It's Monday! A Birthday Necklace

Ah, it's Monday. Time for me to share whatever it is I feel like sharing ;)

Just a quick bit of eye candy today!

What do you think? Pretty?

I whipped this up as a birthday present for one of my friends while I was holidaying at Mum's place. Luckily, Mum's into jewellery making as well and had all the gear I needed! 

It's the first time I've really played with the wire coiling and decorating a focal bead in this way. I have a tutorial for a similar piece coming up soon.

Happy Monday! Hope you all have a great week!

(And Happy 4th of July to all my U.S. friends!)

Whip It Up Wednesday: Anthro Inspired Violet Post Earrings

Last week I shared my version of Anthro's Tiny Tea Rose Posts, this week is similar but we're doing Violet Post earrings this time! I'm only using materials I have on hand for all of these :)

The Inspiration:

The Knock-Off:

What You Need:

* Polymer clay (Dark blue, green, white)

* Clear seed beads

* Aerosol varnish/glaze

* Toothpick

* Clay cutting blade

* Earring post blanks

* Super glue

* Bead glue

* Oven :D

What To Do:

Blend some white and green to get a nice shade of green (as I explained last week ^_^), and take a hunk of your dark blue. Kneed both colours until malleable.

Cut off portions so that you have ten small balls of blue and  four ovals of green. This is for a pair of earrings :)

Flatten three of the blue balls into circles and arrange them as shown below, then use your toothpick to join the three circles in the middle.

Flatten two more balls of blue and join them gently to the back of your piece, like so:

Repeat to make a second earring piece.

Flatten your green ovals and pinch the ends to make leaf shapes, then gently attach them to the back of your flowers, in the position shown here:

Put these on some baking paper on a tray, and bake according to the instructions on the clay packet.

When the earring pieces have baked and cooled, you could use some black acrylic to highlight the centres of your flowers. I plan to try this next time, but forgot this time! Oops! You can also spray the pieces with varnish or some other kind of glaze to make them nice and shiny. I at least remembered to do this, but forgot to take a photo *facepalm*

When everything is dry, pop a dab of bead glue in the centre of each piece and sprinkle your seed beads into the glue.

I used super glue instead of bead glue without thinking, and ended up with a yucky opaque coating on my beads :( So use bead glue, hot glue or something else! Not super glue XD

Use super glue to attach your earring post blanks to the back of each clay piece.

You're done! Here's the obligatory black and white photo of me showing off my new earrings ;)

Linking up at Sunburnt Cow

Whip It Up Wednesday: Anthro Inspired Tea Rose Earrings

As you might be guessing, I'm on a bit of an Anthro kick ;) 

Did you see that my Anthro-inspired Big Top earrings got into the TSWL's Finest May 2011?! Exciting!! So, if you like them, please vote for me!

OK, so here's my next Anthro installment! 

The Inspiration:

Tiny Tea Rose Posts, $24.
Not really too expensive for Anthro, but fun to make!

The Knock-Off:

Not as delicate as Anthro's, but not too bad!
These also look much nicer irl; I needa work on my photography ;)

What You Need:

* Coloured polymer clay (in green, white, pink & yellow/gold)

* Earring post blanks

* Aerosol glaze/varnish

* Super glue

* A clay cutting blade

* An oven!

What To Do:

To make the right shade of pale yellow (or as close too as I could with my on-hand clay) take a large portion of white clay and a small portion of yellow. I only had gold, so my final shade isn't exactly what I'd like, but it's OK :)

Kneed the clay until it's malleable. Roll both colours out into a strip.

Twist the two strips together. Continue twisting and kneeding until the colours are completely blended. If it's too dark, add more white, and more gold if it's not dark enough.

Now take a hunk of white and one of pink and blend these together as above to get a nice pale shade of pink.

When you have your pale yellow strip and pale pink strip, roll them out to about the same thickness. This just makes it easier to judge the required size of the smaller portions we're about to cut off :)

[I also blended some leaf green and white to get a nice shade of green to go with this]

Cut off small portions of clay in the following (this is for a pair of earrings):

2 x larger pink balls

4 x larger green balls

4 x smaller yellow balls

6 x larger yellow balls

Flatten out both of the pink balls and roll them gently to form two flower centres, like this one:

I like to flatten things against my blade, just because it's a nice smooth surface.

