Button Crafty

Been crafty with buttons. New earrings being made :)

Custom Health and Mana

So I produced a custom key-ring with 2 bottles filled with blue/red liquid and 'Health' and 'Mana' handwritten labels on them.

Here are some images from my making of them :)

Practise writing for the labels, done by hand and as small as I could, decided to use the slightly off white coloured paper as the white looked a little 'stark' and 'abrasive'

Bottles, Corks, Super Glue and syringe at the ready, You have to use a syringe to fill the bottles and you have to stick the yringe right in the bottle..as the neck is so narrow if you try and drip liquid in the drip of water just form a perfect seal on the top of the mini-bottle

Bottles filled and I settled on having ink in them, tried with water and food colouring but the food colouring wouldn't stay mixed and just ends up settling on the bottom - looked rubbish. The red ink is just pure red ink, It had a nice translucency about it, but the blue ink looked really dark on its own - almost black, so the blue is part diluted with water to give a nice colour.

Using a candle I (cautiously) burnt the edges of the labels...with great care trying not to incinerate the entire label! Hard when they are so small!

Cork's in the bottles, a tiny dot of superglue on the cork to hold it in with just that little bit more confidence, Black string and key-ring attached and all that was left was to label the bottles

 

And the finished product, please note the great photography (Not my work!) Photograph taken by the buyer who I am pleased to say seemed to like the finished product! And also who's photography skills greatly out-weigh my slap-dash "click as I work" images :)

A quick note...

So I'm still at work at my day job, here till 6 then the weekend begins! Just a quick note to say 'Donna's Day' at work went great, I gather the jewellery I donated sold, there were cakes, quizzes, auctions, raffles, prizes and all level of goodies :) and lots of money raised by all! A good outcome I feel :)

My Inner Geek

I will be completely honest, this project was initially a purely selfish one. I am a MASSIVE Zelda fan (I would go so far as saying closet geek) ...except without the 'closet' part as I shamelessly flaunt a triforce tattoo on my left arm. I fell so deeply and madly in love with the Nintendo 64 version of Ocarina of time, I literally played it to death in my early/mid teens and to this day the music and blocky 64 bit graphics (Which back then were the most amazing 3D I'd ever seen) can en-trance me for hours, days and night.

As a Zelda fan I would go mad for all Zelda merchandise, endlessly trawling ebay for t-shirts and such. So I decided with my new found interest in cabochon jewellery I would simply make myself some Zelda inspired goodie to wear!

I've gone for the obvious to start...the triforce symbol which is perfect to squeeze into a little cabochon. I got me some high res images and, once I resized them to the same size as the cabochons, printed the images with my laptop and printer set to all the highest quality settings and onto glossy photo paper.

 

Then a simple bit of super glue on the glass cabochons, let them dry, cut them out and set into my cabochon settings with a tiny dot more glue.

I bought these base units from a seller on http://en.dawanda.com/ there are loads of HK sellers with great quality and value supplies for jewellery and crafts - which I highly recommend for anyone after supplies, just make sure you plan in advance as postage from HK take 2-4 weeks (no good if you're in a rush!) These base units are great, the earring studs come with the ear-posts fully welded into place so you don't have to worry about using 'super-strength' glues like Araldite to hold the posts in place, and I've found basic super glues seem to work well to hole the cabochon in place - which doesn't experience anywhere near as much tugging and pulling as the ear-post will.

The earrings are ready to go and the necklace's only need a length of chain and a clasp attaching. I love making these, and ended up making one of each for myself then more to sell on my dawanda page!

Available now from my DaWanda - http://en.dawanda.com/shop/MissDragonfly

A small donation

So my day job in a call centre are hold a charity day this Friday called 'Donna's Day'. Donna worked in the call centre, and at the age of just 26 suffered a stroke. We are looking to raise money for Donna and make people more aware of stroke victims and how to spot the signs early.

I have made and donated free of charge some limited edition beaded pieces to sell for Donna's day, 100% of what is made from sales goes straight to the cause.

Here are a few pics of me setting up the stuff for sale and also images of the items which I have donated.


Setting up:

Making me a sign
 

Sign is ready to go...

Some business cards if people would like one...

 

5 Handmade Bracelets for donation:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And 10 pairs of earrings...

 

 

 

 

 

 

And we're ready to go :)

New Items in my shop :)

Pow! I am back, after months and months of silence I am back into the flow, making and selling my Jewellery from my previously mentioned DaWanda platform.

I have been a busy bunny, having seen The Hobbit movie I got all enthusiastic to make some Hobbit/LOTR inspired pieces, I have also been itching to try out some 'Glass Cabochon' based work - and so decided to combine the two.

Simple process, finding and developing an image with high enough definition to be visible through the glass cabochons, I foolishly though 12mm cabochon would be more than big enough but it turned out they are actually quite small and finding a sharp enough image to place behind them proved to be some-what tricky!

 

Having developed the image and printing off on high quality photo paper (with my pc and printer settings all set to as high as possible) all that was left to do was to select the images, lots of very fun sticking and cutting then to glue them into the antique bronze effect earring flat back studs.

On reflection 12mm is quite small - however larger than this as earrings would possibly be too large, however I may invest in larger cabochon (Maybe 20mm) to make some necklace pendants - I feel these will be less 'fiddly' to work with.