O' Fun For...my newly ear-holed sister

My sister Chelsey turned 21 this week. We were going to go get drunk, but that fell through when we realized that we don't drink. Blast! Instead, I thought I'd do something equally wild, and make a pair of earrings for her newly-pierced ears. Oh yes. I just get crazy sometimes. Don't try to stop me.

I made two pairs of the same earrings since my sister-in-law Corin requested a pair to go with the necklace I made for her last birthday, and these happen to match. The two pairs turned out a little different from one another. One dangled down longer, since I seem to have issues making the same thing more than once. I'll give the danglier ones to Corin, since she is the more experienced earring-wearer. You never know who might lose an eye if you give an overly-dangly pair to a rookie. Safety first.



Since I started this blog with the hopes of contributing to the internet-craftiness-sources that taught me all I know, I have made yet another picture-heavy tutorial for you! I learned, though, why there weren't many wire-wrapping tutorials out there when I was trying to learn. See, you need two hands to do the wrapping, and that leaves very few good options for taking the pictures. I could...

A) Try to mess with the timer on the camera. Get lots of dark, blurry shots of my shoulder or the wall behind me.
B) Hold the camera between my jaw and shoulder like when you talk on the phone while both hands are occupied. This results in more of the timer problems, coupled with the camera falling down my shirt. Those pictures might not make it past some of your internet content filters...
C) Ask my husband to spend half an hour watching me make the earrings so I would have my own personal cameraman for the event. The children will inevitably follow him into the room, resulting in a broken camera and one or more wire-cutting injuries. I decided I'd rather have him put the Christmas lights up.

So.... I took pictures of what things looked like in-between steps, since it left me with a free hand. If you get confused, Google wire-wrapping until you find a handier tutorial by someone who can manage multi-tasking and may actually know what they are doing. Also, the super-macro setting I used to focus on the tiny wire made it look like I have horrible man-hands. I have very lovely man-hands in real life...

*Disclaimer: I don't know much about this whole jewelry making thing, so I use a lot of made up names for stuff and fudge my way through most of it. I thought a tutorial by a beginner would help give people who wanted to try it out some confidence. If I can do it, so can you. (That's why I cook. Yan can do it.)

Step one: gather your tools. There is sterling silver jewelry wire... uhhh... some gauge that makes it bendy, but not too bendy? I don't remember what gauge. Time to Google for more information. Maybe this is not the most informative tutorial I have ever made... Baby nail-clippers to cut the wire, two sterling silver fishhooks earrings, flat-nosed jewelry pliers, tiny rounded pointy pliers (I should learn what to call all this stuff) and your beads.



Cut a nice long-ish (12 inches or more?) piece of the wire, and pull it through your fingers a few times to straighten it out a bit. Pinch it about 1" from the end with the flat pliers, and bend the ends down to get the wire the right shape to work with the teardrop bead. You'll have to straighten it out while threading, but this makes it easier to work with once it is threaded, I think.




Once the bead is threaded, bend the ends up towards the point of the bead and twist a few times. (Just like a twisty-tie for your bread bag.) Snip the extra from the short end.





Now make a loop by clamping the wire with the pointy pliers and wrapping around one plier-point. (This is where Google can clear things up again...) Pinch the loop with the flat pliers, and use your other hand to wrap the wire around a million times, starting directly below the loop and working down over the point of the bead as far as you want. Now, there is probably some magical technique I haven't run across yet that tells you how to finish this off so your wire doesn't lose its shape and get all bunchy, but I haven't learned it. I clip the wire just after turning past the edge of the bead, then bend it back at the tip or up or wherever I need to until the wire stays put. Pretty sure that's not the right way, but that's what I do.





Now take the wire leftover from the teardrop part, and make a tiny loop with the pointy pliers at one end. This is to hold your bead on the wire. You can get all fancy and make a swirly or something instead if you are feeling daring that day.



