16mm glass tile love

For the first time in what seems like decades - I got bored.  How is it remotely possible that someone who is usually bursting with creativity and aspirations lands up with boredom? Illness - that's how.  I'm not sure why my immune system decided to give up on me but for the last week and a bit I came down with one heck of a cold/flu/infection which left me completely useless.  All I seemed to be able to manage was laying in bed (but not actually sleeping) and feeling beyond frustrated with my inability to do anything remotely productive.  I spent all my time focusing on being able to breathe and searching for tissues. Ugh.

Well I am finally beginning to see the light at the end of the sickness tunnel and although the stomach virus seems to be still tormenting me with being super nauseated with some nice spouts of laying on my bathroom floor - I can almost breathe from my nose now which I call major progress! Aha! I'm also furiously daydreaming up crafty ideas to work on once I am useful again and decided I should write a blog post and share! What a concept! I think is also what is known as "procrastination" since instead of actually doing something - I am writing about doing something instead. Masterful I know. 

As you may recall (if you follow me on social media) - I've been having loads of fun dabbling in the world of glass tile jewelry.  I expended my glass tile necklace selection to include new sterling silver vintage images of mammals (and kittens and pulp science fiction) as well as came up with a bunch of 8mm and 12mm glass tile earrings! Such fun!  I even recently made 200 new 16mm glass tile rings to take to my last craft show and loved all the patterns, colours and images I got to use. Take a peek:

So what is next on my glass tile obsession? Why magnets and wine charms of course!  Just what the doctor ordered! So I hit the internet to order up some more supplies (probably one of my favourite seemingly productive (but not really) things to do) and am not stocked with materials to make my crafty dreams come true! Now come in your help (pretty please)! What sort of sets do you think I should make? If you were to pick put a magnet or wine charm set what would you want it to look like? Washi tape patterns? Vintage kittens? Anthropomorphic kate drawings? Sure a giant selection is great for an actual craft booth but it doesn't transfer to online sales very easily and since I'd love these to be added to my Etsy inventory I need a little direction. What do you think? 
 

my high tech photography studio

I've had friends ask me how I manage to take all of my product and blog pictures so I figured today was as good a day as any to reveal my ultra high tech photography studio. Behold:

Pretty fancy eh? Here's an even more in depth labeled picture:

The secret it out. I take pictures on the floor of my living room with my iphone camera. I've tried all sorts of different set ups and equipment since I started selling online in 2008 (wow that was a while ago), but this seemed to work the best for me.  I have a stretched panel of light cotton fabric (that is actually part of a lightbox Fraser made me) as my backdrop and use the lovely light source of our giant front room windows. Throw in a cushion for my bum and you're set! There it is in all its glory. Oh, and yes, I do have quite the jungle of plants hanging out in my living room...

Brass Studs

Over my two year crafting/blogging hiatus I came up with some fun projects to keep my idle hands busy.  Now that I'm trying to come back into the crafting and selling world I figure it is about time to share one of my favourite new items I've added to my crafty arsenal - brass stud earrings: 

The sparrows and little crosses are totally my favourites (hence using them as my first image) but I have loads of other designs to chose from too. Here is a little selection of the smaller sized studs (although now that I've been making them and selling them consignment for a year or so I have expanded the line even further):

I ended up dividing the earrings into two groupings (smaller and larger) and made two sizes of packaging to differentiate them.  Here are a few of the larger (thus slightly more costly) studs:

Aren't they fun? As always, I enjoyed coming up with a new packaging idea for these and had to branch away from my standard recycled kraft cardstock (which is brown) and went with some classic white card to make the gold colour pop.  I then stamped on a pale blue/green pattern for a bit of interest and put the url to my etsy shop on the back so people can find me if they're interested in the other goodies I make!  

I will definitely have to take some updated pictures of my entire selection of brass studs once I whip up another batch but (as you may have noticed) I've been super busy lately crafting up a storm! Now the only kink I have left to work out is how in the world I will display these at my craft booth.  I suppose I could just lay them neatly on the table but there is certainly a fly away risk with how light they are and if I tried to lay the whole lot of them out my table surface would be monopolized with just the one item! Oh dear! 

What are your thoughts? Do you have a favourite pair? Any suggestions for future designs? 

