Top and bottom ear cuffs

Wire, wire, wire

Oh my poor fingers are sooo sore, but I'm happy with the few things I've learned. I bought myself a small, cheap wig jig, and it's really been awsome for the smaller S links. And a few pendants and earrings managed to find their way out of my wire.
My favorites…so far…are the ear cuffs

Empty hearts update

Ooooh I like that, empty hearts, I'll have to use that…but not for this one, I already have plans for these.

As I feared, most of the resin sank to the bottom as it hardened, and so the walls were too thin even to remove the the hearts from the mold. But I don't give up easily…and my mother always called it stubbornness, more like focused perseverance :)

It's a good thing I can mix the ice resin in small batches, because as I was brainstorming I came up with a brilliant plan. I just have to do them in six layers. And prop the mold in the direction I want each to settle. And wait six hours between each layer. And then another mix to put them together. And three days to cure before I add the liquid. And another mix to seal it up and add the bail...easy peasy. =|

If you don't hear from me again, I've just lost my mind, that's all.

It made me nervous

I ordered ice resin back at the begining of January, and I've been dying to play with it, but it gave me heart palpitations. I know how stupid that sounds, but seriously, everything I read about using it talked about how unforgiving it was…and this stuff isn't cheap.
So I decided to start small, just half an ounce, which as it turns out, isn't so small. I covered four butterfly stickers to give to my nieces and still had a ton of ice resin left over. Since I'd read all about the stuff before I got up the nerve to actually use it, I knew it could be used in silicone molds, and I just happened to have some heart shaped silicone ice cube trays i wasn't using…but they're waaaay to big to fill completely, so I decided to "paint" the sides and bottoms. So far…it's not really working :(

The problem is that silicone works so well with ice resin because it doesn't stick…yeah. Not so smart. So I've been getting up every few minutes to swirl it around the molds hoping it'll get thick enough to stop sinking to the bottom. Right now it's at corn syrup consistency, and I'm hopeful. I'll update in the morning, but it's gonna kill me to have to wait that long =[

I can make that

My niece never even asked for the one's we had at work. She went straight to feathers at JoAnn's and said, "Aunt Det, you can make those feather things like at your work."

I couldn't resist her big brown eyes or her I-know-you-won't-say-no grin.

So then she wore hers to school on Tuesday, and when I asked her if she liked it…she said "Yeah, we've got three orders." Lol.

I hope her friends like them, I made her help me with them. And for being such a sport I made her some earings.

I wrote a really long blog

And my blogger app deleted it while I was trying to post it :(
I don't really have the energy to go into it all over again, but I wanted to share my new project.
Long story shortened, two problems + two solutions = 4 new projects ;)

Problem 1: The butterlfly's wings kept folding in on itself (and JoAnn's clearanced all their silver to 97¢ because it was getting stolen…yeah, scratching my head at that one myself). Solution 1: make my own S links from head pins.
Problem 2: I had two butterflies, and one chain that was too long as one and too short to split. Solution 2: bead link extenders.

New projects: Build your own bracelet (or whatever you fancy).
I haven't taken pictures of the others yet, but there's paper clip bookmarks; and a way to convert pins (broach) to slider pendants that will also work for making polymer clay and ice resin pendants.

I like to remember my Grandmother

I've been racking my brain for a way to display/wear her seashell collection. I saw a picture of this done with sea glass, and I immediately thought of her shells, they've sat in a coffee can on top of my bookcase for nearly two years. It was nice to look them over, just the way she did over the years as she gathered them to remember all the places she'd been.
I wanted it to look more nautical than just wrapped wire, though, so I braided 28 guage wire before weaving it through the loops and around the shell, to make it look like braided rope that you would see on deck or sectioning off areas of beach.