Gussied up monogrammed bath towels and embroidered kitchen towels – bead stash bustin’

A few birthdays ago, my hubby gave me a 4-1 Futura Singer Sewing Machine. That contraption can kick a** and I haven’t even learned half of what it is capable of doing. I just bought some bathroom towels on sale at Big Lots. $5/bath towels and $4/hand towel minus 20% off! As Chandler from Friends would say, “Whoop pah!” I also bought four kitchen towels at Walmart for $1.48 each! Another WHOOP PAH! To give them just a touch of pizzazz, I embroidered them on my sewing machine.

I’ve been seeing a lot of those Live, Laugh, Love quotes all over Pinterest. Since I had that fourth towel, I added “Eat a lot”. I figured, intuitively, we would all like to “Live well, laugh often, and love much”, right? Well, let’s “EAT a lot”! In retrospect, “LEARN” something or to that effect going with the “L” theme might’ve worked, too. Next time.

The “LIVE” towel is slightly discolored because I used it! It was a little wet. Crafts that are functional. What a concept!

I added little beaded embellishments because that’s what I have lying around…haphazardly. Decided that these beaded dealies needed to be bracelet length so they can pull double duty.

Let’s make these beaded bracelets!

DIY Shrinky Dink Pendant – Pin Recreation #3

Several weeks ago, I created a pin board on Pinterest entitled “Pin it, Wear it” for a contest Favecrafts was hosting. I then challenged myself to re-create everything I pinned on to that board. I’ve deduced that I have some lofty goals, now that I’ve taken the time to review them. I’m a bit nervous.

So, you can just imagine when I picked this project, I thought this one was going to be ridiculously easy. And it is…once I found the right materials. Let me back up for a moment. For those of you who don’t know, a shrinky dink  is a piece of plastic that is decorated and then baked in an oven to which the plastic ends up being approximately 1/3 its original size and 9 times thicker. Mind boggling, I know. It’s amazing. I love it. It was invented sometime in the 70s.

I wanted this to be a truly upcycled project. I didn’t want to go buy a Shrinky Dink kit, or go to a bulk store and buy containers. I wanted to find a container that would’ve been thrown away. After weeks of looking at the bottom of every plastic container I had, I finally found one!

At the bakery section of Ralphs, the pumkin chocolate chip cookies container had #6 on it! Cookies and a shrink medium. We won twice that day!

Let’s shrink the dink!

More salt dough earrings!

There’s something so immensely satisfying about finishing a project (or two) and completing the “must do today” on the endless “to do” list within a day! (Wait, what?)

In other words, I did some billing (for our business), folded laundry, AND made some jewelry!

I made these earrings using the same recipe/proportions for my salt dough heart earrings.

Before punching out the round shapes, I stamped the rolled dough using a slow drying pigment and a foliage relief stamp. I made sure I rolled the dough thinner this time.

Then I poked holes opposite ends of each other and placed them in the oven at the lowest setting (mine is 170) flipping them over every 30 minutes or so. It took about 2 hours.

I then took a nail file to it to smooth out the edges and slathered a layer of Mod Podge on both sides.

I added the fish hook findings and some up-cycled pearls to dangle. I love how they turned out! I will try it with some blue ink (maybe a cobalt blue color) to try to give it a porcelain effect. I’ve been making a lot of earrings lately, so maybe a bracelet next time. I’m not sure how sturdy those would be though. This project costs next to nothing so it’s definitely worth a shot!

Pip pip! Cheerio!

Salt dough jewelry – Valentine earrings!

 Judging from my previous posts, I’m in love with Valentine’s! Or is it that I’m in love with the idea of being in love?

I’ve seen a ton of salt dough ornaments on Pinterest at Christmas time. The recipes to make them call for a lot of flour and salt. I’ll be sure to make some of those the next yuletide season. I have visions that every gift given from this household will have a precious salt dough ornament tag attached to it.

Since I only want to make a few  beads, I have a reduced the batch size significantly.

Let’s make these earrings!

Heart shaped crocheted wire earrings

Now that all the holiday stuff is put away and the shelves at Michael’s are picked clean of all the good Christmas stuff…who really wants the bent antlers attached to the Santa hat, even if it is 80% off? I’ve been feeling a yearning for the next holiday, Valentine’s Day! I know I would be remiss if I didn’t acknowledge Martin Luther King, Jr. day, Ground Hog Day or Superbowl Sunday (which isn’t really a holiday! What?! Gasp!) But I just don’t have earrings to go with those days…yet. Until then, let’s make these earrings!

Memory Wire Hoop Earrings – Pin recreation #1

Favecrafts is having a “pinning and winning” contest through January 13. Like I need a contest to pin. Pshaw! The gist is to create a board, pin, hashtag them, and then you might win some crafty crap.

Being the overachiever (ahem) that I am, I thought I would take my pins to another level and actually make the things I’ve pinned. In other words, I will “pinduce” (pin + produce = pinduce).

I challenged myself  to recreate the 10 items I pinned.

Here is pinduction #1! Here is the inspiration pin along with instructions if you want to make them yourself.

Not too shabby! I used all materials that I already had. All the beads were upcycled from other costume jewelry that was given to me by a friend. These were made in less than an hour.

Some thoughts on this project: