Week 23: Halloween Time!

After a couple of successful weeks staying away from the Halloween crafts I've fallen back into old habits!  That's right; it's Halloween Week, the SEQUEL!  One thing I really like about Halloween-Themed crafting is that it gets me to work on accessory types I usually pass over.  This time it turned out to be hair accessories.  I love putting weird shit in my hair for Halloween.

Halloween Themed Bloody Book Page Hair Bow.

Neon Green Skeleton Hands Headband

I don't know why I keep insisting they're so Halloween-y.  I'm pretty much going to wear them all the time.  Especially to bowling, though don't ask me why.  It just seems right.  BOWLING OF THE UNDEAD!  I also whipped up these little goodies to round out my seven projects for the week:

Cute Bat Earrings Made Out of Buttons

MORE Cute Bat Earrings Made of Buttons (duplicate project, so doesn't count I just thought these were friggin' cute)

Franken-Heart Earrings.  I hand painted on the stitches myself.  : )

Black Widow Earrings.  One is going up, the other is going down.  Spiders everywhere!

Vampire Bite Choker.  Inspired by Lucy from the 1992 Dracula movie with Gary Oldman... I am from the 90s and my vampires DO NOT sparkle thankyouverymuch.

Shattered Soul in a Bottle Necklace

Back of the Shattered Soul in a Bottle Necklace.  I used broken windshield glass from my apartment complex parking lot.  Looks like there are some dark spots; somebody's soul needed to be laundered!

That's all the Halloween Crafting goodness I have planned for this week, but I'm sure as October gets closer and closer I'll keep churning out weirder and weirder stuff.  See you next week!  : )

Week 12: Fab Fabrics

This week I decided to work with a medium that I don't use nearly enough.  Both fabric and ribbon are versatile, cheap, and usually utterly ignored by me in my crafting endeavors.  While digging through my old goodwill finds box I pulled out a really pretty (yet irreparably stained) silk skirt that I've been meaning to turn into something else.  Then while cleaning I uncovered my sorely neglected ribbon stash.  That was what got this week started.  Anyway, on to the projects!

Nobody can loose their keys in their purse quite like I can.  So I made myself this ribbon key fob to help me identify my key ring in the vast depths of my purse.

Hairflower from remnants.

Bib necklace from old T-shirt.  This was super easy; I just cut the shirt around the rosettes, which happened to be at the neck of the shirt.  That meant I could run a thin cord through the seam and boom!  Five minute necklace.

Earrings made from lace remnants and old iron-on style denim patches.  I just cut four of the teardrop shapes, then used my trusty rolling mill to punch out the circles in the center.  I cut the lace to fit, then sandwiched it between the two layers of denim and ironed it.  The heat activated adhesive took care of binding all the elements together.  Hurray!

This choker is made from some funky yarn that was like a rolled up net.  It was nice to trot out my old friendship bracelet making skills on this project!

Fabric bead earrings!  Everybody is super into paper beads right now so I thought I would go ahead and try making some in the same style, but with some scrap fabric I had laying around.  I'm pretty pleased with the results!

And last but not least, the reincarnation of the silk skirt!  I cut strips off where there were seams, then wrapped those strips around some wooden bangles I've been meaning to do something with forever.  These are so totally not my style but I love them dearly anyway.

I'm super into using the denim iron on patches to make jewelry now.  It was so fun and super easy!  Thanks for looking, and I'll see you next week.

Week 11: Warm Leatherette

To help atone for last week's "gluing stuff to other stuff" crafting theme, I decided to pick up a medium I haven't used much before: Leather.  A couple of years ago I picked up some leather (and pleather!) skirts at Goodwill for practically nothing.  My intent was always to turn them into something, and thanks to this blog I actually got around to it!  Eventually.  I did also grab a bag of leather remnants from Joann's to help supplement my color supply; unsurprisingly the skirts I had gotten were all black except the one pleather snakeskin print skirt.

