Housebound and Makin' Stuff

Since it's snowing like, every other day almost, I've been making lots of stuff.  Been wanting to make necklaces for those pendants for awhile.  The Chinese Horoscope characters are Dragon and Tiger.  And also a bracelet from some of those awesome Czech beads that Joe brought back from Prague.

Bigger pic of the necklaces.  The blue morpho wing pendant (far left) just didn't look good with anything other than liquid silver.  And I also didn't want any beads distracting from the pendant cause it's soooo pretty.

Couple bracelets for Kris; the one on the right has the Notre Dame colours.

This ice crystal was really shining on some snow outside so I boosted the contrast on the pic on the computer and that brought out a bunch of rainbows in the snow.

A fresh coating of snow is always really pretty as long as it's just a couple inches.  I put this on the hood of my car and then got the brain storm to spray coloured water all over it.  

This was just before the Superbowl so I did the Hawks' colours and 12th man on the back of the car.  

Mary was in from Idaho so I made this for her.

Hanging thing...I guess for a window or whatever.

Window crystals.  

Craft kit of the month project: painting techniques.  I had to use my own paint cause the stuff that came in the kit was dry, and a really yucky shade of midnight blue.  Dots are time consuming and can be really hard to make the right size.

Melted some of those plastic three sided beads.  I used to call them tri-beads when I was a kid.  It took a long to time arrange them around the bottom of the pie pan and I must've bumped the pan when I put it in the oven because that one side came out all wonky.

Suncatcher with green, light blue, dark blue and purple Makit Bakit crystals.

This was shot looking through the above, at my light.

The day of the Superbowl, I had potato skins with cheese, turkey bacon & scallions and a Jones cream soda.  When I got the potato, the bin sign said, 'Idaho'.  Jones Soda is bottled in Seattle but is a product of BC, so I had a Pacific Northwest themed snack.  

And then I had to do this to the bottle afterwards with Hawks' colour glitter & rhinestones.

Finally, I started this cross stitch during the game and took about a week, off and on, to finish. 

Wordless Wednesday

Still Crafting!!!

I have no upcoming shows but I can't stop making things.  I have so many projects and tutorials saved that I just have to keep chipping away at them.

This is a cinnamon stick star I saw on Pinterest.  The person that made the one I saw used different decorations like real juniper and star anise, neither of which I had.  However, I was able to snip a few bits off of some existing decorations to use in the corner, and I found a small cardinal mixed in with my Christmas craft supplies.  

Then I had to make more of course.

Craft kit of the month came in and I wanted to get that done ASAP too.  The bags are made from vellum and had to be traced, cut and folded.  Then embellished with rub ons, embossing and small pearls, assembled and the ribbon handles were added last.  I worked on these while watching the Seattle Seahawks kick the Giants' ass on a cold, rainy Sunday.

Here's another lit bottle with blue, purple and green glass blobbies glued on.

It's somewhat difficult to make the blobs fit well all the way around and I tried to do all my 'fudging' on one side that I keep turned towards the back.

And another picture I saw on Pinterest using beach glass wired wrapped to a starfish.  This is a prototype but I've had some friends express interest in buying them.  I can get the starfish at the Christmas Tree Shoppe, but only in summer unfortunately.  I popped in to buy some and was really disappointed that they are gone till next year. 

This is another one I'd been wanting to do, making a suncatcher with the plastic Makit Bakit crystals.  I found one of their kits to make bowls by melting the bits in a pie tin and then shaping the sides as they cooled.  I really bought the kit because it had large bags of crystals which are next to impossible to find.  I melted them in the pie tin but I didn't shape the sides.

This one I did in a cookie cutter.  Unfortunately the heat of the oven and expanding crystals popped the soldering on one of the cutter seams, down at the bottom which is why it looks so raggedy.   

Russell's niece had asked me to make a beach glass bracelet for her sister....

....and liked it so much she commissioned four more.

And since I had everything out and a tall, thin jar, I tried again with this Austrian Santa snowglobe.

Old Time Crafts

I used to love Shrinky Dinks and Make It Bake It kits back in the 70s.  Some of these items are enjoying a resurgence thanks to Pinterest craft ideas.  

I found the doggie kit in Michael's Crafts and picked it up because it was just $2.99 and it's really cute.  The Shrinkies is a 1960's themed kit and I didn't realize that all the designs were precut and pre-drawn and just needed to be coloured.  I thought I would have to first trace & cut the designs.  But that was OK....it was a snowy afternoon and I was watching 'Amadeus' so I coloured all of the designs in one sitting.  

 Here's a batch in the oven, in mid shrink

The one on the left was once as big as the one on the right!

Large size designs ready to go in.

And here's the plate of all the shrinkies post-oven!

And here's my doggie suncatcher.  I actually had to bake this one twice.  The first time there were quite a few spaces that needed additional beads.

I forgot how much I like the smell of melting plastic.