earrings (only about 1/2" wide) that basically came pre-made - wires on them and all, I mean - so all you have to do is put some artwork in there and seal it up. This artwork came from paperwishes.com - they have some books of artwork especially for jewelry, called "Easy Peasy", which are made to go with Patera findings and/or memory glass. I've been wearing these a lot.

This one is imperfect (like all of them) but I like it anyway. It has some match artwork which I bought on Stampington's download page (here) and then I added some glitter and some little microbeads. The artwork got sort of obscured by everything else, but it still looks cute and you can still tell it's a bird so oh well.

(Photo backgrounds courtesy of my Claudine Hellmuth class - we're making a little chipboard book so I put it to work already.)

Sugar skulls

I've got my "Black Friday" promo up on Etsy - I'm offering free shipping anywhere in North America, and reduced shipping elsewhere (either $3 or $1, depending on the item). And I reduced the price on the wirework pendant - I knew I had set it a bit high in the first place!

I gave in yesterday and went to the Michael's store in Houston that's carrying the Crafty Chica stuff. It seemed kind of silly to drive up to Houston just to go to Michael's (considering that there are Michael's stores within 5 or 10 miles of my house in about 3 different directions) but the more I thought about it the more I really wanted to check it out. If anybody local happens to be reading, the store is at Bissonet and Weslayan - it's a nice big store, considerably bigger than the suburban ones I usually frequent. Because it's big (I guess) it's arranged a little differently - it has the scrapbooking stuff on the left as you come in, and the jewelry stuff is on the right, instead of being on the left where it is in the store I go to the most often. Which meant I automatically veered to the left, and the jewelry - and the Crafty Chica display, which was nearby - was practically the last thing I came to. Never fails. But it looked good, when I finally found it, and a lot of the stuff was nearly gone so I guess it's good that I didn't wait any longer!

There were Day of the Dead charms! I had to get those!

I don't know how well you can see the little drawings, but they are all little line drawings of skeletons - Catrina and the like. So cute! (There was another set that was color, but I've forgotten what they looked like already. Aha, here are both sets, and yeah, that's what I was thinking - they weren't Day of the Dead related so I forgot what they looked like immediately!)

Then there was some non-bead stuff: papers

with sugar skulls and hearts and such, so of course I had to get them too. And then there was the great big sugar skull (an iron on):

I have no idea what I'm going to do with it but I had to have it. Actually there are two: the big skull and a smaller loteria-card skull. I could put them in my long, long delayed Day of the Dead quilt that I've been saying for years I was going to make, or I could put them on a tote bag or something. I haven't made up my mind.

Swag

Here is the aforementioned haul from the Houston Bead Society Show. (The flickr version has notes.)

I made a really cute pair of earrings out of those dark red rondelles. And I also got a finished version of one of the necklaces with the decoupage rounds, finally. I'll work on pictures tomorrow. (And inevitably, I started working on another donut. This one is Siam.)

Funky Charm Bracelet, sans charms

I wrote an entry where I talked about two of the three classes I took from Kay Hand - then I ran out of time and never talked about the third. So here's that, for the first day of NaBloPoMo!

The name of the third was Funky Charm Bracelet, and it's, well, just what it sounds like, a funky charm bracelet - it's a sort of multi-part wirework base, with (naturally) charms of various kinds. The supply list called for bringing a focal or two to put between the wirework pieces, and the night before the class when I was looking through all my stuff, I found a copper watch face I had almost forgotten about, so I decided to make one of the focals a watch face. Or in other words, I'd be turning my charm bracelet into a watch/charm bracelet. Kay thought this was a great idea, as I had sort of assumed she would - she's very open about things like that. For the other focal I bought a big green stone flower bead. (Actually it was out of the same bag as the one that ended up in my "Leftovers" necklace.) And I brought a variety of charms and beads with a green theme, because I just like green and because I thought it would look good with the copper.

