Bass Clef Faux Gauges

If you've ever played in a band or orchestra before, you'll probably recognize these as bass clefs. They're in sheet music for instruments like the cello, euphonium, double bass, bass guitar, bassoon, contrabassoon, trombone, baritone, tuba, timpani, harp and keyboard instruments. 

Not gonna lie, I had some help from Wikipedia for that list. 

But wait, there's more!I made these into cute faux gauges. Basically, embed the post half of an earring into the front, and the back half into...well, the back half. Just make sure you also poke a hole in the clay so that the post has enough room for when you actually put the halves together.
 Also see my post on Tentacle Faux Gauges if you haven't already!

Hearthstone Charms

If any of you are gamers, you've probably seen these before:

Hearthstones! They're an item from the game World of Warcraft that allows the user to transport to a previously set location. Read up on it here.

These charms are super simple to make, and they're a cute gift too! Just give one to someone special and tell them that now they can teleport to any place of residence once every 30 minutes. 

I used this Fimo rock effect clay for the base. 

Then use a sharp blade to slice off pieces at angles to create a rock shape. Use a blunt point (I used a knitting needle) to make the swirl.

Stick an eyepin through it to make a charm. Then, after baking, use some blue shimmery paint to define the swirl.

Happy teleporting :)

Enchanted Noms

This summer has been way hotter than any I've experienced before. Incidentally, this happens every single summer. So what have I been doing to keep my sanity in this air-condition-less state? Watch old Disney movies, of course. And making earrings!

Based on one of my favorites, Cinderella. If you're not familiar with the story (shame on you!) the right earring is a normal pumpkin and the right is Cinderella's enchanted carriage. Just make sure you take these off before midnight, or the magic might wear off ;)

Invincibility on your ears

Remember those old Super Mario games where those little bouncing stars appeared when you hit the right blocks? Then you'd be granted temporary invincibility and proceed to run forth as fast as you could, cackling as you plowed right through the otherwise menacing goombas. 

Well now you can carry that protection everywhere you go on your ears!

The stars are origami made from paper strips. If you don't know how to make them, you can view my tutorial here. Then I applied one coat of clear gloss, painted on the eyes, and finished with another coat of gloss. When stringing them on eyepins, I've found that it's a lot easier to first use a sewing pin to poke a hole. From there on, just cut the eyepins to different lengths and attach them to earwires. Easy!

AFK Necklace

I'll admit it: I'm addicted to my computer. I rely on it for so many things in my life, from drawing to gaming to communication. So when I'm not happily clacking away at my keyboard, I sometimes feel a bit out of my element. 

But now, with this upcycled necklace, you too declare to the world that you are apart from your beloved! 

Start out with some keyboard keys, eye pins, and jump rings. Removing keys is relatively easy; just slip something thin and sturdy (I used the tip of my flat nosed pliers) under the edge of the key and apply leverage. 

Take your eye pins and cut them down to size. 

If you have these nubby things on the backs of your keys where they attached to the keyboard, clip them off with wire cutters. 

Use a generous amount of hot glue to attach the eye pins, making sure to cover any sharp edges left from the wire cutters. 

When that's dry, attach the jump rings...

...and string your keys onto waxed cord with some beads. I'm using faux pearls here. 

Tie on some clasps with square knots. This is the time to make sure your necklace is the right length. 

I usually apply 3-5 coats of clear nail polish onto my knots to make sure they don't come undone. 

If you had planned ahead, you could use crimps to keep your beads in place.But if you're in the same boat as me, make sure the beads are centered and then knot the cord.

Ice Cream Sammiches

Ice cream sandwiches are a favorite warm weather food of mine. The soft chocolatey...what are they anyway? Soft cookie? Thinner and more delicious variation of whoopie pie?

But I digress.

Neapolitan ice cream sandwiches are delicious. And cute. And that's all you really needed to know.

Start out with some super dark brown polymer clay in rounded rectangles. 

Use an X-acto knife to make little grooves in the sides.

And use some sort of point to make the little holes. I used the tip of a knitting needle.

Next, make little blocks of pink, white, and light brown clay for ice cream.

The perfect charm for summertime :)

Rain Cloud Earrings

Okay, so I lied.

Those pokeball earrings are no longer my favorites. These are:

They were pretty straightforward to make: shape the clay, wire them up, bake, paint, and chain. I used white clay for the clouds and then painted them with a coat of bright white and a light dusting of shimmery translucent glitter. Then I used the pointy end of a toothpick for the eyes and the stubby end for the cheeks.The raindrops were blue clay painted a shimmery navy blue with just a bit of silver near the tops. 

Pokeball Studs

I know! I haven't blogged in over a month! D:
But I'm going to make it up by posting a tutorial for my new favorite pair of earrings. Ready?

Start out with two flattened circles of the same size in red and white. Make sure to do the white one first so the red dye doesn't blend over from your fingers. 

Cut each in half.

And re-assemble them.

Then cut thin slices of black clay and lay them over the seam.

Make another flattened white circle about 1/4 the size of the one you made before. Also, roll out some black clay very very thinly.

Wrap the black clay around your white circle.

That's right, pokeballs.

Then, y'know, bake clay according to the package instructions, glaze if desired, and glue to earring posts.

Faux Pearl Earrings

These faux-pearl ones are super cheap and amazingly easy to make too!

This would be a great project if you have broken sewing pins. You can't really tell from my photo, but one of the pins I used has a small split on the end which snags fabric, and the other is a bit bent.

Start out with two pretty sewing pins. You may recognize these from my pincushion ring tutorial. I bought a whole box of 50 or so a few years ago for about $2 :)

Use a pair of wire cutters to shorten the metal posts. You may want to find a pair of post earrings you have to get the correct length.

Get some sandpaper and round off the sharp edges you just made.

Now find something for the backings. I have a ton of these squishy rubbery things that come with most store-bought post earrings. They fit perfectly on my pins. 

Wire Daisy

Memory wire: something that I will never use again. Not for anything that requires the wire to be shaped anyway, because it does look like it has good bangle potential. 

But anyway, this is a pendant that I made for my mother before. The center was a bit messier than I would have liked because memory wire does not like to bend or keep its shape, so I strung some faux pearls on beading wire and hot glued it on :)

Seafoam Dangles

These might be my favorite pair of wire earrings so far. I know, I keep saying that, and it's because I love all most of the earrings that I make, but the color of these glass beads just make me feel like I'm at the beach, one of my favorite places to be. 

I actually got this craft wire pegboard type thing (it looks like this, with movable pegs) on sale for $4, which I used for most of the wire form, except for the small curls on the ends. It certainly made it easier to make two almost identical shapes, one of my weaknesses, but it does take some getting used to. 

Gold Curves

I really love how this pair turned out! I actually had no idea in mind when I started making these, but I really liked how the first earring looked, so I just replicated it for the second :)

And I made yet another earring rack, because I started running out of room on my pyramid! Tutorial coming soon :)

Quick Enameling

Okay, so it's not really enameling-- it's nail polish. It is quite a bit cheaper, faster, and easier though, and yields quite excellent results in my experience.

For example, I got a set of all plain silver colored earrings cheaply (except the cherry ones). There they are in various states of completion.

I usually use 1-3 coats of color, depending on the brand of nail polish and how opaque I want the color to be. You really don't need a clear top coat unless you put glitter or something on top.

Note though that your color might come out slightly different over metal with a gold vs. silver colored finish. It's not very clear in the photographs, but my one coat of green came out significantly darker on the gold cherry leaves than on the silver turtles. 

If you happen to have some plain looking jewelry, this is a great way to spruce it up. And if you mess up, it comes off with nail polish remover :)

That said, I can't guarantee that all the harsh chemicals in these products will not harm your jewelry, so please do not try this on anything valuable!

Screw Earrings

Ah, what's not to love about looking like you just came out of a hardware accident?

You'll just need to clamp your two screws in a vice and use a hacksaw to cut off the threaded part of it...

...and then hot glue them to earring posts. Does it get any simpler? ;)

Charm Porcupine

So far I've made tons of little earring charms with a loop that can be interchanged on one pair of kidney earwires. But these presented a bit of a problem storage and display wise, because I couldn't hang them from a traditional earring display. So...time to make my own! 

I was charging my camera as I cut and drilled this, but just pretend the wood is in whatever shape it's layed out as :)

Get a strip of thin wood. Mine was about 14" x 4" x 2cm.

You'll want to cut it as shown above, in half first, and then one large triangle in the middle of each with two half triangles on each side....

...like this!

As you see, the two half triangles can be put together to make a triangle the size as the one in the center.

Now go ahead and drill holes. I belive I used a 3/32" drill bit, but you can try out one hole first to see if it's the  right size. The eventual goal is to fit one toothpick in each hole, so if you're not sure on the size, try a smaller drill bit first and work your way up until the toothpick is snug.

When you're done drilling the holes, get your hot glue gun ready-- you'll be using it a lot from here on.

First you'll need to glue your half triangles together to make a full size triangle. Try to do this quickly and push the wood tightly together.

Then, grab half as many toothpicks as there are holes, and cut each toothpick in half. Stick each toothpick half into a hole, blunt side out so you don't prick yourself, and apply a little bit of hot glue to the inside are to secure them.

See why I call it a porcupine now? ;)

After every toothpick is glued in, you can glue the four triangles together into a pyramid shape. Just as before, try to work quickly and press the wood firmly together for the best fit and hold.

At this point, you can paint this if you like or keep the natural wood look as I did.

And finally, the fun part -- put all your charms on it! :)

But what to do if you only have a small number of these dangle charms? What if building a whole earring porcupine is just too much work? Or maybe you just don't have the tools needed?

I'll show you how I made a more traditional earring holder too, and how you can easily hang these charms on that or a store-bought one ;)

Beach Glass Tutorial

As promised, here's the tutorial on making your own beach glass!

Start out with plain glass. I used beer bottles, because of the color variety. Smash them up one by one inside of a bag to whatever size you want your finished product to be. This will probably make holes and glass splinters in whatever bag you use, so I layered up four plastic shopping bags and smashed mine inside of those on my driveway with a large hammer. You may also want to wear safety glasses just in case. 

I used one of these Rock Tumblers that I had lying around. This one's made for about half a pound of glass, grit, and water, so I used the following:

1/2 of a glass beer bottle

5 heaping tsp playground sand

Fill to the top of the glass with water

Of course, if you have the special grit, you can go ahead and use that, but since beach glass isn't smooth, I found the playground sand worked perfectly, and is a lot cheaper.

After about 3-4 days of tumbling, I got this pretty authentic looking beach glass. Obviously, the longer you leave the glass in there, the smoother / more worn it will look. You'll have to change out the sand every few days though, as the particles will get smaller and less abrasive.

But if you don't want to go through all that trouble, you could always just buy a bag of these at your local craft store :)

These are two pendants I made as gifts while trying out different wire wrapping techniques. Also a pair of earrings that I made before, if you're looking for ideas.