My newest addiction: Pseudo-Stained glass earrings

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!  /evil cackling

Creators, lend me your eyes! I present to you the newest additions; fresh off the slab and here on your screen: pseudo-stained glass earrings!  Ta-da! *poof*

Feast your eyes upon their transparent beauty. The glory of these earrings is that they are made with simple aluminum wire and color tinted glaze. It works very similarly to a liquid bubble wand: the glaze is smeared across the smaller wires and the surface tension keeps it from popping. The clear glaze gives the transparent look (which is like stained glass), thus earning the prefix 'pseudo' since it is not made of glass. 

Because I think this technique is incredible I have been inspired to create several earrings with different colors (ROYGBIV). Inspiration began to infect my tiny brains after completing the colors of the rainbow. I wanted to kick it up a notch, like Emeril, *POW* and started making shapes:  my first attempt were ocean waves, which were then followed by tropical green leaves.

I love that each pair is unique and quite beautiful in it's own right. Click here to see the rest of my creatures. Or here to take one as your own pet.

Thank you for your time, but now I must depart for the haunting hour begins! Muahahahaha...

Not just another craft blog.

Hello blog community!

As this is my first time blogging, please be kind. The intentions for this blog is to share my hobby of crafting with anyone who cares to check in. I first started to use Facebook...but that feels out of place, especially since I enjoy selling my hand made crafts.

Here it is: I'm a 23yr old college graduate, searching (desperately) for employment, an aspiring scientist, and have been releasing stress via a creative outlet. I guess you can say that I have been creative my entire life and started crafting before my child knew what I was doing. I thoroughly enjoyed the book order pamphlets in elementary school; not for the books but for neat the projects that hid inside. As I got older my curiosity grew and moved on to crocheting, bead work, stamping, knitting, sewing, and jewelry making.

I feel inclined to give a watered down version of my biography, but this blog is about crafting and not me (particularly) so let's stick to the craft!

My most recent jewelry endeavor includes the use of color pencils, shrink plastic and an oven. That's right: SHIRNKY DINKS! Shrink plastic has been my obsession as of late and here's why: you can literally create anything you want. The possibilities are truly endless!  Alright, my recent inspirations have been monarch butterfly wing earrings and microscope slide earrings made from shrink plastic.

First I traced the outline for the wing and then colored in the details using colored pencils. The same was done for the slides. After coloring each piece was cut out, hole punched (yes, I used a regular hole puncher because I don't really want to fork out the money for the 1/8 jewelry hole puncher), and placed onto a foil covered baking sheet.

Pre-Bake

The directions specify using paper, which I typically use, but when you're out of paper bags foil works just fine! The oven is set to 325 degrees Fahrenheit and baked until shrunk. I personally like to take the shinkydinks off of the baking sheet and onto a flat, cool surface to decrease the risk of crooked pieces.

Post-Bake

As you can see the pieces got thicker and smaller! Woohoo!

Now is the fun part: designing the earrings. There is a local bead shop called My Thing (in Turlock) which has a wonderful array of beads, spacers, caps, and hooks. I get most of my beads from this store and the women who own/work there are absolutely wonderful!

After playing around with color schemes and bead shapes/sizes here is what I came up with!

Finished Monarch Butterfly Wing Earrings

Finished Microscope Slide Earrings

And there you have it! 

Enjoy!

-nnvillan