Crafty Hens

I'm loving how Pinterest now recommends boards and pins that they think I may like.  I get all sorts of neat new ideas in my feed without having to go searching for them! How lovely! One project Pinterest so nicely brought to my attention was these amazing hand stitched felt French hens by mmmcrafts (link)! Just look at how darling these ladies are:

(source)

I love the fun non-traditional colours they used and the adorable stitched details! I'd love to make one of these and hang it up in the kitchen or maybe even the front door! I feel like these are totally something my Grandma would have put up at the farm when I was a kid (making me love them even more) and are even a bit reminiscent of my favourite vintage pyrex pattern - butterprint:

Heck you could even make a hen from turqouise and white felt and make it even more butterprint-y! Lovely! Looks like I'm adding this project to my ever growing "to craft" list! What are your thoughts? Do you ever make weird felt things to hang on your walls? 

Canadian Mammal Pendants

My creative juices have been flowing at all time high speeds these days.  It may be that I didn't do much creating for the last two years or perhaps my amazingly organized craft room but regardless, it feels great to whip up some new things! The newest of my creations is a line of 1" necklaces featuring some awesome canadian mammals! Here's the most canadian of all the creatures - beaver!:

Isn't he darling on top of his little dam? And the animal cuteness doesn't stop there - check out a wide selection of other canadian furry creatures:

Yeah! You can use all your wildlife recognition skills for this picture right? Even with the two species of bears, deer, and squirrel? What fun! Ok. So I mislead you a bit with the mammal thing. Owls and gulls are indeed not mammals - but the majority of them are so I figure that counts. Plus that owl is trying to eat a mammal? Yup - a bit of a stretch but I'm sticking with it.  Boy do I ever love these. Heck - I even think the back of the pendants look cool:

I'm happy to report that these beauties are lead and nickel free with a nice coating of silver to avoid all your sensitive skin woes - and to top the whole thing off there is a generous long chain if you (like myself) dig the long pendant look:

Obviously these are easy enough to make shorter as well - but I feel the long chain sort of goes with the whole nature, free spirited thing. 

So how did I come up with the designs you may wonder? With a ridiculously enormous amount of work of course!  I started with rough images from a magnificent 1927 wildlife book from my Grandpa's farm and after a lot of high res scanning I did many (many) hours of digital drawing.  Once I got the little dudes to a nice spot, I added some colour blocking to the backgrounds and bam! Time to print, coat, cover, paint, and bezel up those images into their final homes inside those necklaces. Whew! It did end up being way more work than I originally thought it would but on the plus side I am mastering my photoshop skills and potentially peeking the interest of the masses to start studying wildlife biology of Canada! Hooray! Go science!

So what are your thoughts? Anyone out there brave enough to correctly identify all those lovely little creatures? Who is your favourite? 

Polymer Clay Cat Brooch

As part of my polymer clay making rampage I took a little detour from bead and necklace making and tried my hand at cat face brooches.  I really do love kittens and even though I will probably never own one I can certainly own hypoallergenic pins of them! Take a peek:

Me-ow! I am super happy with how they turned out and liked making the different faces and patterns on the cats.  It also gave me another opportunity to try to master tiny little paint strokes which is super challenging.  I often see crafts and projects people make and wonder how the heck they create things so effortlessly.  Painting tiny details is actually really hard and these pins were far from effortless at my skill level - but practise does seem to me improving my abilities.

I really love the little orange cat the most with his smug expression perfect for the label of a jacket:

and in case you are concerned how you will be attaching said brooch - I glued on a nice sized bar pin with epoxy:

So what do you think? Are you big into brooches? or cats? or both!?!

my new colour obsession

So after sharing all my sculpting and painting projects to you for the last few weeks I wanted to take a moment to tell you about my new favourite (in fact - I feel quite obsessed with) paint colour I mixed. It is used on both of these necklaces below - any guesses on which beads I'm swooning for? 

 Actually, I'm not totally sure these pictures do it justice - but it is the "mustard-y slightly olive green sort of ugly in a cool way" colour! Check it out: 

Yay! It seems to keep popping up in loads of the mid century modern designed homes I love looking at and really like how even though it is sort of an odd duck of a colour, it is still nice and muted and neutral.  I'm not about to wear it head to toe by any means (it isn't the best for bringing out skin tone), but I'm loving using it in little doses to add some interest to my jewelry!

