Stuff for Friends

Oh, before I get to the stuff I made to send to a couple friends, here's the first successful stencil I've ever done.  I have these glittery watercolour paints that I forgot I bought years ago so I tested them out with a large metal stencil.  First time the medium didn't bleed under the holes.  

My dear friend and sister, Lady Axe, has been identifying more and more with Native American spirituality, especially the power of Mother Bear.  I found this commercially-produced arrowhead in my craft stuff and recycled the bear charm off of an old necklace of mine and made her this necklace.

I made her a medicine wheel with ribbon, beads and a feather.  It's quite small, probably 4" from top of wheel to bottom of feather.

This dreamcatcher surfaced in my supplies as well, as did the carved stone bear bead, so I added waxed linen cord with metal, glass, wood & ceramic beads, and a rawhide lace hanger.

My freshman year college roomie, Angie, is wonderfully creative and we had so much fun making stuff in our dorm room after our homework was done.  She continues to inspire me with her photos and artwork so I made this project I saw on Pinterest.  This is a small box I covered with paper, ribbon, real wood and an old key.

Inside the cover on the left and the project on the right.

She loves architecture and doors, so I used some door ephemera and made a fold out picture book, which is adhered to the bottom of the inside of the box.  Then I decorated the pages by crudely drawing doodles.

And the back side of the pages.

More Dream Catchers

To say that 2013 has started off with some challenges would be an understatement, and that goes for the crafts I've been working on.  It's not just me; a lot of my friends are complaining that their lives aren't going very well either.  Someone asked if Mercury was retrograde again.  

Here's another dream catcher using one of the crocheted snowflakes.  

The intent was to attach it to that hoop with beads like the other one.  BTW, I wrapped the hoop with red gradiated floss with gold on top literally years ago; at least 6 or 7.  I've been trying to finish some of the projects that I started and abandoned. I managed to get one beaded loop on and it was not going well at all. Not even a little bit.  So I decided to tie them on with some pretty fibres that my friend Rhonda sent me.  Every single fibre ripped.  I guess the starch inside the loop made the crochet very sharp. I finally settled on a thick fibre strand to tie them, and then dabbed glue on the knots.  I remain skeptical as to their structural integrity over time.

After that I just tied on a bunch of the different fibres that came in the bundle.  

Keeping up with the Works in Progress, I finally used the last metal ring I bought years ago to make one final doily dreamcatcher.  I was waiting for the paint to dry on another project, so I started wrapping the ring with synthetic sinew and floss.  

Initially this was going to be a celestial-themed dream catcher.  I had a moon in the center, but it just didn't seem to look right.  I saw a snowflake charm in the pile I'd dumped out on the table, and loved how that looked instead.  Then I sewed the crystal beads into the spaces and attached the doily to the ring with silver beads.  I finally had the brainstorm to use twisties to temporarily hold the doily in place in the center of the ring so that I could sew the bead loops on.  It only took me 3 of these to finally think of that solution....

Sewed some snowflake sequins w/ blue seed beads on blue ribbon for the bottom hanging part.

Projects

I saw a cool idea on Pinterest to use a doily to make a dream catcher.  I finally found some doilies at JoAnn Fabrics in Hyannis but they are kind of poorly made and didn't fit into the metal ring I had at home.  

But then those pre-starched crochet snowflakes surfaced when I took out the decorations so I snagged a couple.  This was the project I'd had to step away from when I went to Onset that one day.  It may look like it was easy but I ran into some problems stitching the beads due to the high amount of starch and difficulty getting the needle through it.

After I had the snowflake attached to the ring, which was originally wrapped with synthetic sinew fibre, I realized I should have covered the bland sinew with floss.  That meant stopping what I was doing and trying to shimmy in this step as an afterthought.  It was Not. Easy. 

I used some peacock feathers on the bottom.  I'm not crazy about the way they hang but oh well.

Then I stuck some stuff on these mini glass bottles I had laying around.  Just what I need....more knick knacks.

This one was definitely fun to make and is definitely for me.