National Craft Month

I had no idea that there was a national craft month!  I found out on the 3rd, which was timely since I'd made the ATCs on March 1st and 2nd.  I decided to try and work on and/or complete at least one thing, per day, all month.  Not sure how successful that'll be, but so far this is what I've gotten done. 

March 3, continuing to work on celestial cross stitch.  Projects in progress that are worked on every day will be considered  'craft of the day'.  

March 4, three more map pendants of places I love and a peace sign patch pendant.

March 5, dragonfly necklace

Also March 5, I tried a couple of tiny 'hurricane lamps', made from a bead, push pin and wire, with ring on the bottom.

March 6, beaded bracelet.

Not sure if I can keep up for the whole month but I'll give it the ol' college try!

Map Pendant

Quite awhile ago, I pinned this Tacoma pendant on Pinterest.  The link went to the artist's Etsy shop and unfortunately, it was already sold.  Of course I loved it and wanted to do one for myself.  

I'm not sure how I arrived at a tutorial, but I found one on the Happy Hour Projects site.  She was kind enough to include the link to the 25mm bezel set, which can be found on Amazon.com HERE, and which comes in 2 parts and looks like this:

The pendants are shipped from China, so they take a little longer than most Amazon packages to arrive.  I only ordered two of them and I wish I got a few more as they are pretty inexpensive (about $3.60).  

All I had left to do was find a suitable map to use, so I grabbed my old 2003 road atlas and went right to Washington State.  Unfortunately, all the town names were really large.  So I flipped over to British Columbia, but Vancouver Island/Victoria was also too big.  Then I found the map I needed which fit perfectly! It has all my fave places: Mt. Rainier (a little cut off at the bottom), Tacoma, Seattle, Olympia, the Olympic Peninsula, Victoria and Vancouver. 

I assembled mine a little differently than in the tutorial.  I mod podged the map to the brass part then put the glass dome on top.  The key is not to use a ton of glue or else it will show through the paper as a very dark splotch.  

Next, I turned to the map of Massachusetts and hoped that the next one I made could emcompass Buzzards Bay, Bourne and Sandwich, but the distance on the map was way too far, so I'm not sure what I'm going to do yet with the second bezel set.  The possibilities are endless!