Food Charms

A continuation of my recent earring spree: More earrings that I can't wear until November! I'm pretty sure that I'm insane to be tempting myself with these now, but what's made is made.

They all have a loop at the top where you can slide them on and off of a pair of kidney ear wires, so they're easily mix-and-match-able ;)
They're made out of polymer clay with a coat of clear nail polish for seal and shine (after baking). It's pretty straightforward making them-- I just googled up photos of my favorite foods and then mixed and made the clay, but if there's any one in particular that you'd like a tutorial for, leave me a message :)

Origami Cranes Part 3 - Dangle Charms

Now I pretty much loved how the crane earrings turned out (check out folding the crane and making the earrings first if you haven't already), but I thought they could use an extra bit of shine. After sitting and thinking (read: taking a nap) for a few hours, I came up with the idea of little dangling beads. 
I had a few of these sparkly silver colored beads left over from my kanzashi flower tutorial:

And I soon had them wired and looped up.All well and good, I thought, but I have five pairs of earrings and not so many beads. The solution? Swirly connectors!

I don't know if these exist or not, but I'm going to be calling them swirlies :)Just start out making a shape like a treble clef and close the bead loop into the top of it. 
You can then swirl these onto the bottom loop of any of your cranes...

These should stay on with no problem unless you're doing some serious gymnastics throughout your day.
You could wear just these as earrings too:

Did I mention how I love the easy change-ability of kidney ear wires? ;)

Origami Cranes Part 2 - Earrings

As you can probably tell from the title, there's the answer to yesterday's mystery!

These were made based on a little idea that I had-- just have a little dangle charm with a loop that can easily slide on and off kidney ear wires for super space saving and thriftiness! I have dozens of earrings now, and only needed to obtain one pair of ear wires: the most expensive part of my earrings :)

I tried different techniques to color the paper too, since I didn't want just solid colors. Thin tipped markers and water colors! (Click here to see the origami crane tutorial)

Just poke a hole straight through the crane with a needle, run some wire through, and make little loops on the ends. 

They also have three coats of varnish to waterproof and stabilize the paper.
The loop on the bottom may look a bit odd now, but just wait until the next post to see what they're meant for ;)

Origami Crane Tutorial

The crane is one of the most popular origami animals, and quite easy to make:

Start out with a square of paper. I almost always say that you can use any size paper you want, but this is really a good project if you'd like to try a smaller piece of paper because it's so simple. 

Fold diagonally.

Fold that triangle in half.

Pull up the uppermost layer...

...and start squishing it down...

...and then flatten it all the way.

Then flip it over to the other side...

...And do all that again.

Now, make sure the open end is at the bottom. Fold one side in to the center.

Do the same for the other three.

Fold the top triangle down and crease.

Then unfold everything until you get a square.

Start pulling the uppermost layer up.

And squeeze the corners in.

And then push it flat.

Do this for the other side too.

You should have four movable triangles in two stacks of two. Pull the top one on the right stack over to the left stack. Then flip it over and do the same.

You should end up with this.

Push the tip of one of the triangles down. This will be the head. The one that you didn't push down is the tail.

Pull the two triangles up. They're the wings.

Bend the wings downward and curve or crease them however you like. 

You're done!

Legend has it that if you make 1000 of these paper cranes, you get a wish. Here's my 1000:

That's not my goal this time around though. Stay tuned to see what I'm going to do with the ones I made today ;)

Origami Heart

I was first taught how to make this heart by a good friend, and I've made hundreds of them since- they make sweet cards if you're in a rush or an extra touch to a little note. 

Start out with a rectangular piece of paper. I just took an 8.5x11" sheet of printer paper and quartered it.

We're going to call the bottom part of this the 'square' and the other part the 'rectangle' of this piece of paper. 

Diagonally fold the square

And then the other way

For some reason, blogspot rotates some of my photos. If you have any idea how to fix this, please tell me!

Anyway...

Flip your paper over.

Fold the square in half.

And unfold

Flip it over.

Start squeezing the edges of the fold you just made in toward the center...

...Until you get this....

...and then squish it down flat.

Fold the rectangle in half down to the square

Fold the upper triangle down to the center.

And the other one.

Flip it over.

Fold the entire paper in half...

...so you get a center line!

Now fold the edge in to that handy dandy center line.

And the other one.

Now fold only the upper triangle down.

Because the lower triangle tabs will be folded down at an angle. These will be the two round shapes at the top of the heart.

Tuck them into the big triangle.

Fold the bottom corners up now...

And stick them into the slot too.

You're done! This is what the back should look like.

And the front

You can write a little message in them too. Just unfold it like this...

...Write your message on the inside...

...And re-fold it. Make sure you write instructions for anyone who doesn't know how these are folded!