Whip It Up Wednesday: Glass Tile Pendants

As you hopefully already know, one of the things you can win in our 100 Followers Giveaway is a pretty glass tile pendant! So, go and enter the giveaway, and then I'll show you how I make them!

What you need:

* Bottle of glaze

I used Sun And Moon's glaze which worked awesomely.

You could also use Diamond Glaze or something else similar.

* Scrapbook paper (other papers and fabric also work fine)

* Super glue

* Glass pendant shape (1 per pendant)

* Bails or charms (1 per pendant)

* Pin

* Toothpick

What to do:

Cut out a piece of your scrapbook paper to the same size as your glass (slightly larger is OK too).

Make sure the back of your piece of glass is clean.

Apply a dob of glaze to the centre of the back of your glass.

Working quite quickly, spread your glaze out on the back of the pendant using a toothpick. 

Use your pin to pop any bubbles if they appear.

Press your glass piece onto your paper. Press it down from the middle, working out towards the edges. This helps avoid bubbles. Getting this step right, i.e. bubble free!, can take a bit of practice.

If you get a big bubble, before the glaze dries you can pull the paper off and wash your glass piece under a running tap. Clean it off thoroughly and you can try again!

Let the glaze dry (I'm a bit OCD so I usually leave stuff overnight) and then use some sharp scissors to trim any excess paper carefully from the edges.

Now, most instructions I've read say to glue the bail on now. I disagree, I think one layer of glaze (or a layer of microglaze) is probably a good idea to protect the paper. It's up to you.

Pop a little dob of super glue onto your bail or charm of choice and press it onto the back of your pendant. This will dry quickly, so place it carefully!

I used a range of different things for these pendants.

When the bail or charm is secure, you can start glazing the back. Use the glaze bottle's nozzle to work around the outside of the back of the pendant. 

When you've got glaze all around the edges, work towards the middle. Pop any bubbles that you see with a pin. The glaze will look cloudy until it dries, like this:

Let this dry. Again, I usually wait overnight. You can repeat this step as many times as you like, building up height on the back of the pendant.

All done! Pop them on a necklace cord and you have a gorgeous piece of unique jewellery! If you used charms on the back of your pendants, you might want to attach a jump ring to the charm and slip the necklace cord through that :)

Here's the four pendants I made. 

Fronts:

Backs:

This is the one you can WIN!

What do you think of the name, Whip It Up Wednesday? 

Let me know if you have a better "Wednesday" name idea!

Mod My Blog Monday: Keeping a Tidy Link List

Welcome to the very first instalment of Mod My Blog Monday!

The idea with MMBM is that I answer YOUR blog and website related questions! So please let me know what you'd like me to talk about here! You can leave a comment, email me or leave a question on our Facebook page. <3

Today I thought I'd share with you a little few tips and tricks for keeping your lists of links and buttons tidy.

Before You Start

Back up, back up, back up!

I can't stress this enough! ;)

Click the "Design" tab (highlighted in blue), then "Edit HTML" (highlighted in green) then click "Download Full Template" (also in green) and save the file to your hard drive.

If you need to revert to this back up, click "Choose File", find the file you saved, then click "Upload" (all highlighted in purple above).

OK, now let's get on to the fun bits..!

Adding a Gadget

If you don't already have a Gadget in your side bar to keep your party links organised in, it's a good idea to add one! When you've logged into Blogger, click the "Design" view tab (circled in blue).

Next, click "Add a Gadget" (circled in green). You want to choose a "HTML/Javascript" type gadget. You can drag and drop it to a different location in your design if you want to.

The purple shows where my gadget is :) Click the circled "Edit" link to open up the editing window.

What I Do...

The very first thing I do is put a <center> tag at the start of my list and close it at the very end (</center> is the closing tag). Then I paste all my button codes between these two tags. The "center" tags are highlighted in pink in the screen shot below:

Notice that HTML tags are always in U.S. English - this can
take some getting used to for U.K. English spellers like me! :)

In the image above...

PINK shows the center tags.

YELLOW is the image tag.

GREEN is the link tag.

PURPLE is the target attribute of the link.

BLUE are the width and height attributes of the image.

When I paste in someone's button or link party code, this is what I do to it:

• Remove any <center> and </center> tags in their code (we already have our own!)

• Remove any <BR>, <br>, <BR/> and <br/> tags - these are line breaks, I usually don't want them here, and if I do, I add them myself. Using line breaks, something like hi <BR> there will display on separate lines, like this:

hi

there

• In the image tag, I look for the height and width attributes (highlighted in blue in the screenie above). If they are there, I change them both to 100 pixels. If the tag doesn't have width and height attributes, I add them myself. The finished tag looks something like this:

<img src="their_image_path.jpg" border="0" width="100" height="100"/>

This way all the images are the same size. You can use whatever size suits your layout of course :) And if you're happy with the image's original size, you don't have to do this step. I like my images to be uniform size.

• If it's not already there, add a target="_blank" attribute inside the link tag (highlighted in purple in the screenie above). This way, when your visitors click that link, it opens it in a new tab/window, instead of them moving away from your blog. So the complete button code for me looks something like this:

<a href="their_website_url" target="_blank"><img src="their_image_path.jpg" border="0" width="100" height="100"/></a>

OK, that was probably a lot of info! Please do ask if you need anything clarified or if you have other questions.

Have fun modding your blogs!

Giveaway Closing Date & Official Schedule

First off, let me say thank you to all you beautiful new followers for joining us! 

Remember to like the Hazel & Honeysuckle Facebook page as well! 

Another thanks goes to everyone who has entered the giveaway! If you haven't already entered, click here to check it out. There's a cute pendant and fabric flower accessory on offer, and it's super easy to enter!

Giveaway closing date: Thursday 31st of March!

I'll do my best to announce the winner on the 1st of April!

(April fools anyone..?  ;))




Giveaway closed! Thanks to everyone who entered!! <3

Now, I need to apologise for being a bit MIA this week! Lucky I organised my pet week ahead of time, eh? Hopefully having a schedule will make life more organised! Here's the plan:

 Scrap Box Sunday

 Mod My Blog Monday

Whip It Up Wednesday

Favourite Things Friday

Sound like fun?? If you have a particular tute you'd like to see for Mod My Blog Monday (anything HTML, CSS or Blogger related!) or for Whip It Up Wednesday (anything sewing, beading or otherwise crafty) then leave me a comment somewhere on the blog, Facebook page or send me an email!