She Sells Sea Shells By The Seashore
Or “She Collects Sea Shells By the Seashore” might be more accurate….
I act like such a benny when I go to the beach, and must take one good trip up and down the shoreline collecting shells. What I’ll ever do with the amount of shells, I’ll never know.
Today, I did put three shells to good use. I had three white shells with natural holes in the top of them. I also had a bag of “beads” (I quote them because they’re not beads of sorts, but flat shell-like pieces with holes in them) that fit within the shell. Add a jump ring or two, and you have an instant necklace! I made three – the brown/teal one is mine, the pink/purple one is my mom’s and the yellow/lime one is my sisters.
Here’s the backside – I suppose you could wear it either way – showing the shell side or showing the beaded side.
And on this one, you can see the hole
I heart engineering purse
Finally! Summer is here for real! (and it’s what? July 22nd?) My vacations are over (sniff sniff), my class is over (hurray!) and now I can craft.
First up – a purse for my sister, a college engineering major, who’s turning 21 next month. The square root of negative 1 is “I” (for infinate number or something like that….), hence the “I love engineering” pocket on the front.
I machine embroidered the word “engineering” and my mom hand embroidered the square root sign and the heart. (ignore the color of the fabric here – it’s much greener)
We got the fabric in Lancaster, PA last year. Lime green is my sister’s favorite color (she even custom painted her Jeep to match!), and as soon as we saw this fabric, we knew it had to be made into a bag for her (too bad it took over a year…..)
And then we lined it with an even more hideous green floral print fabric.
And a few more random shots of the bag
Disney Glass
Obviously, at some point, I’m going to combine my love of Disney with my love of glass.
And this is what you get….
Glass: part 982…..
well….not really, but it feels like I have over 900 posts about glass.
Here is an update from the past month or so….I’m not putting it all up (that would take forever!), but rather just a sampling of my favorites.
One of my newest favorites—a pineapple! It is handpanted with special fuse-safe paint.
I don’t usually go with this many layers on my pieces because they tend to get messed up, but this one came out nearly perfectly!
Another one where I used many layers—and actually had it come out nice. (Trust me—for every one “nice” one on here, there’s at least 4 or 5 more that didn’t come out as nicely. It’s very trial and error)
I love this one—I lined up a bunch of “noodles” (very skinny rods of glass) next to each other.
Sushi!
This one is my mom’s—-but it’s so cool, I had to post it
Another dichroic one—I tried to make it look like it was woven
A few from our “flip flop” series:
One of the most complicated ones I’ve ever made…..a Rock Band Guitar
Simple long one:
Very traffic light-esq
I almost can’t wait for fall to wear this one! I handpanted the tree onto a piece of dichroic glass.
Flowery
A Wii-mote—-hahaha
Lots of colors:
And last but not least—a strawberry
Easter Eggs
I’m attempting to catch up—although I haven’t done much of my usual crafting lately, I have a little bit to post.
I’m going to back up to Easter. For years, my family has always made our version of Ukranian Pysanky Eggs. I say “our version” because traditional Pysanky Eggs take years of practice to master, and hours of work per egg. In comparison, we take about an hour an egg, but we still follow the same traditional practice of using hot wax and a special tool to apply it with.
This year, my boyfriend’s mother and aunts wanted to try to create their own Pysanky Eggs, so we had a party the week before Easter and all made eggs.
The first four pictures are my attempt at traditional Eggs, and the last few are our more modern take on Pysanky.
This one is a traditional Pysanky design. It took me around two hours to finish.
And a side view of it
This one is also a traditional design, I just don’t really like how the colors came out
And this is a non-traditional design—it’s a tiki man!
And the more modern eggs
Happy Dr. Seuss Day
So it’s a month late…..
I made some Cat In the Hat hat’s for some teachers, and couldn’t resist turning my sisters cat into the real Cat in the Hat….I’m still surprised she stayed still that long…
And for good measure….here’s the actual hat. No pattern—I just wung it.
And….on Read Across America Day, we celebrated with a snowstorm. Mother Nature dumped over a foot of snow (something I haven’t seen since I was in Middle School in the mid-90’s.) I consider photography a form of art, so here’s some pictures I took with my DSLR.
