I've had these little artwork pendants sitting around for a while now ~







With all of the pendants I've created, I've used most of the box of microscope slides and worn through about half of the soldering iron tip! I was planning on buying some replacement tips online, but went ahead and ordered the higher wattage iron I've been wanting to get.

When that arrives, I think I'm going to buckle down and actually make some ambigram pendants, which was the whole idea behind learning how to solder, but I seem to have been ignoring the idea. Honestly, I did attempt to make quite a few, but only two turned out. I used a full slide for several of the longer words, which is 1x3 inches. I ended up going over & over the long sides to smooth everything out, until I finally burnt the paper underneath.

Finished up this skirt yesterday & it is off to its new home ~





I love the purple & brown combination (with a touch of black). I had a few scraps in that color combination that have been sitting around for far too long & was so happy to use them in this project.

I am way too picky about editing my photos, especially getting the colors as accurate as possible. And so I spend way too long editing them and wear myself out! Does anyone else have this problem? But if I am going to be choosy about what colors I use when I make something, I want the pictures to represent those color choices. I so admire girls like My Paper Crane, who are able to get a new blog post together every day. (Being too wordy isn't helping me out either!)

I am working on a whole set of 'original art' pendants, decorated with tiny motifs (spirals, dots, vines, etc). I drew these with a silver paint pen on black cardstock, which looks great with the silver border, but even the fine point is too thick (and the fumes are horrible). I have two more to photo, but I don't think I'll be using the silver again.

2 more pendants ~ Describing the print of a fabric is always hard for me,
but both of these reminded me of exotic artwork.

This flower seemed to be inspired by India ~



And this design looks very Chinese to me,
probably because of the bright red & white coloring.
I got this pattern off of a recycled tissue box of all things! ~

I thought that I was over this cold, but then I ran out of Dayquil!
About all I could do yesterday was lay around & nap.
But here are a few things I had a chance to make the day before ~



I love that ".com" fabric, but only have a little left. Perfect for these little pendants/charms. The fabric has different fonts all over, so expect to see some more of these.



I have a few more finished, but haven't edited the pictures yet.
And a lot of 1" illustrations ready for soldering!

Did a little soldering last night, it's been a while!

Here is my first custom ambigram pendant. I don't even have them up on the (ambigram) site yet, but an older customer saw them on my blog! I'll take that as a good sign that they will be popular ;)



And another fabric pendant, just to have something new to add to Etsy. If I have time tonight I will try to make a few more, and add new ones every day or two. But that might have to wait until the weekend!



I do so love this paisley print. Two of the three pendants I've sold have been of this print, and I'm sad to say I think this is the last of it! It's funny, because the actual print just has clusters of the paisleys, and was not quite this pretty in its full form.

Each of these pendants feature a tiny original ink drawing of a letter.
They were so fun to work on, I plan on making many more!










And a few more letters for you...

"Baluyut" Ambigram

I forgot all about this little pendant ~



And my newest ambigram ~
These two names did not want to pair together. She had ordered the design on Etsy without asking beforehand if the names would pair together, and I almost wrote to her to say the only possible combination would be "James and Tina" (all on one line), but I don't think that is what she had in mind for her tattoo. I decided to give it one more try & go all-out decorative Old English to hide the extra lines, but I'm not sure how pleased I am with the results.

"James" & "Tina" Ambigram


Last night our friends John & Jessica came down from Tennessee for an Atlanta Braves game, and invited us to come. I am not a sports person, and was not too excited about going, but it is always fun to see them. The theme of the night was Elvis, and they had 2 flying Elvises parachute from a plane into the stadium. Right before landing, they dove down at such a high speed, I think everyone was sure they were going to crash, but they landed smoothly. It was really the highlight of the evening! (The braves did not do too well, so even the sports fans agreed that was the best part)

More excitement involved a sudden storm coming through, and blowing all of the empty cups, boxes & bags everywhere, and all over the field. Lightning, freezing rain, and a short rain delay. A few broken bats, a few fireworks... that pretty much sums up my first baseball game.

Woohoo! Yesterday my first glass pendant sold on Etsy.
I was hoping they would do a little better, especially at the $5 price,
but you have to start somewhere. And I have many, many ideas for them!

One such idea ~ ambigram pendants!


This was the reason I wanted to learn how to solder in the first place!
(I already attempted some resin pendants, which did not work out so well)

The only problem with this necklace ~ I want to spread the word about ambigrams, but I can't flip the design up-side down! This would be a great layout for someone with a secret crush. You could display your own name, for others to see, but if you look down you would see the secret name.

Here is another arrangement ~


This way a person could read one name from the your left side, but if they walk to your right, they could read the second name. (It would also be easy to turn the pendant to show someone) This is my favorite layout I think. Of course, I can also show both names at once (as I do in the pictures I post here).

So far the ambigram pendants with really long words have not been so fun to work on. I've tried twice to create a "Strength" pendant, but a corner of the paper was burned each time. To get the long sides smooth, I have to go over them many times until it's right, which is causing the burning. I think a hotter iron would smooth it the first time, and fix the problem.

The above pendant was created from my most recent custom ambigram. I came across the buyer's Etsy shop & traded her for a pair of chinese take-out box earrings. So cute!

"Brian" & "Thoey" Ambigram


And here are a few more fabric pendants for you!
I think I need to re-take the photos with better fabric choices for the background.

First off, the applique sketch for the Forest of Trees skirt, which will wrap all the way around the bottom of the skirt. This will feature many kinds of trees, all in shades of green & brown, topped by the brown tiny patchwork that I recently posted ~









And the glass pendants I made this weekend ~







A few tiny art prints ~
I don't think the butterfly collage works well on such a tiny scale. The most interesting part was all of the tiny patterns in the paper & fabrics that is lost. Worth a try!



With this last pendant, I tried laying on extra solder to get the nice thick border that I want. I feel like it is even smoother than before, but it is harder to keep the back smooth (and not leave a 'seam')...



I think my iron may not be hot enough to melt all the way through the thick solder at once? I bought a low heat iron on the recommendations of my stained glass book, which is 25 watt, but I noticed my favorite solder-er uses an 80 watt. For now, I'll make do, but I think I will pick up a hotter iron later on. They are pretty cheap anyways!

Another fabric piece. It is so fun to look through my stash and find the tiny patterns that will work. Also a great way to use the multi-colored fabrics scraps that are hard to mix into patchwork later. I think you will be seeing a lot of square shapes.

My only problem now ~ I have no idea what to call this kind of print! Not quite a mandala, not quite a paisley (though some did get cut off), or a flower. I guess I will just call it a fabric pendant?

I also have a tiny art print ~


This is a black & white version of the Rainbow Hair painting I posted here before. I thought the grays would look nice against the silver.

This one gave me some troubles. The solder is a little wavier than I had intended, but not necessarily in a bad way (since it mimics the hair). But the paper in one of the corners got singed (through the solder & copper tape). That is why you see the addition of a little wire spiral, which covers it up nicely!

I thought that while I was practicing my soldering, I might as well throw something in between the glass slides, just in case it turned out no-so-horrible. So of course, fabric scraps came to mind! I certainly have plenty of them ;)





(The pictures are linked to my Etsy shop, as well as some more pictures. They are 1 x 1/5 inches.)

They both have a few minor flaws, but I am really happy with how they turned out! The most notable flaw you can see here, the bump on the side from where the copper tape was over-lapped. I'm already working on a few more, but this time I placed the overlap under the spot for the jump ring, and I have other plans if that does not work out.

And now I feel like one of those girls that just bought a button maker and can not stop making more and more. Yesterday I cut out many more pieces of fabric, as well as printing out some ambigrams and tiny art prints. I cut the glass and taped together about 6 more pendants. Everything looks so lovely behind the glass, I don't think I was able to capture the depth it adds well enough in the pictures.

I also got these cute little mini-clamps ~
(I should have given you a better sense of scale in the picture, they are about 3 inches long)

The glass really heats up as you work, so you can only solder about one side before it is too hot to hold. I switched back and forth between the two pendants I posted, giving on a chance to cool down while I worked on the other, but it was still rough on the fingers. The clamps not only solve the heat problem, but are also handy when you are wrapping the pieces with copper tape.

It's been too long since I've posted a "links" post!
Todays topic ~ Beading, with a focus on peyote stitching.

To see what you can create with tubular peyote stitches, check out these links ~
Enchanted Tree - Peyote (and ndebele) stitched necklaces
Mountains of the Moon - lovely dread beads

Beautiful!
Peyote stitching strings together beads so they are stacked on top of each other like bricks. There are a few different kinds (even & odd count flat) which allow you to create a sheet of beads. (Tubular peyote is very similar to even count stitching, but links the two sides together, to create a tube shape)
Tubular Peyote Tutorial
Ndebele Chain Directions - this stacks the beads one on top of another.
(Easily create designs charted on graph paper)

To create the beaded river rocks you may remember from my journal ~ The first tutorial shows you how to wrap a rock in peyote stitching. You create a circular disk for each side, then connect the two disks. Sead beads come in differing sizes, and the circle pattern used in the rock tutorial came out warped for me. The second link is another circle tutorial that worked perfectly for my Czech beads (and then I connected the disks following the first tutorial).
Peyote Beaded Rock Tutorial
Circular Flat Peyote


Unfortunently, the craft store will not be your friend if you are looking for supplies. I tried numerous needles & thread from the store, but both were too large to run through the beads as many times as I needed to. I asked for help on All About Beads (on Delphi Forums) & got great recommendations on what sizes I needed. I did not want to waste any more money on something that *almost* fit. Very helpful girls! (For the size 11 beads I used a #10 needle & size B Nymo thread, but there are a few sizes that will work)

Also, the beads need to be very standard sizes to interlock nicely. You can't just use the cheap beads from the craft store. There are lots of varieties of Czech & Japenese beads that are created to be nice & uniform. I bought all of my supplies from Whim Beads, which is run by the same lady who started All About Beads. They have a huge selection & cheap prices.

