Tag: jewelry

American Family Dream Bank MAKERS, CRAFTERS & DOERS: Chain Mail Floral Pendants

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Blown Out

Well, I had hoped to share pictures of our awesome both set up at Elver Park for the Fresh Air Craft Fair today.  But we got blown out.  Literally.  The vendor agreement said that the fair would go ahead rain or shine; it did not say that it would go ahead with crazy, gusty winds.
So here’s our booth part way through being taken down.  That’s when I remembered to take a picture.  It looked great and we actually held out longer than the people around us before the big wind came through.  The secret:  Attach the canopy to cinder blocks.  We were helping someone else keep her canopy from blowing away when the wind knocked everything off our table.
Look at the poor gourd lady.  This is when they cancelled the fair.  It was a bummer to do all that prep work and then have it cancelled but, ya know, shit happens and we met some nice people there.  Also, the wind distributed many of our new business cards far and wide.  
So on to planning our Etsy Shop opening.  It’s May 21st  and I’m too superstitious to make a crack about the weather not being able to affect that opening.  
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Time For A Little Goofing Off

No, I’m not showing off my neon pedicure….actually, I am.  Isn’t it cute?
Also, I’m showing off these tee-shirt bracelets.  I’m hoping to sell some on Saturday at the Open Air Craft Fair in Elver Park.  I’ve been pricing and inventory-ing all morning so it’s time for a little goofing off.
They’re mixey matchy, cute and cheap.  
I hope people like them.  Who could say no to someone with such cute toes?
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Getting My Act Together and Taking It On The Road!!!!!!!!

So, this will seem pretty random but when I was in college, I had to bring in a song to learn for Musical Theatre class.  I knew nothing about sheet music or what to pick so I asked the guy at the shop to pick for me.  I don’t remember which song he picked but it was from the musical “I’m Getting My Act Together and Taking it on the Road“.  I think the reason I don’t remember the name of the song is that I never sang it.  My teacher said he didn’t want to spend the semester hearing it over and over again so we picked an old standard from the ’40’s for me to sing.  It was actually pretty funny.
In any case, any time I am getting myself organized my brain shrieks: I’m Getting My Act Together and Taking it on the Road!  And that is what is ringing in my head because I am vending at a craft fair (My first in years) this coming Saturday.
I made cards.  I sewed on them a little bit.  
We’re probably going to change the design eventually so I only made 40.  
It doesn’t seem sustainable to always sew on our business cards but I like the way it looks.
I made a big ol’ sign.  I sewed on that, too.
But you can’t really see the stitching unless you’re up close to it.  I need to fix that somehow.  I don’t want to sew on it too much because it perforates the paper and if I do too much, it will fall apart.  
I have some stuffed animals.
Jewelry out of electronic components in muffin tins…Yes that’s right, muffin tins.  They’re good for storage.  
Pin cushion bonanza!
Jewelry out of tee shirts and my partner has a lot of wool crowns and balls.
And I have the ability to take credit cards which feels like a super power.  I know there’s butt loads more of stuff to prepare but I feel like I’M GETTING MY ACT TOGETHER etc…  
PS – I still can’t carry a tune.  That poor teacher was tortured by my singing for a whole year, 
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Big News + shiny stuff

I’ve been pretty busy making stuff for our craft show on May 11th. (pssst..check out the links above this post) I haven’t done a craft show in years and I’m super excited about this one because it’s sort of the kick off event for my friend, Jennifer, and I.  
Drumroll please……
We are starting a business.  Woohoo!!!  
We will sell crafts, craft making materials (including some of the obscure, vintage-y, remake-y stuff we both love so much) teach crafts and help people get in touch with their creative sides.  We do some of this already though the Fearless Crafter workshops that we teach at Monona Library and we want to take our act on the road!  We’ll slowly be rolling stuff out through the summer and into the fall.
We’re calling ourselves Rusted Thread. 
I’m very excited and will have more detail coming up!
Back to now; I want to share some of the jewelry pieces I made over the weekend:
Those are hex washers up there with fresh water pearls and garnets.
I usually try to include some beads in everything but I just wasn’t feeling it.  These are O-rings and little screw, eye things.
Big washers, some sort of gasket-y deal and lugs.
I don’t know what these are made of but they’re shiny!
Bracelet made out of lugs with sleeves.
And finally, a necklace made out of washers, beads and a tee-shirt!  I haven’t made jewelry for a while but I really enjoy it.   I also wanted to practice my mad photographing skillz using my phone’s camera to help me figure out if the pictures are good enough for Etsy… I can’t decide.  I’ll have to have a look around there and see what I can see.  
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Halfway and counting down…

I’m calling this the halfway point.  I emptied the shelves and put lots of stuff into bins.  We’ll be moving these shelves into the next room and then putting in some way deeper shelves.
Gotta find a sunny spot for my table.  It all looks so spare and tidy now 
But this is only some of what I have to put back in an orderly fashion.  
Actually, I’m going to cal it the thirdway point.
There’s more here.  The quarterway point is starting to feel right.  I’d better get up and get moving.  
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Here’s Something You Can Do

Here’s something you can do with a strip of tee shirt.  
I like it.
Pretty bad ass.
And I have all this left to play with.  
Expect more badassery coming this way.  I will need to get more doo-dads to add because all of my beads have small – not shirt width – holes so I get to do a little shopping!  
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I Do Love the Ponder

I made this necklace last week and wrote a whole blog post about it using my phone.  Then I deleted it by mistake and spent a shocked 30 seconds realizing the implications of phones not having “ctl z”.  
I don’t think I’ll use the phone to blog again.  
Anyhoo – Last week a friend and I ran a jewelery making workshop at the library.  The idea was to use old jewelry and hardware to make new creations but almost everybody skipped the hardware.  That’s my favorite part!  But, whatever works for people, works for people.  
I used to make and sell my jewelry but have gotten distracted by how many other really fun things there are to make in this world; it was a kick to make some again. 
In fact, the workshop was so popular that we all decided to do it again in January. It’s not up on the web site yet but when it is I’ll post a link.
Tomorrow, I am taking a screen printing class.  I’m supposed to bring in a simple image to use and have been pondering and pondering.  So much fun to do, I do love the ponder.  
So, today I think I’ll try to make something.  I’m tempted to pull out my ink stone and calligraphy brushes but I’m not sure how that’ll translate to screen print.  Then again, I’m all about the “only way to find out is to try it” theory.  
Yes, I feel it, the time to make a mess is upon me…again. 
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Still here Update

I know.  No posts for a month and then two in a day.  What could I be thinking?  
Look at all that floor.  And, look! A table top that hasn’t been seen for months and months. 
I’m just so proud of myself.  It’s not done by a long shot but it’s so much better.  Now I know that I have way too much linen and have to make something out of it really soon.  Also I have lots of awesome IKEA print fabrics that I completely forget about.
We got the giant cork board up and hubs is busy hanging art still; check out what he did with my denim quilt back there is the guest/game/workout/storage room.
I got rid of lots of wool and some pretty linen clothing that I was going to cut up but then I decided against it.  So…whaddaya all say to a crap craft swap? 
The going away pile.
I think I’ll ask if Sector67 is willing to host one. Would you (local folks) come?
I might even give away some of my baskets – I haven’t used them in forever.  I do love me some baskets.
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Camera

My camera is a family camera.  It’s also several years old.  
I mention this because it is in the process of dieing an inconvenient death.  
Just look at the difference in the quality of the pictures. 
Before
After
With that in mind, I am not really going to have any good, new photos until after Christmas.  Santa is bringing us a new camera.  I’ll see what I can do with old pictures in the meantime:
Older picture, obviously.