And here's what I came home with:

We had time to make the three wirework pieces, plus the clasp, and get it all assembled, and get started on the charms. (As I recall, other people got a bit more done than I did - I always do work rather slowly.) The wirework parts are made of 16-gauge wire, as I recall. And it's really very freeform - I had the watch on the other day, and somebody asked me how it was made, and I sort of went blank. I really couldn't think what to say. You just kind of bent the wire back and forth around your pliers, and you sort of had a basic idea about the dimensions you wanted - sort of 1" wide and maybe a little longer than that - and you just made a squiggle til you got there! (I hope the person I was talking to didn't think I was hopelessly rude. I just have moments like that, I'm afraid.)

Well, so I came home really happy with what I'd done so far, and intending to add more beads according to plan - and then somewhere in the next day or so I changed my mind. I think part of it was because I was thinking I'd get more wear out of the watch if it didn't have colored beads on it. And besides, I thought the wirework looked really pretty - so the end result was that instead of adding more beads, I disassembled it and took all the beads OFF. Even the stone one, which I also liked a lot.

So here's the state of things after I took it apart:

 

I knew the two segments attached to the watch-face were fine as they were - and in fact, they needed to stay put because I had specifically made them so they'd match up with the connectors on the watch. (Oh, and it looks at a glance like the stone flower is still attached, above, but it's not. It's just sitting there loose.)

Here it's partly back together again - I'm trying to remember why, exactly, but I decided to put the clasp on the side instead of the bottom. Maybe it was just because I liked the way it looked!

And here's the final product, more or less - although I know I tinkered with it in small ways for days after this. Notice that I had to make another wirework segment, since I didn't have any focals. I made all the jump-rings myself - and I used them in pairs, both for strength and because they looked good that way. And I also fashioned sort of an extender on the end, to make it adjustable, a bit. So except for the watch face, I made every bit of this myself, out of wire. I was very proud of myself!

Oh, and I did start on another bracelet, to be a proper charm bracelet this time - but so far I haven't finished it. I decided to use silver instead of copper for this one.

It did get a little further along than this, actually. And one of these days I'll pick it up and finish it!

Unintended results

A week or so ago - maybe more, now - I was talking about the classes I've taken this year. I've taken quite a lot of them; it's partly intended to be an occational distraction from my real schooling that I have going on. Let's see, if I'm counting right I've taken 8 jewelry classes so far this year, with a 9th coming up next week. In the late spring and summer I took several from Kay Hand - her classes are a lot of fun and I'd like to take more of them if I can ever get my schedule synched up with hers again. The weird thing is that I never come out with finished pieces that are anything like what she taught in the class, really - but I've used a lot of her ideas in things I've made since then.

The first class I took was the Gypsy Diva Necklace - which is essentially the necklace on Kay's home page, if you follow that link above. That was an all-day class and it sort of had several "modules" - one was making painted beads out of Tyvek, which was a lot of fun and I have a whole bunch of them lying around, and I've sure they'll get used in something - or several somethings - sooner or later. The second module was making stamped tags out of sheet metal - those are still lying around too - and then you learned to put the whole thing together and make charms and a wirework clasp and so on. And I was adding charms and such like everybody else, but somewhere along the line I went astray! Basically, what happened was that the Gypsy Diva necklace eventually got turned into the Day of the Dead necklace, for me - at least, I think that was the class where she said something to the effect of, "Just cut into the chain anyplace you want and add a bead, and then do the same thing again and again until you get something you like." And that was essentially what I did with the Day of the Dead necklace. And I suspect that there will be more things forthcoming using that basic technique. The Gypsy Diva necklace got utterly sidetracked for me after I added the skull bead early on. I didn't want charms, I wanted more skulls!

This is pretty much the only existing picture of what was supposed to be my Gypsy Diva necklace:

 

I think that greenish long bead is still floating around my workspace, still attached to that same chain. I really should find it and start over. But the skull was long ago removed and is on the other necklace now. I think part of the problem, actually, was that I felt from the beginning like that wanted to be two different necklaces, but I was too stubborn to admit it at the time!

