Week 39: Shooting Gallery

Sorry to be short this week, but work is exploding all over the place!  I kept the bullet theme going from last week as I still had some designs rattling around in my head, and well... here they are!

Shot gun shell pendant!  I had a fun time sawing off the plastic part of the shell to get just the cool "top" piece.  There's got to be a better way to do that, but so far the internet has been no help.  : )

Crystal tipped bullet earrings with sheet music.  I'm so glad I got this cool sheet music tape from Michael's!  It's a Tim Holtz product, and it fits these bullet casings perfectly!  If it takes color well, it'll be the perfect accent, and I can guarantee that I'll have a rainbow of these earrings in no time.

Bullet flower pendant on leather!  This bad boy was actually harder to make than I thought it would be.  My tin snips cut the casing just fine, but cutting it did harden the metal significantly   rolling up the ends by hand was a challenge.  Maybe if I ever get around to getting a micro torch I could anneal it, because I really like this design and want to play with it some more but my hands really don't like it at all.

Two, that's right TWO crystal points in a wire wrapped bullet.  Could i be any happier?  Plus I'm excited about the raw crystal accents on the necklace itself.  I rely an awful lot on chain to present a finished pendant, and it's nice when I have a cohesive idea for a full necklace.

Triple bullet wire wrapped pendant.  I wonder which one is jut right?

Bullet casing with stone and bead fringe.  I really had fun making this; putting together the "dangles" let me go through a lot of beads to find the right colors and textures I wanted, and who doesn't love that?

And finally, another "bullet tip" pendant.  I''m so happy I saved the bits I cut off with my pipe cutter.  Just goes to prove that crafting is great for justifying my hoarding instincts!

Well, I'm out of bullet ideas but certainly not bullets; I haven't even made a dent in the five gallon bucket I was gifted awhile back.  But unless I can come up with some relatively unique ideas in the next few days, i think this round of bullet crafting has run its course.  Thanks for stopping by, and I'll catch you next week!

Week 38: Bullets Galore!

This month is set to be the most challenging month so far in keeping to my 7 things a week plan.  January is by far the busiest month at work and it's going to take up a lot of time and energy.  So I'm going to try to stick to doing projects that I really, really love as an incentive to get though this month while still keeping my goals, my job, and my sanity.  Well, ok.  I lost that last one awhile ago but you can't blame a lady for trying!  : )  And do you know what I really love?  Bullet jewelry!  And excitingly, I had the though a few days ago that I could probably cut down the bullets I have with my pipe cutter (thanks Lowes!) which would give me more design options.

These tassels came off the ends of a very pretty strand of iolite that I ordered from Fire Mountain.  They were too pretty to throw away!  Once I looked at them I realized that the ends would fit into the smallest of my bullet casings, so of course that had to happen right away!  I love the way they look, but they are super tickley to wear!

Bullet Chakra necklace!  The lighting wasn't ideal for photo taking, so you can't really see the colors well.  I used red tiger eye, orange quartz, yellow tiger eye, adventurine, stabilized turquoise, lapis, and amethyst to create the "rainbow".

I saved the tips that I cut off some of the bullets, thinking I could use them and this is what I came up with!  I don't know that you can really tell it was ever a part of a bullet to begin with, but that's kind of the point.  Plus, chain fringe makes everything better.

Bullet casing and raw amethyst "cascade" style necklace.  Lots of little bullets with one big honkin' bullet at the end.  I'm super fond of this piece.  I think the gold and the purple look very nice together.

Another cut-off bullet tip repurposed to be a kind of bead cap.  The way the round beads fit into the ends made me really happy.  It's a neat little pendant, and it may have to come live in my jewelry closet.  That's right; not box, closet.  : )

Glass heart with crystal tipped bullet accent.  'Nuff said.

And here is the most time-consuming project of the week!  I  treated the bullet casing and all the brass leaves with alcohol inks to add some color, then sealed it with nail polish   (I find that alcohol ink on metal can be tacky to the touch if left unfinished).  I've always loved beetle wing jewelry, but I've been too poor to afford any so this is the next best thing!

I think to keep the momentum going I'll do bullets again next week, which I think will officially make bullets the most used theme of the year.  Congrats bullets, for being an awesome jewelry component.

Week 3: Bang Bang

It appears that I'm having weekly themes!  My lovely little sister gave me a whole bucket full of spent shells from her husband's latest foray to the shooting range.  They hung out for quite some time before I got around to doing anything with them.  Thanks to the blog I thought I could figure out at least seven different things to do with shell casings.  That turned out to be not quite true.  I managed to execute six different designs for the bullets, but I was lacking a seventh.  My seventh object was a washer that I wanted to turn into a pendant.  Because with most of the bullets I had decided to solder jump rings to the top, I used it to add a jump ring to a washer, and then decorated it.

The world's most amateur attempt at a solder join.

The finished washer pendant with chain

 I am pretty happy with the washer pendant overall, as long as I don't look at the back too long.  I'm much happier with the bullet projects.  They are all pendants waiting to be officially made into necklaces, except the lucky two that actually got hung on a chain.  I'm pretty happy with the results.  overall I consider this week a success, but I'm a little worried about keeping up this accidental weekly theme thing.  :)  Still, here are the finished bullet pendants.  See you next week!

Bullet with butterfly wings.  I'm so from the 90s.

I added origami paper, a bent brass finding, and some chain to this bad boy.  I think this one is my favorite.

I "re-tipped" this bullet with a an amethyst bead from my stash.  The casing is also "engraved" (aka I slipped while drilling holes and decided to drag the drill all over the casing to make squiggles to hide it.)

This one got wrapped in text printed tissue paper and tipped with a quartz crystal point.  I then "antiqued" the paper by running a heat tool over the paper to add the dark edges.

This bullet was treated with an ammonia fume and salt treatment to turn it from its original brass finish to this really cool mottled blue.  I added a red tiger eye tip before I gave it the patina treatment as I was worried trying to "smoosh" the end of the bullet around the bead would mar the blue finish.