Speaking of obsessions and jewelry - I've finally finished sharing all the different necklaces I have made and found a nice group photo in my camera roll to show you:

I certainly didn't intend on making 23 different necklaces when I brought my craft supplies out, but inspiration hit so there you go! I thought it would make a nice conclusion to my sharing series with you and a nice conclusion to the week too! Happy Friday! 

Painted Wood Necklaces

After making my own polymer clay beads into necklaces I decided I wanted to make take a stab at making just wood bead necklaces as well!  I got a few different shaped wooden beads from my stash (I will have to show you my epically organized and enormous amount of craft supplies sometime), sand them up, and then paint them with my custom mixed paint colours.  I ended up making three different wood necklaces and this one from the tiny square beads is totally my favourite:

I really like the asymmetry and colour blocking I went with and even though sanding and painting all those tiny beads was super time consuming, it was lots of fun to make!

I then decided to try larger squareish wooden beads in a random colour selection. Check it out:

My pal Jim said this necklace reminded him of his mom...which I'm not entirely sure was a compliment or not - but I'm happy with how it turned out. I love the coral colour next to the neutrals and gold and think this piece could really add to all sorts of different outfits. It also contrasts amazingly well with teals and turquoise (which makes up 50% of my wardrobe) so that may explain my paint colour selection. 

The final all wood necklace I made is quite similar to the polymer clay and wood ones I showed you yesterday, it just took like 1/4 of the time to make.  I think it's pretty cute (and like the lighter cord colour with the wood) but miss the handmade texture and imperfect-ness of my sculpey beads. Here you can look and decide for yourself:

After making these three wood necklace projects I yet again appreciated how awesome it is to have my premixed custom colours in little pots (I don't seem to shut up about that do I?) and love trying out new ideas! I feel like the spring brings out all my creative juices.  Maybe that extra vitamin D fires up my brain cells - or maybe I've just been on medical leave from work for so long that I'm going stir crazy. Let's say its the vitamin D...

Matte Clay & Satin Wood

Here it is folks - my favourite Sculpey project I've made over the last month! It took way longer than I expected (which seems to be a trend with all my crafts), let me use my favourite custom mixed paint colours, and let me stretch those creative juices by making interesting combinations of wood, clay, and colour. Check them out - lovingly handmade polymer clay bead (with a touch of wood) necklaces:

Aren't they just dreamy? I am super thrilled with how they turned out and am impressed with how they came together despite my complete lack of planning on what size and colour beads to make. I went with a matte finish on the clay and a satin finish on the wood beads for a bit of interest and contrast. I think it helps show the texture and imperfection of the clay to give it that one of a kind handmade and lovingly crafted look. Once again I turned to good old organic waxed cotton cord to string them and tied adjustable slide knots so you can easily adjust the length of the necklace. Here is a shot of the necklace I've been wearing non stop: 

I really like how you can dress it up or down and how it reminds me of the neat statement necklaces Lisa Congdon is always wearing (she's my internet artist hero - so obviously I want to be just like her).  Once again I went slightly overboard on the making and ended up with a whole collection of clay and wood necklaces that are all a little bit different:

I alternating the number of beads, the colours, and the proportion of clay to wood with each necklace I made and kept falling in love with each one when it was finished! I'm planning on shipping these beauties off to Funktional in Kelowna (minus the one I showed you that I've been wearing) but totally want to make more soon! I figure if I can make them thinner than 2 cm in an envelope they would be great to sell online too! (FYI: parcels over 2 cm in thickness cost an arm and a leg to ship from Canada and usually deter people from online buying from me). Yay!

So what are your thoughts? Do you have a favourite? Are you going out to buy a giant block of Sculpey clay so you can get making too?