Now take all of the yellow balls, small and large, and flatten them out into circles. Roll the edges slightly up, like so: 

For each earring, take one pink centre and push two small yellow pieces gently onto opposite sides of it, like so:

Now for each earring take three of the larger yellow pieces and push them gently around the centre piece. Roll the outside edges of the big petals back slightly, like so:

For each earring, take one of the green balls and flatten it but into an oval shape. Add this to your flower.

This is what it should look like from the side:

Use your blade to cut off the "stem" of the flower. Be careful not to smoosh the petals when you do this though. Now you should have something like these:

Pop some baking paper on a tray and bake your clay pieces according to the instructions on the clay packet.

If you want, when they're baked and cooled, spray them with some glaze - shiny!

Use super glue to attach an earring blank to the back of each piece and that's it!

Here's another of my awesome photo edits ;)

Oh, what a freckly face and scruffy hair I have!

I hope you enjoyed my latest Anthro knock-off! Stay tuned for more :D

Whip It Up Wednesday: Vintage Style Frame Charms

If you're a liker on H&H's Facebook Page you might have noticed a little teaser I posted a while back ...

Well, now I'm finally going to share with you how I made them! Whoo!

First off, here was my original inspiration:

I've been stashing these cards away for years (as any normal crafter does, right?!) - they came from inside a photo album, and I couldn't possibly throw them away! 

What I used:

* Patterned cardboard  (for background)

* Metal frame charm

* Scrapbook key charm

* Tiny Swarovski crystals

* Moon & Sun Glaze

(You can use Dimensional Magic, Diamond glaze, etc.. Anything similar will do!)

What to do:

Cut a small rectangle of your patterned backing so that it will fit inside your metal frame charm. I cut out a piece with a cute little blossom on it.

If you need to, you can protect your cardboard with Microglaze at this stage so that the print doesn't run when you put the glaze over it. I didn't and it worked fine, but if you drew or printed something out yourself you probably should! 

If your key charm has a loop on the top (like mine did) use some pliers or cutters to bend or cut it off. I actually couldn't cut mine, so I bent it backwards and forwards until I could pull it off ;) If you want, use a file to take the sharp edges off.

Put your backing piece inside the metal frame charm. It's a good idea to actually glue it in :) You can use a bit of glaze between the frame and cardboard to attach it.

Lay out all of your other embellishments inside your frame. You'll notice that I also cut the word "spring" out from my cardboard pieces and included that - looks pretty cute, huh? 

Make sure you place this on a flat surface so the glaze is less likely to run, and ideally on a scrap piece of fabric. This way, if the glaze overflows or seeps you can easily peel it off the fabric when it's dry, instead of it sticking permanently to your work surface!

Pipe your glaze around the inside of your frame edges first, then fill towards the centre. Use a pin to pop any bubbles that might appear, or push the bubbles to the edges so you can remove them.

Let this dry until it's clear. With the glaze I used, it lost "body" when it dried, so I simply kept letting it dry then adding a new layer until I was happy with the final product :)

Now just to turn them into pretty jewellery for the store! :D

A Few Of My Favourite Things - AussieJules

Remember these beaded earrings that I made for my MadeIt store?
(They're still available if you're interested ;))

Well, I just wanted to give a shout out to the lovely lady that made the beads - Julie Frahm of AussieJules! She makes her own flameworked beads in all sorts of different styles, even makes them from recycled materials like champagne and wine bottles. She also makes beautiful beaded jewellery!

Julie will do commissions - perhaps make a keepsake from the champagne bottle you drank from at your engagement or wedding? Sounds like a fantastic idea! Go and check out AussieJules!

Jewellery Trinkets for the Store

Just finished adding some more things to the store! I think this is enough jewellery for now, time to focus on my other sewing related items for a bit and get those established. I suspect I need to narrow down my items to just a few types of things if I want any hope of selling anything convincingly, what do you think? Honestly, I'm open to hints and tips!

So here is what I added to the shop tonight:

Some vintage style earrings and a necklace.

Some cute girly hoop earrings. These look much better on than my photography can express, which is a bit of a shame really! But I'm practising and hopefully improving as I go!

Nice simple earrings. I love the lampwork beads used here, we bought them at the Rundle Street market the other week when Mum was here. The lady we bought them from was wonderful. I will dig up her business card and give her a shout out tomorrow!

Let me share my favourite new item with you though!

