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.

Can't. Stop. With the Halloween/DdlM Links!

Even though it's really too late to make much more stuff for this year, my excuse this time is that I want to remember this one for future reference:
HUGE round up of H'ween and Dia de los Muertos links!

Also, I love Cathie Filian's bat necklace
Cool DdlM dolls!
knitted pumpkins!!

Man, I realllly want to get in on this order of Alexander Henry Loteria fabric. Have I even mentioned here that I used to be a quilter?* I have not even been tempted by quilting fabric lately - except for this one. (I have a fair little collection of those AH DdlM-related fabrics. I was intending to make a quilt out of them someday, although the quilting has been on indefinite hiatus lately.)


*I ended up talking about that in the entry below this one, so look there if you're interested in hearing more about that!

Crafty Halloween linkage

Now that Halloween's getting close, I keep nosing around and finding adorable craft things I hadn't noticed before (or had noticed ages ago and forgotten about):
Panoplie's tiny little pumpkin earrings (So cute - makes me want to run out and buy orange druk beads!)*
Smilin' Jack cuff (found on Bead Art Originals)
Alexa's painted mini-pumpkins
ilovetocreate's necklaces made entirely of paint!

Kathy Cano-Murillo is the goddess (or something) of Day of the Dead. Her Crafty Chica blog is awash with it - go check it out!

I could keep going all day, but I will stop or Halloween will be over by the time I post this!


Oops, one more: notmartha's meatloaf hand. (My husband wants me to make him one of these!)

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*No, no, no. No shopping allowed for me right now!

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!

Necklace details

I realized I didn't have detail pictures of the skull necklace, so here are a couple. This one shows the rusty bead at the bottom, which I adore, and also features the matching earrings I whipped up Saturday afternoon:

And here's more:

I wish I knew where that bone bead at the bottom right came from. I really like it.

Day of the Dead necklace

I finally quit tinkering with my skull necklace and here it is:

(I lightened the picture up some so you could see it better. There's also a bigger version on Flickr.)

I wanted to write up a nice tutorial with very specific instructions, and I found that I just can't do it - or at least, not very specifically - because of the way I made it: I collected skull beads for over a year and then I just sort of winged it. But I can tell you what I did and how it's put together, anyway, and hopefully you can use some of these ideas to create your own version!

Ingredients:

• Skull beads in various sizes and materials (size range is about 6-20mm) (more on this below)
• Jet crystal coin beads, 6mm
• Antique brass chain – mine came from Michael’s and was unsoldered
• Antique brass wire, if you can find it - if not, antique brass headpins will do the job just fine
• Antique brass jump rings in sizes to complement your chain
  
• Bar and toggle clasp – I used a bright copper bar and an oxidized copper toggle, from two similar sets (but note that if you do this you need to make sure they fit one another!)
• Optional: charms - I used antique brass spider webs, and a brass lightning bolt

I made this necklace in a very informal way – since the chain was unsoldered, I just unlinked it at random(ish) intervals and started adding beads. I looked through my beads and charms for anything that looked suitable for Halloween or Day of the Dead, and anything black or goth. I really intended to use round Czech beads as well as the little coin beads, but I happened to try the coin beads first and they looked so cute I just kept using them. I think they give a bit of unity to the assortment of beads. I decided to put the clasp in the front – and the decision to use two different colors of clasp was mostly driven by the fact that the bar that matched the oxidized toggle had bent and wasn't really usable. I also intended to put far more than one charm on this necklace – I had a whole collection of charms by the time I got done – but when I added the rusty skull and the lightning bolt below that, it just looked finished, and I decided to stop.

As far as how it’s assembled, I just linked everything together with headpins and jump-rings and whatever I had on hand. I used both bought jump-rings and ones I had made myself. Mostly I just used simple loops - I wrapped a few, but since I only had headpins to work with and no wire that really matched, I didn't have enough wire to wrap with a lot of the time!

Sources:
A lot of my sources were the places listed in my sidebar. Manto Fev is an especially good source for skulls. Or just try searching for "skull beads" on your favorite bead-seller's website, or on Etsy.
A few specifics:
Lightning bolt charms (The spiderwebs also came from the same seller, but she seems to be sold out, last I looked.)
Here’s a different rusted skull charm from the same seller I got mine from.
Copper skulls: http://www.magpiegemstones.com/catalog/item/5238630/6693716.htm
I think some of the other skull beads came from Elise Mathiesen’s Beads of the Month program (aka botmo) on Livejournal. I think the black AB glass skulls (which look like they might be pressed Czech glass) may have come from her.

About metals: my intention was to mix up my metals even more than I actually did. I decided that the antique brass chain was more in keeping with the mood of my necklace than the brightly-polished copper I started out with, but antique-finish copper or silver would probably look good too. I did use polished copper in the beads, and also heavily oxidized copper, and polished brass, as well as the antique brass; but no silver, in the end. This was more because of what I had on hand than any real design decision, though.

Note: I added a couple of detail pictures here.