The other awesome thing about this week is it gave me a great opportunity to put my recently purchased Sizzix Big Kick to work.  One of the touted features that eventually led me to purchase a machine was that the dies could cut through fabric, as well as paper and card stock.  The other feature I was into was the embossing feature.  I managed to use both the cutting and the embossing functions while putting together this week's projects.  Woohoo!  I love gettin' my money's worth.  Anyway, on to the items!

Hair Flower!  I used a die to cut the different flowers.  Then I used fabric stiffener to make it hold its shape, and placed my very first rivet in the center to hold it all together.  I used Tsukineko chalk based inks to add the turquoise color. I ran the brown leather flowers through the embosser, but after the leather was pretty thin so you can't really tell.  Still, it does add a bit more texture to the overall piece so I'm not complaining.  : )

I liked the first hair flower I made so much that I made it some friends!  These were made of thinner leather/pleather, so  I sewed them together and added a bead to the center.  These are all glued to a felt backing, then glued to an alligator clip.  Because industrial strength is the only type of equipment that will stay in my hair!

Butterfly wing earrings.  These were also die cut.  I am really having a butterfly thing lately, and this is the first project I've tried that actually looked the way I wanted it to when finished.  Hurray!

Die cut circles that I ran through the embosser to give them texture.  I really like how these turned out and can't wait to emboss more stuff.  I see a lot of hand made leather components in my future!

Hand cut squares, linked together with super short Japanese 2 in 1 chains.  Punching all the holes in the little squares way more time than I thought it would but I'm pretty happy with the results.

Hand cut leather "feather" earrings.  These took FOR-EV-ER.  First I cut the shapes, then I "fringed" them, then i took super tiny slices out of the fringe cuts to give them a more raggedy look.  Without the extra cuts they looked pretty smooth and not feathery at all.

Steampunk has invaded everything!  These are die cut gears that I arranged and glued together using my trusty sidekick, FabriTac.  I then cut a two piece felt base, glued the gears to the top, glued the ribbon to the "back" of the top, and then glued the final layer on top of the ribbons to sandwich them in so their ends weren't exposed.  I wanted to do it with chain instead of a bib, but it didn't quite look right.  The background grey makes it look like a more cohesive piece.

And my favorite, the leather leaf.  I'm so stupid pleased with this necklace.  Only about 1 in every 20 projects turns out EXACTLY the way I imagined it in my head, and this is definitely one.  I embossed the die cut leaf and then ran it through an embossing folder.  I then used the same Tsukineko chalk inks from the hair flower to highlight the embossed area, and sealed it with an acrylic spray.  It was a little plain on it's own, and I had a hard time figuring out what to put with it to give it some extra flair.  Then I remembered that I had some amazing Labradorite that had "flash" similar to the ink color.  I wire wrapped three of them and threw them on the ring bail.  I think they work really well together!

So, yay leather!  I really and truly enjoyed my foray into this medium.  I've got about half a dozen more ideas in my journal for future leather projects, so expect another leather week sometime in the next 41 weeks.  Again, thanks for looking!

Week 5: Among Nature

The weekly theme continues!  this week I decided to work with materials that were either natural, or reflected nature.  This was a pretty fun theme as I got to play around with different styles and make a variety of object.  I feel like I've been kind of a "one trick a week" poodle-pony up until now.  Now, on to the variety!  See you next week.

Hair clips!  I found these cute burlap leaves and butterflies in the scrapbooking isle and knew I had to find a way to make them live on my head.

Necklace with bone and ceramic beads on cotton cording...

...and its friend: a necklace with wood and ceramic beads on cotton.  I'm counting this and its predecessor as one item.

Leaf earrings!  I love these little burlap leaves. I also added some wire "vines".  You can't see them too well on the beige pair, but they show on the green pair nicely.

Little silver leaves and fancy jasper makes for cute earrings, I think.

Necklace with copper and glass leaves with brass acorns.

Black bamboo sticks wire wrapped with copper

Wire wrapped leaf pendant in copper