I love every single lampwork bead on this baby! They are all handmade, very detailed and just lovely quality. In my favourite colours too! The idea with this is that the new owner can send me their photos in digital format and I will put them in the frames. There's scrapbook paper in the frames as a placeholder, but if someone really liked it I'd be happy to leave the scrapbook paper in permanently too, lol! It does like very cute as it is!

Anyhow, check it out at Hazel and Honeysuckle on MadeIt!

(It must be nearly time for a tutorial again...)

Tutorial - Family Tree Bracelet

I've made family tree bracelets for both my Grandma and my Nan as Christmas presents now, so I thought I'd share with you how I go about making them. This is the one I made for my Grandma a while ago.

This is the one I made this year for my Nan, which I'll talk you through. She's rather fond of purple :)

Materials:

• Photo frame charms. 6-10, Tibetan silver.
• Photos. One for each frame. 
• Assorted of other charms. 
• Assorted small coordinating beads. 
• Head pins. For attaching coordinating beads.
• Chain. Enough for two strands around the wrist plus a little extra for an extension chain.
• Jump rings. Enough to attach everything.
• Lobster clasp and ring. One :)
• Glue. I used my trusty gemstone glue yet again. Is there anything that stuff can't do?!

What to do:
Turn your chain into a basic bracelet
I like using two strands of chain, it just gives it a bit more texture. In my first bracelet I used two different types of chain - thick copper coloured and dainty gold coloured, in this one I used two strands of the same silver chain. Try to pick something aesthetically pleasing because it isn't completely hidden.

Undo a loop at one end of your length of chain and attach it a few centimetres from the other end of the chain, so you end up with a double stranded bracelet with a little extension chain. Attach your lobster clasp to the end of your bracelet that doesn't have the extension chain, and the loop to the base of the extension chain. I also like to attach a little Swarovski crystal or other bead to the end of the extension chain. You should end up with something like this:

To make the Swarovski crystal dangle, I used a soft silver head pin, made a loop and wrapped the excess around the top of the crystal. I forgot to take a photo, sorry :(

Print your photos in the right size
I used 6 frames for the first bracelet and 10 on the second. I wouldn't really use more than 10 myself, but it's totally up to you.When you've decided how many frames to use, you need to actually find some photos ;) I can't really help you here! But I like to make sure I have at least one photo of each immediate family member, sometimes pets too if the person is an animal lover. You could also include pictures of things the person you're making it for likes, like favourite flowers or foods or something.

It's a bit of trial and error working out what photos will look nice and printing them to fit. My biggest bit of advice here is to print them using your printer's draft setting (this uses less ink and is faster) onto scrap or plain paper before printing them onto photo quality matte or glossy paper. I usually put all the mini photos into one large image file so I can print them all at once, and I usually have two or three sizes going at a time when I'm trial printing. I would advise cutting the pictures out and making doubly sure they fit before using photo paper, not just eye balling them.

Also, I like using single tone photos for these. It's up to you what you do, but have a play around with the colour settings in your graphics program and see what you come up with. For the first bracelet I started with sepia tone and modified it to be a bit more coppery, for this one I started with black and white and modified it to be purpley :)

When you're happy, print them on photo paper (glossy, yum!), cut them out and glue them into the frames. I like these Tibetan silver frames, but gold, copper, base metal or any other charms would of course work just as well. Let these dry fully before doing anything else with them.

Attach photo frames to the bracelet
Use jump rings to attach the frames, evenly spaced, to one strand of the bracelet. Should look much like this:

Attach charms and beads to the bracelet

I liked to use charms that reflect the person I'm making the bracelet for, but you could just pick ones that look pretty or fit the theme of your bracelet. For this bracelet I used an assortment of real and glass pearls, glass beads and metal charm in silver, white and purple tones. For this, I placed one purple and one white smallish bead onto a head pin, sometimes with a small silver spacer at the bottom or between the beads. I made a few of these using different bead combinations, but trying to balance the overall colours and look.

Before finishing the head pins, I like to lay out all of the charms and beads and see if I like the balance of the overall piece.

Nommy!

When you're happy with the look, finish your head pin pieces by bending in a loop just above the top bead and cutting off any excess wire. I use round nose pliers for the loop bending, there's lots of tutorials online about how to do this so for now I won't go into detail.

Attach all of your charms and beaded pieces to the still-empty strand of the bracelet. I try to place them so that they fall roughly between the frames.

Viola! You're done. Congratulations :)

Update: I'm now offering to make custom bracelets just like these in my MadeIt store!