The second class was called something like Hammered Metal Pendants, and this is what I came home with:

and a second pendant:

They were intended to have lots of charms and things - typically for Kay's classes! - and while I am not at all against charms, I agonized over the first one for a long time and finally decided it was essentially finished. I like it like it is. (And I haven't gotten inspired about what to do with the other one yet. I figure it'll come, eventually.) But anyway, I almost took up metalwork on the spot, it was so much fun playing with these pieces.

And the third class was the Funky Charm Bracelet, which I think is going to have to be a separate post!

Still more shopping

This is part of the stuff I bought at the quilt show. For those of you who don't already know this, the big quilt show in Houston has sort of a "bead corner" - officially called Embellishment. There weren't as many bead vendors as there have been in other years, I thought, but there was enough for me to go seriously over budget with, just the same. (The show was earlier than usual this year, which probably threw everybody's schedules into disarray, I figure.)

This is basically in order from lowest to highest expenditure:

1. Beyond Beadery mostly specializes in seed beads, which are not my weakness, but I still managed to buy quite a few things. They had a lot of really cute charms and drops, plus I got this idea to use the biggest size of seed beads (3/0) to do something with a sort of 60s boho sort of vibe, as demonstrated at the bottom of this picture:

My mother had this really goofy necklace in those colors along about 1969, I guess that's why that screams 60s to me. Anyway, I'm not sure what I'm going to do with those wreath charms, quite, but I'm in love with tricolor things these days so I'm going to figure something out. And the others are probably earrings-to-be.

2. April Melody. Somebody on the Texas Beaders list said that April specializes in "fancy glass" and that's one of my weaknesses, but I tried to restrain myself by sticking with one color:

I love love love those both of those spirals, the green ones and the copper. (I'm wishing I had bought some more of the copper ones, they are too perfect together.) The rounds at the top are vintage. And I had a fake-Pandora bracelet that had room for a few more beads, so that's what the three silver-core beads are for. The beads I had already were blue and white, so the green goes really well with them. I'll have to remember to take a picture of it.

(And I don't have pictures of my third and most expensive stop yet. That will have to be a separate post.)


Oh, and in case anybody's thinking, "But weren't there any quilts at the quilt festival?" There were, and I didn't take any pictures again this year - I didn't even have my cell phone with me - but here are the quilts that won awards. (If you're a geek like me, you will especially appreciate the Tolkien quilt, which is on about the 4th row down - and you can click on the picture to see a bigger version with more detail. It's really really cool.)

Links and pictures

I added some store links and links to magazines - I'll probably add some links to other weblogs, too, later on. For the online stores, I mostly stuck to ones I've ordered from myself and had good luck with - and the ones with locations after them are local stores that don't seem to sell online. I also added a bunch of books to my Amazon store, just for fun.

I did take pictures; here's some of my Hobby Lobby loot:

And here's some other stuff I've bought lately: resin beads from Natural Touch Beads and Happy Mango Beads (see sidebar for those links):

Here are some (not near all) of the leftovers from my skull necklace - I didn't end up using many charms because I decided I liked the way it looked without them. Plus, I just have way more stuff than will fit on one necklace, period. Obviously there's going to have to be a series!

Some of these came from Bead Boutique and I think some from one of Nomadic Notions' San Antonio stores. Quite a few of the others I bought on Etsy. I also have tons of other skull beads left over, which I didn't try to put in the picture.

I would post the picture of my finished necklace but I'm not really happy with the picture; besides, I changed it after I took the picture. So I'll post a new one later. (If you can't stand the suspense and want to see, the ones I have are on flickr.)