Earring time

The next polymer clay craft I have to share with you is 100% inspired by me wanting to wear my custom acrylic colour pot colours (link).  What better way to add a tiny touch of your favourite colour to any outfit than with some nice stud earrings! Ok...so there are probably lots of ways to incorporate colour to an outfit that doesn't involve your ear lobes, but I am a sucker for simple studs. Check out my Sculpey earring creations:

How fun! At first I was having trouble getting two little flat circles to be the same size until I started just making a tiny ball of clay and then cutting it in half to get two equal sized portions. These are totally everyday earrings for me and am super stoked with how they turned out. Here's a hand shot for size reference:

I also decided to do some with matte varnish and some with satin so you get a different look depending on what you're going for. And on a related note - these are incredibly sturdy little earrings. How do I know this you may ask? Well I accidentally stepped on a pair which seemed on par with stepping on a lego piece (there may have been cursing involved) and the earrings remained perfectly intact! I take product testing to a whole new level apparently...

sort of flat clay beads

Well I may have finished sharing my Sculpey pendant necklaces I made, but I made some other polymer clay necklaces too - this time with handmade beads! It seemed like a natural transition from pendant charms to beads and although these flat beads are far from perfect, I am totally digging the imperfection of them. Take a peek:

Hooray! Colour blocked and stacked bead necklaces! Once again I used some waxed cotton cord to string these onto and tied them with adjustable slip knots so they can be different lengths super easily!  I did learn one lesson quite quickly once I finished sanding, painting, and varnishing them...I didn't make the bead holes big enough and ended up having to bead ream the heck out of them to get them threaded on my strong! Oy! I will know better for next time.  Here's another close up so you can see their wobbly perfection:

Yay! I love them! They were insanely time consuming to make so I only ended up with the two of them - but that just makes me love them even more! Any thoughts? Have you ever made clay beads before?

Polymer Clay Pendants - playing with Studio Ghibli

Well we've made it to the end of the work week and here are the final Sculpey painted pendants I made into necklaces! I've been on quite the Studio Ghibli binge lately so I painted these little dudes with soot sprites and Totoro! Take a peek:

Aww! Aren't they darling? I also decided to use different coloured cord for these pals since my go to light brown seemed like too much of a contrast. Once again I took these pictures before my new grey organic waxed cotton came in so I will be switching out Totoro's cord for the waxed smoother version. Oooo I'm just thrilled with how these turned out and am such a sucker for cuteness! 

In case you missed out on any of the polymer clay fun I've been sharing this week here is picture of all the pendants I made:

Oh my! Apparently I don't like just making one of a project and ended up with eleven different necklaces in the end. What do you think of them? Any suggestions for pricing? Which are your faves? Happy Friday!

Polymer Clay Pendants - playing with dots and lines

Ok, so these necklaces are pretty darned similar but I really had a fun time painting the little lines with my new tiny paintbrush (thanks for the recommendation Lisa!) and making more dots! Check them out:

Yay! They sort of remind me of the fun mid-century modern patterns they used all those years ago and I love how the layers of dots turned out. I also decided to use different colours of cord to string these ones together and thanks to a lovely package I received the other day I can now switch out the grey bamboo cord I used for grey organic waxed cotton (which sits better and feels smoother on your skin)! Hooray! What do you think? 

Polymer Clay Pendants - playing with triangles

Today I am sharing two of my very favourite Sculpey painted necklaces I made. I feel like triangles are all the rage these days so I played around with these three sided wonders to come up with these:

The small triangle mustard/dark teal/white one was actually the first pendant I painted and probably took the longest with all those tiny lines.  I feel like with all that effort I need to keep that necklace to enjoy, but in all honestly I sort of love them all so it's hard to pick any one favourite over another. What do you think? Enjoying my week of pendants so far? Do you have a favourite?

Polymer Clay Pendants - playing with dots

My week of sharing my polymer clay pendants continues with two more designs I made where I played with painting little dots. Check them out:

My mom really said she loves the pink and red and gold chevron dot one and my pal Jim thinks the light blue and teal one is his favourite and looks a lot like an egg (which in hindsight I totally agree with even if that wasn't my original plan)! The dots were super difficult to paint on at first but after lots of practice it was super fun! I used lots of different sized toothpicks and dowels and scoring tools to make the dots and by the end I felt I mastered it. 

In other (very much related) news, Wild Olive did a polymer clay raindrop pendant on her blog a few days ago (link)  that shows the same steps I used (more or less) to make mine! Great crafty minds think alike! 

