Siren's Song necklace

Time to dust off the blog...Do people still blog?  Seems like Instagram and Pinterest have taken over the world. 

I am dusting this old girl off in order to share some tutorials with you.

My first is for this Siren's Song Necklace I made 2 years ago. It took me a whole month to make the beads and components and about a week to put the piece together.

I ended up sending this one to Stampington and they published it in an issue of Belle Armoire Jewelry.  It took a couple years to get to publication, but it was worth it.

This post has the basics from the article, but no step-by-step photos.  I won't be able to take a month to remake them and take pictures so you'll just have to let your own imagination fill in the missing blanks.

What you will need:

Supplies

Scissors

2 pieces of Plexiglas

Waxed Linen Cord

RIT Dye-Purple, Aquamarine, Navy Blue, Green

Alcohol

Plastic containers with lids

Slotted Spoons

Micro beads

Sand

Varathane Clear Gloss Water-Based Interior Polyurethane

Metallic Lustres by Deco Art (all colors)

Bamboo Skewers

Floral foam

Small alphabet rubber stamps

Sculpey Mold Maker

Seashells, sand dollars, starfish

Ocean themed pendants

Premo Sculpey Clay in White PE02 5001

Premo Sculpey Clay in Cobalt Blue, Green

Stampers

Texture tools

Spray bottle of water

Baby wipes

Sculpey Clay Conditioning machine

Sculpey Etch-n-pearl

Steel Rebar Wire

Heavy Duty Side Cutters

Needle Nose Pliers

Sculpey Super Slicer

Vinyl gloves

Silk Strips

19 gauge black steel wire

Hammer

Bench Block

Step-by-step instructions

Making the beads:

·         For beads, condition the white clay, then pinch off a piece of clay and roll it into a ball. Then poke a hole through the center of the bead.  Repeat from the other side of the bead. Add texture or words.

·         For the quote pendants, roll a ball of conditioned clay about the size of a golf ball.  Flatten with fingers and press the clay between two pieces of Plexiglas that have been misted with water to your desired thickness. Stamp desired design into disk.   Poke holes in the pendant.

·         For Disk Beads, roll clay into a ball and flatten between fingers.  Poke a hole in the bead.  Leave on the skewer and roll over textured surface or roll into micro beads.

·         For unique beads and focals, use Sculpey Mold Maker to make your own molds from seashells, pendants, and starfish. Then use the molds to make your own unique beads and focals.  Roll clay into a ball and press mold onto the ball.  Either use the skewer to make a hole through the whole bead or add a piece of wire bent into a U shape for a bail.

Following manufacturer’s directions, bake the beads in toaster oven. Keep in mind that thicker beads will require more bake time than thin beads.

Finishing the beads:

·         Once the beads are baked and cool, make dyes by adding about 2 tablespoons of liquid dye to about one cup of alcohol.  Mix thoroughly.  Add white beads and focals to the dye bath.  When you have achieved the look you want, remove from the dye bath with a slotted spoon.  Rinse with cool water until it runs clear.  Spread out on trays or paper plates to dry.

·         Use DecoArt’s Metallic Lustres waxes to add color to beads.  Layer multiple colors over beads and pendants using your fingers.  Once dry, buff with a soft cloth.

·         Seal beads with Varathane.  I place my beads on a bamboo skewer and dip them into a small jar with the sealer.  Then I set each skewer in a board that my husband drilled with holes.

·         For the beads with micro beads and sand, I dipped the bead in Varathane and then dipped it into a small container of sand or micro beads.  For some, I mixed the micro beads right into a small amount of sealer and then rolled the bead in the mixture.  I also dipped some beads into the Varathane and then sprinkled the beads with micro beads all over.

Making Clasps:

·         Make a necklace clasp with needle nose pliers and a piece of wire. Curl end around needle nose pliers to make a small loop.  Turn over so loop is on top of the pliers and bend around to make a hook.  Grasp end of wire with needle nose pliers and curl up into a loop.  Harden wire by pounding it with a hammer several times on each side. Make heart loop for clasp by cutting a piece of rebar wire about 3 inches long. Bend in the middle and pull the ends so they make a loop at the bottom.  Use pliers to bend tops of the heart. Harden wire.

To Make the Necklace

*For the necklace back, use 4 silk strips and loosely braid 3, adding and dropping a strip in an organic way repeatedly.  Add wire clasp and loops to ends so each necklace strand can be added. If the piece is too long, you can shorten it by knotting it in the middle.

* Build your collar by creating each necklace strand on waxed linen cord or silk strips.  Add them to the necklace as you work to check lengths and placement

Of course you can use these techniques to make your own  earrings, bracelets, rings etc...  This is just a starting point for your own fabulous creations.  Please feel free to comment with a link of your own goodies.  I'd love to see what you come up with.

If you are reading this, I'd love if you took a moment to comment so I know you are still out there...

 Thanks for stopping by....

Got Old Sheets and Coffee Filters? Make this Awesome Shabby Chic Banner...

This sweet banner is made from old sheets, coffee filters and twine.

The coffee filter roses are a cinch to make.

Just dye your filters like I described here.

I used Fuchsia RIT dye and lots of instant coffee granules in the dye bath to get the muted grubby rose color.

Next, loosely fold your coffee filter in half and in half again.

Pinch the pointed end and twist.

Some people staple it at this point, but I find the twisting usually holds well enough.

Each rose takes 7-12 coffee filters.

Lay down one filter as the base.  

Glue 6-8 filters around the edge of the circle.

Finish with one or two in the center.

Now you can add them to a bamboo skewer, your wall, the cover of a book, etc.

For this banner, I glued 2 roses back to back with twine sandwiched between.

I used three different twin sheets from the thrift store.

Two were floral patterned and one was the palest blue.

The sheets were ripped into strips.

Then a pulled off the loose threads.

And I cut them the desired length.

For these, they were about 8-10 inches long.

I just tied them to the twine while watching TV.

I love how it turned out...

I am not sure where it will end up.

Maybe in the studio...

Maybe as a gift...

For this post, I clipped it to the fence in the back yard.

I hope it brightens your day....

Thanks for stopping by....

We will be linking up with these great blogs....

Sweet Halloween Tags

Remember not too long ago, I shared a simple tutorial on stained tags.

You can find it here.

You can do the same thing to create colored tags  by just substituting RIT Dye for the coffee and cinnamon.

An even simpler way to dye small batches of things, is to mix your dye and water in a large Ziploc bag.

Just add you tags/lace, fabric and paper right to the dye in the bag.

Squish it around a bit.

You may want to leave it in the zipped up bag to intensify the color.

Then remove the tags and let them dry like before.

I dyed some tags orange for fall.

I ran them through the Sizzix Big Shot with some embossing folders.

Then I went crazy giving them a sweet Halloween makeover.

You can see the workbench was covered with goodies...buttons, rossettes, stickers, dyed cheesecloth, lace, paper bits, vintage haloween images and halloween stickers...

I usually start by sewing paper scraps or images to the tags first.

I added some lace sewn to some as well.

Then I start gluing goodies to get the look I want...

A lot of the images are printed on muslin from the Graphics Fairy.

These will be perfect tied to pumpkins.

I just love tags...

Not sure why...

I just always have.

Maybe because they are more usable than a card.

I love a homemade card, but a tag I keep out long after I 
got it/made it....

I stamped some spider webs on vellum as well...

And punched out some spiders from black card stock.

I always think of a tag as a mini canvas for artwork.

Hope you feel inspired to try it out as well...

Thanks for stopping by....

A Raggy Rug from Old Sheets... A DIY Tutorial

I showed you in an earlier post how my daughter dyes some old sheets from the thrift store to use for a rug.

After she dyed all the sheets, she ripped them in strips.

Each strip was about an inch wide and the length of the fabric.

She removed all those loose strings.

And she cut the strips to about 6 inches long.

She cut a piece of non-slip rug mat to the size she wanted.

Hers is quite small.

About 18 inches by 24 inches.

Then she just started looping the fabric pieces through the non-slip rug mat. 

Some tutorials she had seen had merely slid the strip in and centered it.

She wanted hers to be strong so she tied each one.

Yup!

Each One.

She worked on it for about a week while watching TV.

About 1-4 hours a day.

I adore her colors...

And they actually match another rug we bought her before so they will go together.

She did every square in a row and then skipped a row between.  

She also left two rows around the edge to keep it from curling.

The back is pretty too.

Viola!

Finished!

She was very pleased wit it.

She should be.

It is awesome.

I already had the RIT Dye since I am on the Rit Dyesigner Team.

Check out my board here.

But if I had purchased it, I would have spent less than $15 on dye.

The sheets were $3 total.

I have seen other raggy rugs where this is where they really racked up the cost.

You could use fabric you already have or use old sheets like we did.  

Our thrift store sells stained sheets as drop cloths for 50 cents to $1 each,

Since we were dying them, a couple stains did not show.

And we had the non-slip rug mat already.

Sizes vary but buying one big enough for your rug will run $7-10.

So you could do this for about $30.

Ours cost $3.

My daughter entered it in the fair.

When I went to enter it, the little girl that was carrying things back to the judging tables, held it up to her face and rubbed her cheek against it.

A good sign...

Thanks for stopping by...

We will be linking up with these great blogs.

Wile RIT Dye did provide me with the dye for this project, all opinions are my own.