Craft shopping

Things I bought at Hobby Lobby:
First, the non-bead things -

• a few Christmas ornaments
• some fall-themed napkins
• a candle in a Ball jar, in a cinnamon-y fall kind of scent

(I am a sucker for the seasonal department, in general)

• a couple of rubbers stamps on clearance, also holiday-themed
• a few pieces of scrapbook paper, which I've been using for photo backgrounds

I noticed that I am starting to think like a jewelry-maker even for things that aren't jewelry: I saw an ornament I liked, except that it was awfully elaborate - a glittery bow above a glittery pointy-oval shape. I like glittery but this was a little big for the small-scale tree that I am planning on buying (see below for more about that), and then I thought, "Oh, look, it's just connected by a split-ring - I can just take these apart and use them separately!" So I bought it. (It helped that it was on sale.)

and then the beady stuff:

• two tiny silver bumblebees, which I found in the clearance section. I am into charms lately.
• a tube of gold 6/0 seed beads, which I am thinking of as spacers
• 5mm wooden rondelles (with a really pretty variegated effect)
• a string of glass puff coins in purple, with a geometric design on them. I will have to see if I can get these to scan, or get a picture. I was thinking they looked like they'd make good earrings.
• a string of filigree charms, all the same shape but different metal colors, gold, silver and copper all in one set. They had a bunch of these in various shapes.
• some more of the Aunt Lydia's crochet thread, in green, this time. I have been doing some crocheted jewelry that I will be posting pictures of later.

I also took some notes while I was there. I always go wandering down random aisles in craft stores, when I have time, because you can often find cool things in some very odd places. So I figured I'd better take notes or I'd never remember again later. For example, I found some oversized buttons in the drapery department, in really cute colors, and I stood there for several minutes trying to think how I could use them. They are very big - there were round ones that were about 2" in diameter, and slightly smaller squared-off ones that I think were meant to fit on top of the round ones. They could make a very cute brooch, for sure - but they are too big for most other jewelry uses, I think.

I have also gotten interested in tools, generally, and so I was eyeing the tack hammer, also in the drapery department, of course. But I've already bought a couple of hammers lately (a chasing one and a nylon one) so I couldn't really think of a dire need for another one! They also had those lampshades with the self-adhesive surfaces, which are interesting.

In the needlework department, there were lots of things that interested me:

• wool roving and premade felt shapes
• magnifiers of all shapes and sizes (you pass 40, you get much more interested in these)
• all sorts of crafts that I forget about, like plastic canvas and latch hook kits
• another brand of crochet thread besides the Aunt Lydia's, which is what I've been buying, and also metallicized "Knit-Cro-Sheen" thread (which I think I remember from back in the 70s)
• in the middle of the yarn, a book called Knit with Deborah Norville (I'm sure the knitters know about this one already, but it amused me)

Hobby Lobby has soooooo much decorative stuff - you know, vases and platters and picture frames and various knick-knacks. Somebody is clearly buying this stuff, but it sure isn't me.

Then there's the department with fabric paint and such - what would you call that, the t-shirt department? although clearly people are painting and decorating lots of things besides t-shirts; there are even items apparently specifically intended to decorate flip-flops. (When did decorating flip-flops become a craft unto itself?) Flip-flops don't interest me much, I have to say. They had all sorts of stencils and cute iron-ons and such, though, and that did interest me more. And boas in all colors, which I can't resist trying to think of a use for - usually without much success. (Maybe I'll get one to wear to Quilt Festival or something.)

I suppose the flip-flop decorating market would largely be kids - at least I think so. But it's not like I'm uninterested in crafts aimed at kids, in any case. (I mean, look at the above comment about boas. Honestly, I'm either 49 or maybe 9 years old, depending on the moment.) And we won't even discuss the Ed Hardy (temporary) Tattoo Shop. I didn't buy it. I didn't even look to see how much it was. But I definitely can't say it didn't cross my mind.