Polymer Clay Pendants - playing with lines

As usual, I had good intentions to get lots of blog posts done for last week and then somehow ran out of time and didn't write a single one.  Instead I took the lovely (sarcasm - I got so sick) 10 hour drive with my parents up to Telkwa/Smithers for a surprise visit with my sister and my adorable little nieces!  I guess I was so busy playing with my favourite 2 and 4 year olds that blogging got thrown on the back burner. I did however have a whole week's worth of scupley pendant necklaces to show you so I will share them this week instead!

These necklaces were super fun to make and I really enjoyed using the custom paints I mixed up in little pots (link) as my go to colour palette!  The painting ended up being the longest and most time consuming step - but making the pendants themselves was pretty simple. Here's my process:

1) Sculpt some pendant shapes from polymer clay (My personal fave is Sculpey) and make sure to make a hole in there so you can attach it to the necklace later

2) Bake said clay according to the package instructions

3) Let them cool and give them a light sand to remove any lumps or fingerprints

4) Paint them up with acrylics and when you're satisfied with your creation - cover it with a coat of varnish. I voted for matte varnish for these guys. Let dry and cure for 24 hours or so.

5) Attach a jump ring through the hole you made

6) Add a necklace string! I went with a waxed cotton cord for these ones and tied them with an adjustable slip knot fastener so you can easily adjust how long you want your necklace to tie.

7) Enjoy! Hooray!

Here are the first few I have to show you (part of my "playing with lines" series):

Yay! I am such a fan of lines and blocks of colours and like the geometric feel of these beauties and can imagine wearing each of them to top off many outfits.  I however do not plan on keeping the plethora of necklaces I made and instead will list them in my etsy shop which I (really really) hope I can get organized enough to open up again soon - but I might be tempted to keep a few.  Which is your favourite? Any ideas on pricing? 

Katie Makes

Mollie Makes (link) magazine is awesome.  It is jam packed with fun sewing, knitting, crocheting, weaving, and thrifty upcycling projects that you totally want to make and has the dreamiest colourful pictures to swoon over on each page.  Seriously though - how many magazines out there always have projects you want to make in them? In my experience - very few. Sure I love the projects in my subscription to Bust magazine, but Mollie Makes is dedicated to craftiness so there are loads of fun ideas in there! Like most magazines I fall in love with, it's from the UK.  Those Brits certainly know how to win me over with publications but torment me with their lack of availability in Canada and when you do manage to get your hands on a copy it is usually outdated by a season. (Note: they did have a US version of the magazine for a while but it was pretty lack lustre in comparison and I think it may be gone now since I haven't seen one in ages?).

Well! Availability is no longer a problem for me since I decided at xmas to subscribe! I still get them a good 3 weeks after they are released over the pond, but it was totally worth it (plus mail! yay!). Another amazing perk of this fabulous magazine? They come with little projects packages too! Here was my most recent bonus craft kit:

Looks amazing right? I tore straight into this mini project and am thrilled with my sweet new accessories! Check them out:

Yay! I ended up supplementing the kit with some of my favourite embroidery floss colours and surprisingly broke three needles when making these. Seriously? I never break needles. It must have been all that enthusiasm I was pouring into making these babies! 

I made the pendant in a chevron pattern that wasn't actually in their "18 designs to chose from" but was super simple.  I added the dark teal and grey thread from my stash and when I finished and glued the back extra strings down I whipped out some dark turquoise paint to finish off the edges! For the brooch I went with a neat flower design they included the pattern for.  I used my own coral coloured floss because I am apparently supremely particular about my colour selections and finished it off with some coloured pencil petals and chartreuse painted edges! Oooo! Take a peek at those details:

Yaaayyy!!! Issue 51 of Mollie Makes is clearly a big winner and I even have a few more projects up my sleeve from this magazine too! Oh my! What do you think of my cross stitch creations? Are there any other magazines that will make my crafty life more fantastic I haven't heard of? Are you totally going to go buy this magazine now? I hope so!

