More handmade gifting - totally upcycling!

I can't wait until Richard is old enough to craft and give his own handmade gifts! But until then, Mama will help him out! Now that we are into eating solid foods, I started saving the little jars because I know there are tons of cute ideas of things to do with them. For Christmas, I decided to make little snow globes.

I started to get even more excited about this idea when I realized that I probably had all of the materials necessary in my basement - a totally upcycled project! I had several bags of tiny trees from some scenery/mountains I had bought about 10 years ago for my Halloween village. I spray painted them purple and black, but of course never used the tree because they obviously didn't fit that holiday.

Then, I remembered that someone gave me a bag of fake snow several years ago for my Snowtown, but I never used it because I feared the mess it would make. I had silver glitter. I mean, what kind of crafty gal doesn't have tons of glitter??? Here is where I started to lay everything out. Mocha was very intrigued.
I washed all of the jars, and used Goo Gone to get the glue from the labels off. I have a love/hate relationship with Goo Gone. I cut circles from some sparkly while felt I had (again for my Snowtown) and adhered it to the inside of the caps. Then I glued a tree in the center of each one.

I mixed a nice bowl of snow and glitter up, praying that I would not spill it all over the place so that we'd be finding glitter until the year 2025. A spoonful or so in each jar, and secure the lids on.

Now I had to come up with how I was going to finish them off. A piece of ribbon tied around the base is the best idea, but have you ever tried to tie a tiny piece of ribbon around the rim of a slippery cap? That is something that I do not have the patience for. So I ran my silver ribbon through my Zyron machine (which puts adhesive on it) and affixed it round and round. I had some circle labels where I could put the "to" and "from" on the bottom and that's it!

Here are some pics with the flash on, and the flash off. I did have one larger mason jar from a candle that I burned down where I was able to add a snowman. I did not use water/glycerin in them because then there is the worry about them leaking over time. I modeled mine after the ones that were for sale at Anthropologie, which aren't on their website anymore for you to refer to. Very elegant and pretty, but for $38, this crafty gal is gonna DIY!

I hope the receivers will enjoy this memory of Richard's first Christmas!

More handmade gifting - Peas!

My sister-in-law, and nephew, love peas!

Heck, I like peas and so does baby Richard.

She also has a fondness for Green Girl Studios. So what's more perfect than making her a necklace with their pewter pea pod charm! I wanted it to be very simple and delicate so it's on a string of random pearls and seed beads - all in pea green colors of course! I am also gifting her with one of my tin cuffs!

Handmade Gifting

Now that I am starting to send some of my handmade gifts out into the world, I can blog about them! I do apologize though for the bad lighting. Since evenings are the only time I have to create, and we are in the dark days of midwest winter, pictures aren't so great.

First up, I gave my good friend Kristen one of these tin bracelets. These bezel bracelets are so fun to experiment with! She and I have both made button bracelets with them. And now I've finally gotten around the making some tin ones. The trick to them is getting the right size circle because when you dome the metal, it gets smaller. Now that I've got my sizes figured out, for both the small and large versions, I plan to make more of these in the future. I wanted to make each size and then decide which on to give her. I gave her the smaller one which features more variety. I selected tins that had background to them - such as the yellow one she gave me. The strawberries to remember our strawberry picking outing a few years ago. And of course I had to throw in a peacock feather! I am so glad that she likes it!!!

She gifted me with even more pretty tins, and I can't wait to work with them soon!

Happy Holidays!

Wishing all of my blog readers a wonderful holiday season!

Free Shipping

So it seems I missed having a Black Friday sale. Or Cyber Monday deal. That's okay because I haven't been able to update my Etsy shop as much as I'd like. I have had some wonderful sales at work, being that I have brought my jewelry in there. And since those customers don't have to pay for shipping, I thought I'd offer a FREE SHIPPING code through the holidays. Check the end of this post for the code. I'm hoping to update the shop sporadically over the next few weeks, and here are some new items I listed last night.

I don't often make the same design more than once, but I just LOVE how these long necklaces turned out. They are so boho, great for layering, and at a good gift giving price of $18 each. The peacock feather is from Nina Designs and I am so impressed by the quality - they truly seem like real gold! I'm tempted to keep one for myself........
A tin cuff..... hoping to get more tin pieces listed soon!

And some metal work. Lately, I've been more drawn to metal work than beading. It's nice to be able to go back and forth between the two.

Thanks for your support, and the FREE SHIPPING code is: Merry

Jade Scott Flower Challenge

Earlier this month, Lorelei and Jade teamed up to have a challenge with Jade's super cute enamel flowers. It was okay that I didn't score one of the ones Lorelei was giving away because I kinda had a surplus of them from one of Jade's Etsy updates. The reason I bought up so many was because I was hoping to get a nice variety, color wise, for the necklace I had in mind. I had envisioned using several of them for a statement piece - a garland for the neck.
It took me a bit to think up of how I was going to do this. I finally came up with a plan. I had purchased these metal components from Rings & Things (more plans for them to come too). I punched 2 holes in the center of the solid ones so that I could thread the headpin down and then back up to wrap the rest of it around the base of the flower.

Then I punched a hole on each end and embellished each one with a rivet to connect all 5 of the scallops together. Simple chain is all that is needed to finish this collar up!

Here are the rest of the blogs you can visit to see more pretty flowers!

1. Lorelei Eurto
2. Serena Trent
3. Susan Raber
4. Shawna Tobias
5. Lucid Moon Studio
6. K Hutchinson
7. Gigi
8. Lois Moon
And also!
http://cherishdesigns.wordpress.com
http://mariagrimes.blogspot.com/

Did you think he'd be anything else?

So, Happy Halloween everyone (a few days late). Halloween is my favorite holiday, and this year was even more fun because of Richard. Well, kindof. Meaning, it's fun to dress babies up, but they don't really know what is going on. They can't have candy, so it's really more for the parents enjoyment. He had a small party at daycare which I went and helped with, but it was quite short because again, they only tolerate a costume for so long.

He was a peacock.... of course. Are you surprised? I figured I'd better do it now before he can make up his own mind about what he wants to be. There are several peacock costumes on the market, and there's always the handmade route, but I found one that I liked and ordered it a few months ago. He's right around 6 months now, so I had it in my mind that he might be sitting on his own. Like in the picture. On the costume website. You know, all the perfect scenarios in a Mom's mind. Not to mention a scrapbooking Mom's mind.

The costume did not have covered legs, so I knew I'd have to go find some pants to go under it and some socks. Being that the costume is purple and teal, I also knew that I'd have to look in the girls section. After searching at several stores, I finally found the most perfect teal velour pants at Goodwill. But they were too large so my good friend Kristen fixed them right up for us.

Okay! So now we're ready for pictures. He still needs support to sit, so I tried thinking of how to prop him up without distracting from the already loud velvet, sequin and shiny goodness he would be wearing. So first we tried laying down. Not so good.

Then we tried going outside and sitting up against a tree. Even in the shade, it was too bright for his little eyes and in most all of them he is more interested in chewing on the sleeves or trying to pick up leaves.

Then we tried the changing table. Better.... getting better.

And finally, we went and sat on the bench in our mudroom where it provided nothing but white backdrop and pretty decent lighting. I'll let the captions do the explaining now.

* Disclaimer: no babies or peacocks were harmed in the making of this blog post.

So there ya have it. First Halloween checked off the list. Believe me, I have many more pictures and my plan is to have a flip book made with them! It will be fun to see the peacock in "action" while thumbing quickly through the pages.