I found that one out on a main aisle, next to a bunch of kids' Christmas crafts. But on the main kids'-craft aisle there were interesting things too. I have a bit of a fetish for stickers - I have since I was a kid - and I spent a few minutes trying to think up a use for some of the foam stickers I found there, but I didn't really come up with anything. (I have been trying to replace my sticker habit with buying the occasional rubber stamp instead - at least they're reusable.) They had, like, everything in the world made out of foam - foam shapes and foam stamps and 5"-high foam letters in various almost-primary colors. I thought the colors were a bit odd - like the red wasn't really a bright red but sort of an orangy, dull red - but there was also special foam paint ("Won't crack!") to repaint them with, if you cared to. I was tempted by an set of foam alphabet stamps in a cute, funky font, but I resisted.

Oh, and the also on that aisle was the squares of felt, in every color of the rainbow. I have some adorable felt Christmas ornaments that my mother made when we were little (at least, I think I still do, if they survived the storm!* I need to check that) but it's not the kind of thing I'm likely to ever do myself.

In the jewelry department, I've already listed what I actually got out the door with. I used to be very snobby about HL's jewelry department, mostly because early on I bought some stuff that I thought was metal, only to get home and find out it was metallicized plastic. But I think all of the chain craft stores - that is, Hobby Lobby, Michael's, and JoAnn's, which are the ones we have in this are - have improved their bead departments a good bit in the last year or two. Hobby Lobby now carries those short strings of beads very similar to ones you'd find at JoAnn's and Michael's, although they may or may not come from the same distributor. (I think they still could stand to label things much better. It's not too much to ask what the beads you're buying are actually made of!) Michael's still does the best, I think, on having a good assortment of "trend" kind of beads - like the vintage-looking ones that have been so popular the last couple of years, and stuff like that. But JoAnn's has a good bit of that stuff now, and HL is starting to get some too. (Even Wal-Mart has some now. But mostly I still think the quality of Wal-Mart's beading stuff is pretty inferior.)

I do think that those charms I bought were metallicized plastic, still. They're very light. But they were in an open package where I could shake them around and tell what I was getting before I bought them, so that makes it okay. And they're cute.

Hobby Lobby now also has Vintaj charms, but those were locked in a case, and I'm usually too lazy to hunt down an employee to get them to open it up for me. Plus, they weren't on sale, and I usually think it's a waste to buy anything that's not. I also was eyeing those Soft-Flex "Trios" of coordinating wire, but they seem really overpriced, to me. I'm not buying them without a sale, either.

Let's see, then... further down, on the other side of the kids' crafts, was an aisle with leather-tooling supplies. The thing I looked at there and didn't buy was leather laces - I've been meaning to try those out for necklaces. And then the next aisle down was the unexpected gold-mine - I guess I would call it the "miscellaneous craft" aisle because it had a bunch of different things - stuff for soapmaking, and to make your own stepping stones, and stained glass. And a lot of glass for mosiacs. But next to that was a line of stuff called Fuseworks, for making your own dichroic glass - has anybody tried this stuff? I may have to try it out, if I don't end up taking a dichroic class later. (Hmm, Annette seems to be teaching one later this month!) Across from that was the clay - several different brands. I need to watch for them to put that on sale, too! And a lot of supplies for that. I have been DV-R'ing Beads Baubles and Jewels and I have gotten very interested in clay, also. You see my problem? I'm interested in an awful lot of things!

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* All the ornaments, and the two small artificial trees we had been putting them on, were in the utility room on the back porch during the storm. The ornaments and other decorations were mostly in plastic boxes but water got in some of them somehow, and I threw away a whole lot of ornaments, and both trees. (I figured the metal frames of the trees were liable to rust.) We did a good bit of decorating for Christmas last year but what we didn't do was buy another tree, and I've been planning to buy one this year. I need to get in those boxes and check to see what all is left before I go buying a bunch of ornaments. I had an awful lot of ornaments - we've been married over 20 years and I actively collected them for much of that time - so there are probably still plenty for a small tree.