My only complaint would be the minimum order price, which I think is $15? Fine if you are ordering a few supplies, but not great if you run out of just one color & don't need anything else.

( My original bad luck with resin )



( My new bad luck )



So, after all of the disasters, I still present you with these three pendants! The clay on the first two is textured and highlighted with silver paint. The third one is smoothed (not textured)

Will all of the earring I've been making lately, I either needed to make a few more tiers for my CD earring holder, or else make something new. I opted for the frame display.

There have been a few of these posted on craftgrrl lately ~ like this & this one. I had actually seen something like this a long time ago & saved the pic, but I can't find it at all. I believe it was a black frame with a lime green back (or perhaps just the wall color) & you could not really see how the earrings were hung, probably clear fishing line. It looked more like a piece of artwork than a display.

( So, I tried going classy. With basically no budget. )

And here are the results!

For a larger view, where you can see the earrings better, click here.

I thought I had one spot left, until I walked downstairs & saw my rubix cube earrings! So, I am not allowed to make any more earrings for a while. All of the earrings on there are ones that I have made, other than the Dr.Pepper cans (2nd on top). I have some other ones, but these are the ones I wear all of the time.

I am addicted to wearing my long dangly earrings & so I had to make up some more...

These are not all that special ~ glass beads with a red core & bits of silver leaf. I only had four of these beads left & was happy to find a nice project to use them on. They turned out pretty long & I am happy to have another red pair to wear ;)

This was the first pair I got a little artsy with... I took some large teal seed beads & wrapped all around them with wire to create a wire bead (with a little bit of the teal peaking through). The other beads are wrapped around four times & lay on their sides to show off their circular shape. The wire bead balls were pretty fun to make ~ and just think of what you could do with different colors of beads and colored wire!

And these might be my new favorite pair! XD My husband took our broken tv to school to dissect it for his science classes. I came in afterward & snipped out all of the little capacitors. Then I wrapped the tops of them a few times(there was a little dip near the top to hold the wire in place) and put them together in a dangly bunch. I've been dying for a new black pair, and the capacitors make them even more fun!

In other news... I also went through all of the earrings I've made & put a dab of silver nail polish on the openings of the jump rings. Not that it substitutes for a good soldering, but hopefully it will keep anything from sliding off & getting lost.

I also finally got around to adding a ruffle onto a low cut shirt. I had a beige shirt that I usually wear under it (with the ruffle), but it got a spot on it, and wasn't that cute anyways, so I cut off the ruffle & sewed it onto the other shirt. It was not a huge project, but I've been putting it off *forever*, so I am proud to have finished it.


And... I've lost over 20 pounds! Woo-hoo ;) I still haven't gotten my reward for 15 lbs. because we never really have any money, so I'm not really trying to come up with a reward for 20. The reward is how skinny I am! :D

I had a pretty productive Saturday! ;)

I've been wanting to make a Trumpy shirt for a while, & finally got a cheap shirt to put it on.
Trumpy is an alien from the MST3K movie "Pod People", which is my favorite.


(the letters got a little pixelated in the picture)

( And I had to put this on the back of the shirt~ )



Also, I love wearing my dangly earrings with the new hair cut.
There were a few colors I still needed, so I whipped up four new pairs.
( new earrings )

The craftgrrls keep posting earring holders that are made out of records ~ I really like the idea, but it is just way too big for me... and I would feel bad about wrecking a record. Even if I hated it someone else might love it!

So I came up with a CD earring holder :D


I only used one for now, to hold my favorite earrings, but you can easily hang a stack of them. For a picture of what that might look like, and more information on how I made it, check out my craftgrrl post ~
http://community.livejournal.com/craftgrrl/7870403.html

These are a few projects I have been meaning to take pics of for a while, and two new ones.

Crafting New & Old
Inside this link are more pics and info for:

Rubik's Cube Earrings	Chinese Take Out Earrings	Crochet Kitty
Crochet Pop Tab Purse	Wallet with Applique

June 10 '05 ~ Peyote River Rock & Handmade Paper



This was a really big project for me, mostly because it took a long time to learn how to do the peyote well. The main problem is that I was working on a much larger tube than most people use, but I wanted to be able to include images in the stitching (my first peyote project was a necklace fully covered in vines like this It ended up being too wide and would not curve well at all, so I had to break the stitching up into "beads". This was my first complete peyote necklace, as well as first beaded rock and handmade clasp.