Thread your smaller beads onto the wire. For this pair of earrings, I made the three smaller-bead-danglies in three sizes: long, medium, and short, to make it awesome. Yes. It was awesome indeed. This picture is of the long one. Decide how long you want the dangly to be, and use your pointy pliers to bend the wire at a 90 degree angle there, and then make your loop. Now, don't mess with your loop too much. It probably won't be a nice pretty circle without a lot of practice, but that doesn't really matter. If you mess with reshaping it too much, it becomes weak. Then right when you have finished your lovely project, you put the earring on and the wire snaps and it falls apart. (That may have happened to me a few times...) After you make your loop, grip it with the flat pliers and use your other hand to wrap the wire down from the loop to the bead, like before with the teardrop, but you stop when you reach the bead. Clip the end close to the wrapped part. Mine look best when I focus on wrapping back and forth instead of trying to make the wire go downwards. (What does she mean, you say? Well, I make sense in my head, if not here...) Repeat for the other two round-bead danglies



Use your flat pliers to bend the loop on your fishhook earring to the side so you can slip your dangly-bead loops onto it. Start with the shortest round bead dangly. To attach the teardrop, make a loop in the end of a wire. About 1" or less up, make another loop perpendicular to the first, then clip. (See picture)





Put the teardrop-dangly on one end of this new loopy-wire thing, and thread the other end onto the fishhook loop. Make sure the pretty side of your teardrop wire will show when the earrings are hanging. (Not the oddly-cut and bent end of your teardrop wrapping.) Then add the medium round-bead dangly, then the longest round-bead dangly. Use the pliers to close the fishhook loop, and Ta-Da!!! You now have some amazing, sparkly earrings.





You can change up this design by using different beads, making the dangly parts different lengths, making more or less danglies, etc. For these red and black earrings I followed what I had done to make these ones a few months ago and made a few small changes.

So happy birthday Chelsey! (And additional Happy Birthday, Corin!)

O' Fun For... people who enjoy huffing paint

I BLOGGED! See? Right here below, there is a PICTURE-HEAVY TUTORIAL on how to do freezer-paper stencils! The Terrorist has slightly relented, allowing me to finally blog for you all! (All 3 of you. You know who you are...) Verna is visiting, and she helped me with this handy tutorial extravaganza. Thanks, Verna! Everyone needs their own Verna.

On to the tutorial-

We will begin with my trip to Wal-Mart to replenish my stencil-spray paint stash. This is what to look for on the shelves in the craft section. They sell them in multi-packs of colors. Having tried a few, here's what I can tell you about them- Black works the best. It is nice and even and does not bleed. Red and Copper are thick, but work fine if you shake them enough. Orange is thick and spattery, but that can be fun. Silver bleeds like crazy, so take care not to use too much detail or lay it on thick.





Materials needed:
*Fabric paint (spray works best)
*Freezer paper
*Shirts or whatnot to spray onto
*paper to draw or print design onto
*Marker to draw design with
*exacto knife (I wish I had one...) box cutter, or scissors
*tape and scrap paper to protect shirt and work surface from over-spray
*self-healing mat or cardboard or something to put under the image while you cut it with the blade
*iron and ironing board
*awesomeness of some kind



I let Toby draw his own design and then outlined it in marker. (Well, I eliminated some of the detail. You try cutting all that detail with a box-cutter!) Brady requested Lightning McQueen.



Cut a piece of freezer paper big enough to cover the image and put it shiny-side down on top of your design. Put these both on top of the self-healing mat or cardboard if you are cutting with a knife or blade instead of scissors. Scissors don't work very well for most detailed designs. Cut your design out of freezer paper by tracing over your marker-lines with the blade.





Good luck keeping your kids' fingers out of the way while you are working. Maybe now is a good time for a Sponge-Bob break...



When you are done, the freezer paper should remain wherever you want the shirt color to show through, and you should have cut out areas where you want the paint to cover. Sometimes you will have little, unconnected pieces to put back in place when you lay the stencil on the shirt. Put the stencil shiny-side down on the shirt, then iron into place. My iron was set to high heat with no steam. In these examples, McQueen will stay shirt-colored and be outlined with paint color. The shark will be filled in with the paint color.





Once the stencil is ironed on to the paper, lay it out where you want to paint it. Cover areas of the shirt that you don't want painted with newspaper or scrap paper and tape it down so the over-spray doesn't creep on in. I like to cut corners, so I just folded the parts of the shirt not covered in freezer paper underneath. This makes the shirt all bumpy and not level, though, and if the paint is runny it will pool and bleed. (That's what I found out after using this slacker shortcut...) Shake the crap out of the can, point, and spray. Look, even Brady can do it!





