Toasting the New Year's Party with a Wine Themed set of Earrings and new design team!

                                

Good day friends and Happy New Year! I am so excited to tell you about a new design team I am on!  YEAH!

I've been on the design team over at Get Creative Challenge and am having a wonderful time coloring digi images.  Angie is also running the Simply Create Too blog and I am one of the newest members over there now also.  I'm really excited about designing with these fabulous ladies because I get to make whatever I want to as long as I follow the theme!  YEAH!

This month's theme is PARTY TIME challenge #100 and thus I created some wonderful earrings that I wore on New Year's Eve.  

As some of you know I work in a wine store and I get asked over and over if we have any jewelry with a Wine motif. My boss just isn't into stuff like that – so I decided I wanted a pair of earrings to wear for New Years Eve and I wanted them to have a wine motif.

So let's get started!

I started out by cutting a wine bottle and glass shape {welded with my Cricut} out of some cereal boxes! I love to upcycle. I cut the pieces 14 times because I wasn't sure how thick I wanted the glued together pieces to be.

Here are my Cricut cuts and I used 5 of them to get the desired thickness.

Then I mixed up a batch of the Amazing Mold Putty – you can view mixing preparations HERE. I sprayed some UMR Mold Release onto the mold putty before pressing the chipboard into it because I did not want the chipboard to stick to it.

The mold came out beautifully!

Next I brushed some Lt. Green Alumidust where the bottle would be and left an area open where I think the glasses would be. I then mixed up some Amazing Clear Cast Resin {and you can watch a video tutorial HERE} because I wanted the "glasses" to be see through.

So far so good... I then took a silver paint pen and highlighted around the bottle, put a stopper on the top and edged around the wine glass area.

I added some seed beads with E6000® and used

a red paint pen to add some color to the bottle.

Attached some jewelry findings with E6000® 

and I was ready for New Years Eve!

I absolutely love my new earrings created just in time for the Party!
If you are going to CHA you might even see my cuts being used!

Now I hope you've enjoyed my post and my first project for Simply Create Too!

Make sure you follow the theme and join in some fun over there.

Summer Lovin at ABAC

Good morning,

I'm so glad to be here today for our Summer Lovin over at ABAC.  I love being on the design team because it really makes me focus at least once a month on creating "anything but a card".  Not that I have been doing a lot of that either because I tell you, it's been a very hectic summer already.  I haven't had much crafting time, but when I do I am wowed by what I have made.

Today I am here to show you a simple jewelry project that was inspired by my trip to Florida.  I got to meet our fabulous leader Susan and we spent one whole day junk-ing.  I had such a great time with her and we found some awesome trinkets.  Today I will show you two of those fabulous finds.

here are a couple of buttons I found and just loved the detail

using the Alumidust I "painted" all my molds I had created with the Amazing Mold Putty.  

All of these items were found while I was in Florida.  

I decided to go with a green/blue with a bit of purple to remember my days in Florida.  The beaches and the ocean water was fabulous and here, look at the sparkle...love it!

Then I poured Amazing Casting Resin mixed with the Alumilite Dye in Black over the top of all my molds.  So messy, but so much fun! 

I absolutely love the colors.  Who says blue and green don't go together? 

I even added a little bit of purple  

searching through my GIANT stash of beads I found the perfect ones to go with my new recasted buttons. 

I hope you will join us at Anything but a Card and remember there are only three rules.  

1.  Make something summer - y

2.  Anything But a Card

3.  Just have fun while creating!

As always, have a great day and God Bless.

Hair Jewelry

Good morning,

I've got a quick tutorial for you today about hair jewelry, ie barrettes.  I've had short hair for quite a while and I've been letting it grow again.  Hubby likes long hair, (like most men), but I hate the upkeep.  My hair is naturally curly and very thick so it takes a lot to keep it tame.  Actually when my hair is really long I have to get a perm just to keep it tame, otherwise it's all over the place.  It's also very coarse, so I use A LOT of product in my hair.  I usually keep it in a ponytail or braid it when it's long, which in my eyes, defeats the purpose of having long hair because it's always up.  Oh well...hubby likes it long and sometimes I just have to please him.

I also like to wear barrettes and combs and other hair things so I decided to make some barrettes myself. I actually saw this tutorial somewhere while ago and I cannot for the life of me remember where, so if you've seen it or know who's tutorial this is, please let me know so I can give her credit.  She did an amazing job with the making of the pieces, I just added them to the bobbi pins to make barrettes.

So this is how you get started.  First you will need a hotglue gun, bobbipins, loose beads, stringed beads, a circle punch (a bit smaller than your finished piece) and some cardstock (you could use felt too) 

First glue your loose beads together with your hotglue gun in a circle 

I anchored my first bead directly on my mat and hotglued the rest of the beads around it 

to form this.  It lifted off of my mat easily. 

Then I cut the stringed beads (you can get these in the 

wedding aisle of your craft store) in 5 bead length. 

and hot glued them between the beads. 

see, easy, very easy. 

Then I hotglued an accent bead to the middle of the entire piece.

Next punch two circles from your cardstock or cut 2 smaller circles from felt. 

I hotglued one circle to the backside of the piece.

(No, my fingers aren't dirty, they are stained from a previous project.  

Cannot get the stain off for nothing)

Then I placed the second circle between the bobbipin and hotglued it to the finished piece. 

I've had these in my hair about a dozen times now and they've held up very well.

Love the look... 

I even made some black, white and red ones.

I hope you enjoyed my quick Hair Jewelry tutorial and hope to see you back here soon.

As always, have a great day and God Bless.

Connie's Necklace

Good morning and thanks for stopping by.  I haven't been blogging too much lately, but that doesn't mean I haven't been creating. I've got so much stuff to show, but seriously blogging takes way more time than I have.  Today I have a necklace to show that I made for a co worker's birthday last month.  I've been making a lot of jewelry lately and plan on opening my etsy store soon.  Let me know if there is anything you would like to see.