Snowfall: March 2nd
I loved how the snow stood on the fence posts like little soldiers….
I went for a walk in the woods
Pretty trees
I found this in the woods. How an icicle formed sticking out in the air is beyond me….
I loved how the holly leaves formed little “cups” of ice
A lone berry
This is the icicles outside my bedroom window
Happy Valentines Day
Project gone wrong—-but it still made for a cool picture.
Yup. That’s a fork.
Check back to see if I actually make the object pictured in my head using that fork…..
More glass!
I may never get tired of showing off my glass!
Heres the three most recent!
Before and after. The little pieces are “beads” that my mom and I are so into. You stick scraps into the kiln and they form perfect little balls—to be used later!
Another set
And a third set. With this set, we started to branch out and used copper wire in some of the pieces.
A pretty kick-butt Starbucks Frappachino Bottle:
And without further adu—-the close ups of my favorites:
I’m in love love love with this one
And a very similar one, but with different colors
I used 2 pieces of blue to get that deep sea blue. I love how the frit combined with the blue makes it look like the shoreline
Retro TV!
The whole reason for making the glass beads—the steelers logo–in honor of the superbowl of course
Creamsicle
Pink-ness
Easy peasy striped ones:
A small but colorful piece
Happy Valentines Day!
Marbled Paper
Hurray for days off from school! I had a four day weekend this week (thank you Mr. Presidents) and I vowed to spend one of them crafting. I’ve gotten far away from crafting lately because I’m so busy with something else—-but I got in that sewing room today and didn’t come out until dinner!
I cleaned a corner of my sewing room, and came across a newspaper article that I had clipped exactly one year and one week ago. It was about someone who was giving a class for children on how to marble paper. I took that as a sign and immediately set out to do that today.
I didn’t come up with too much when I researched marbling on the internet, but I found a few tidbits of advice. I learned that you need liquid starch to “hold” the paint, and the paint has to be thinned with water and soap. Just how much water and soap was a nice long experimental period this afternoon—but that’s ok—it’s half the fun!
Here’s my supplies before I began. Liquid starch found at shop rite and dish soap/pan found at dollar store. Everything else (acrylic paint, straws, newspaper, cardstock, paint tray) found at home.
I mixed up some paints. After an hour or so, I discovered that the less soap and more water the better. My concoctions were probably 90% water, 7% paint and 3% soap. At first I had 90% soap and 10% water—-didn’t really work.
Artsy shot of my paints:
Here’s the paint chilling on the surface
After the design looks the way you like it (thanks to the straw or toothpick), gently lower paper onto the surface, making sure that no bubbles get trapped underneith (they’ll just be white blobs on the surface)
Gently rinse the paper, and lay flat to dry. Viola—you have pretty paper!
Here’s some more:
Rewind to Christmas
So I’m a month late….
Better late then never!
I didn’t make too much this year in the way of Christmas presents. The two main things I made were Mickey Mouse Wreaths for my boyfriend’s relatives and a Rock Band/Guitar Hero guitar stand for my boyfriend.
Let’s start with the wreaths. There are 4 different Mickey wreaths—each with a different theme.
The silver one:
An artsy-fartsy shot of the silver one:
The red/green one:
The gold one:
And the burgundy one:
Now there’s the guitar stand. My boyfriend (and admittedly I) are obsessed with Rock Band and Guitar Hero. He owned 2 guitars at Christmas, but I knew he wanted a 3rd. His mother always complains that his guitars (and their wires) are always all over the floor, so I designed a stand to keep them off the floor, neat, and protected. I drew the plans, and my dad helped me assemble it. The base and main pole for the stand are octogonal, and 2 dowels were used for the arms. Four rubber 2inch hooks were added to hold the guitars and microphone. The whole thing was spray panted black when done.
The top:
And some “in use” shots:
All this talk about being obsessed with Rock Band reminded me that I also made us matching “band” shirts using the Rock Band logo. I’ll have to get some pictures of that and post them too. They’re pretty cool.