I made a star shirt, and Verna made a flower shirt:




This is the point when you should take some Excedrin. The fumes will get you! I usually like to do the painting outside, but it was cold and wet today. After the paint is mostly dry, you can peel the freezer paper away and... TA-DA! Amazing! Here are today's finished products:

Thanks to the runny silver paint and the 3-year old "helper", this one bled a bit. Okay, a lot...



Toby's shark worked well:



My stars bled a ton, too. I laid the paint on way too heavy.



Verna got the hang of the silver. Super groovy, Verna!



Here is a dragon shirt we made for Toby when he started school. The image wraps around the entire shirt. To paint it I ironed the stencil on the front and back and then held it from a hanger outside while I sprayed the paint.




This is an example of what can happen when I don't force myself to simplify. Here's to you, James Taylor:




Phew! Well, I think that may have made up for 5 weeks of no posts. Don't expect another one that long for a while, but I will try to keep up with my blog!

O' Fun For....a hurried and late entrance to stake conference (church)

I got ready for church today and realized that I had made a bunch of the things from my outfit, so I decided to add them to my fancy-schmancy new blog. Unfortunately, this meant taking pictures of me. Blah. All photos except bracelet courtesy of my easy-going husband, James.

So... here is my whole outfit:



The headband, shirt, skirt, and bracelet are made by me. The shoes were a super-kick-butt-awesome deal at $2, and matched my shirt and headband exactly, so of course I had to buy them! The earrings were provided by a persuasive Honduran while we were on our cruise this last spring. The headband is just the 3" of fabric I cut off the hem of my shirt when making it.

Here is the bracelet: (sorry about the scary hairy hand, but that's what the macro setting on the camera does for ya')



It is one of my first attempts of jewelry making, done with all the sparkly new beads I got from the gem fair. My friend Lauralee was nice enough to be bead-mom and tour-guide to a few of us newbies at the gem fair. "No, no, not those ones, follow me girls! Yes. Those are the right ones. Buy those." ; )


Here is a close-up of the shirt and the pattern I based it off:




The pattern is one of about a gazillion I rescued from my late Grama T.'s sewing room. Grama was a sewing queen, and being told by my Aunt Jill that I could take home what I wanted from her sewing room was like winning the crafty lottery. I used the basics of the pattern, but used elastic thread on the bobbin to gather the neck instead of casing with elastic. The sleeves were gathered using the handy "stretch the elastic really tight and sew the fabric onto it" method. (Patent pending...) I also lengthened it, added a few rows of shirring with elastic thread under the bust, and added some random buttons. Ta-da! You can tell it is one of my favorite shirts by how the jersey is pilling already! Blast! I'll have to make a bunch more for maternity shirts.

Here is a close-up of the skirt:



It is made from an old pair of white jeans that had gotten a bit too baggy in the bum and too short in the legs. Since I did not make a tutorial while sewing, here is my ever-so-lovely hand-drawn tutorial...



*STEP ONE: Cut off the legs right below the crotch, and the waisty-area right above the crotch, being careful not to cut off the bottom of the back pockets.

*STEP TWO: Cut the legs on each side seam and up the middle (front and back), and then cut them in half at the knee. Cut the hem off all pieces that have cuff hem. You should have 16 leg panely-things, like so:



They will not all be exactly the same shape, but oh-well.




*STEP THREE: Sew a bunch of the leg panels together lengthwise until it is long enough to comfortably wrap around your hip-area. (Sew with short ends of panels facing the same way, so the skirt kind of flares at the bottom.) I didn't use all 16 panels. Now sew the end shut, and you have the skirt-piece. Measure the opening at the bottom of the jean-waist piece, and add pleats to your skirt piece until the measurement at the top matches that measurement.

*STEP FOUR: Sew the skirt piece onto the bottom opening of the waist piece. You may want to pin it and try it on first to make sure the pleats don't sit funny anywhere.



*STEP FIVE: Zig-zag about half an inch from the bottom of the skirt, and then cut tiny slits in the hem about every 1/2 inch or so all the way around so that it will fray faster. Well, that's it! That is my first vaguely-helpful tutorial! I hope you enjoy!