a dabble in jewelry repair

Last Easter I went to the island with my best pal Lindsay and we had a fantastic time soaking up all the Victoria loveliness (that I miss SO much since I've moved back to the semi-arid interior)! It turned out that there was a vintage fair going on that weekend in Sidney and I was extra excited to take Lindsay to one of my favourite events! I love checking out vintage goodies and it's even nicer when they are all hand-picked and sifted through so you aren't searching through piles of garbage! Yay! I picked up a few goodies including some vintage accessories and a bizarre triangular milk glass casserole dish (not pyrex - but too cute to leave behind).  I always flock towards the super deals and picked up a few items for a dollar or two a piece. When you're shelling out so little for these goodies they often need a little love - and this super quirky necklace was no exception.  It was missing a few of the coloured balls but I loved the crazy colour combination and shape so much that I figured I could fix it! It may have taken me almost a year to get to - but now all the bits are in tact and this pendant is ready to add to my outfits! Take a peek:

Ok, so if you look at it really close it's pretty obvious which balls I replaced - but here is a before picture for reference:

I felt like the missing pieces weren't SUPER obvious and I would wear the necklace regardless of its "not quite all there" character (because I can relate to that quite often).  Here's another look at the three circles that were missing: 

and the fixed pendant once more:

Hooray! It was a pretty simple fix all in all. Fraser made me teeny tiny little balls with some of his war hammer sculpting clay and then I painted them to match.  After they dried I just had to glue those babies in and bam! Perfect! Jewelry repair a success! What do you think? Do you ever buy things you plan to fix? How long does it take you to get around to them? 

The best news for polymer clay users!

I'm a big fan of making things out of polymer clay. It's super fun to stretch those creative muscles and take a stab at sculpting shapes and creatures from clay! I'm partial to using Sculpey brand polymer clay because it doesn't dry our or get all crumbly if you leave it out and only gets rock hard after baking. It's also a great base to paint on and is super durable once its cooked.  I decided to whip out my box of Sculpey this past weekend and attempt to make a few projects I have been thinking about for quite some time! As always, my craft projects always seem to take way longer than I think they will (so I'm nowhere close to finishing them and sharing) but here are some of my past polymer clay projects I've made: 

1) Geometric pendants and rings!

2) Albi the racist dragon magnet set (including badly burnt albanian boy and jelly bean) for any FOTC fans out there!

3) Love robot charms! Back when people hung things off their cell phones...

What a lovely little trip down past craftiness memory lane! Now - what is this big news I was hinting at from my blog post title? WELL! If you've ever spent ages playing with clay you quickly come to realize that it is incredibly hard to get off your hands. Friday night I made a bunch of little white Sculpey balls and with all that rolling the palms of my hands were coated with a nice layer of clay.  When I finished baking my creations and went to wash up with soap when I remembered how much scrubbing it takes to get that layer off. I whipped out the gardening nail brush scrubber and ended up getting the clay off after 5 minutes of elbow grease.  The next morning I decided to search Pinterest to see if they had any fun polymer clay projects I may want to try with my remaining Sculpey and found a life changing tip - hand sanitizer dissolves clay for quick and easy hand clean up! AH! MY SAVIOUR : 

My polymer clay cleaning days are forever revolutionized! A little squirt of this stuff and that pesky layer of mess on your hands rubs right off with no scrubbing involved! Oh! I'm still ecstatic about this discovery and thought I better share it with all of you! Hooray for clean hands! What a wonderful world we live in! 

pusheen!

I've been a fan of Pusheen the cat for quite some time.  He's everything I love - adorable, a cat, chubs, and full of personality! If you haven't browsed through his blog I definitely recommend it (link) when you're craving some cute gifs. 

Fraser also happens to be a Pusheen fan so this past xmas I decided to make him his own version of our favourite little grey and black pal in crochet form! Isn't he a cutie?

Oh Pusheen! He melts my heart every time I see him and I can just imagine all the cat-like hijinks he gets into when we aren't home (most of which probably involve binge eating). 

He was pretty quick to whip up and probably would have only taken one evening if I wasn't trying to make him behind Fraser's back and not spoil the surprise. I got the pattern here (link) and since I'm quite proficient in amigurumi, found it super simple to follow along. The only change I made was using slightly larger safety eyes than the ones recommended. I am super thrilled with how he turned out and he is now enjoying his new home on our radio in the living room! Hooray! Are you a loyal Pusheen follower too?