The stone was clear and I used alcohol inks to change it to purple, her favorite color.  I sealed it with some clear finger nail polish. 

She really loved it and so did I.  In fact she just wore it this last weekend.  It really makes you feel special when you see something you've made being used or worn.  

Thanks for taking a peak and see you in a couple of days.

As always, have a great day and god bless.

Robin's Nest DT Call

Good morning and welcome to another day filled with surprises.

Today I am showing you what you can make with so little, but make it so beautiful.  As most of you know I am a thrift store junky.  I love rummaging and finding old things to make new again.  A long time ago, (remember I am also a hoarder) I was at a thrift store and saw this cute little house like frame thingy.  It was 25 cents (I know this because I left the tag on it).  I can't resist a bargain, plus I knew I could make something of it.  Well, in my hoarding state, I tucked it away to be forgotten about.  Not long ago I was going through some of my stuff, because I have waaayyyy too much, (Just ask my hubby) and decided I was going to start purging a little, a little!  Shortly before that I had gone to my friend, Terri Sprouls "Live Stream for the Robin's Nest".  I have looked at their papers and such but never had to opportunity to play with any. While watching the "live stream", I won a paper pack from the Robin's Nest...yeah for me!  I didn't know which paper pack I'd be receiving, but knew I was going to create something for the DT Call that Terri mentioned.  As I like to dabble in a lot of different crafty things, I decided to submit this for the Altered Arts team.  I love to upcycle, recycle and unicycle...lol, not really.  So, here we go...

This is the paperpack I won.  It's filled with glitzy snowy paper, alphabet stickers and dew drops.  I've made my own dew drops before, but I am in LOVE with these.  They are so much better than my homemade ones.  There were white, silver, clear and pearl ones.  LOVE, LOVE, LOVE them.  There were also some snowflakes in the packet and I knew exactly what I was going to do with this packet.

I used the white paper with the glitzy snowflakes and cut "snow" with  my cricut and SCAL 3.  I tried to cut where the most of the "glitz" was.

Here is the frame, and I spray painted it blue.  I think "blue" when I think winter, not sure why.  I wanted to have a blue house to go with the papers.  I glued the "snow" to the frame of the house and some onto the chimney.  Then I used some fishing line and attached that to the snowflakes.  I used 4 glue dots and adhered them to the top of the "heart" cut outs and attached the snowflake-fishing line to them.  You can hardly notice that and it looks as if it were snowing.  I used the alphabet stickers to say "Let it Snow" and added some of the dew drops as accents and this is what you get.

Really honestly these pictures do it no justice at all.  I wish you could see how glitzy the "snow" look.  I absolutely love how it turned out and can't wait to give it to my mom,  but by the time you read this, I will have done so already.  I'm sure she will love it...  So, see what you can do with a little?

Now, I also love to make jewelry...beads are a blast.  When I got the paper from the Robin's Nest, I fell in love with the blues and wanted to create something that I can have around all the time.  So I thought and thought and came up with this idea...I used my Creative Paperclay® and cut a circle with a cookie cutter.

Then I cut a piece of the paper slightly larger than the dried piece of clay. 

See where it had fit in?  I glued the paper onto the dried paperclay with 3D Crystal Lacquer.   I also made this fleur de lis out of paperclay and painted everything silvery to go with the paper.  I got the idea of using the fleur de lis from the paper itself. 

I then sealed the entire piece with 3D Crystal Lacquer so that it would sparkle a bit also. 

I wish this picture were better 

but here is the finished piece.  I cannot wait to wear it.  The beads were a perfect match to the paper.

I hope you've enjoyed my little projects and keep your fingers crossed for me...I may soon get to be on the Robin's Nest DT.

Key to my Heart

Good day friends,

Sakura Hobby Crafts is having a design team call here and although I do not own any 3D crystal lacquer I decided to experiment a bit with something else.  You all know me, I will try anything new.  I just love to create and be crafty in so many different ways.  Although I am currently addicted to my scrapbooking and cardmaking, I've been a jewelry creator since I was a child.  My Opa (grandpa) owned a Kiosk (store) in Germany and while I was growing up he allowed me to sell my jewelry creations in his store.  I used to make bracelets, necklaces and earrings and hang them up in the window for all his customers to see.  People from the neighborhood even asked for special orders.  It was a great confidence booster for a kid.  I really thought I would grow up to be a jewelry designer.  I did design for a short period of time, but life got in the way of that.  


This is what I did...


I cut out a heart shape out of white Creative Paperclay and you can find more information on it here.  

Then I embedded a key into the paperclay and let it dry a bit.  

Then I added the dimensional stuff that I do own and covered the entire piece.  I let it run off the sides so that everything would be coated nicely.  If you are going to attempt something like this, make sure you have a piece of waxpaper or something that the dimension will not stick to under your piece.

I also added some cranberry alcohol ink to the top of the dimensional and it spread like wildfire.  SO COOL!!!

This is what it looks like when it pools...so fun to see.  Some spots get darker in areas, but it's fun to experiment.

Then I added just a touch of glitter to the top of the dimensional to give it some glitz.

I let the piece dry overnight and added a jump ring and a chain and you have a very cool charm.  

The other thing I like about using paperclay for some of my jewelry is that it is lightweight and doesn't get too heavy.  Especially for earrings because they can get heavy on your earlobes and I've even seen some so stretched out it looks as if it hurts to wear big bulky earrings.


So anyway, I hope you like my little tutorial on how to create jewelry with some dimension lacquer and paperclay.  I will have to get out and get me some 3d crystal lacquer.  This was a lot of fun!!!