more sparkles sparkles sparkles

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I have a weak­ness for spark­ly things. A cou­ple of years ago I shared a tuto­r­i­al for mak­ing spark­ly ear­rings with but­tons. After being inspired by these ear­rings by Hap­pi­ness is Cre­at­ing, AND final­ly buy­ing myself a bot­tle of Mod Podge Dimen­sion­al Mag­ic (with a Michaels 50% off one reg­u­lar item coupon), I found a new and improved way of mak­ing spark­ly ear­rings :D

I used:

1 clean kitchen sponge

4mm ear­ring posts with backings

spark­ly nail pol­ish (I got a Sal­ly Hansen “Ice Queen” and a “Big Teal” from the dol­lar store)

Mod Podge Dimen­sion­al Magic

a dash of patience

1. Stick the ear­ring posts into the sponge so it stands upright

2. Apply a coat of spark­ly nail pol­ish to the posts (I put the teal one on first). Let dry for half hour (this is where the patience comes in… there’re lots of small steps with long stretch of wait­ing in between)

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3. Repeat step 2 a cou­ple more times.

4. When the nail pol­ish is com­plete­ly dried (I sug­gest dry­ing overnight after final coat, because the nail pol­ish does build up to a bit of a dome on its own, and while the top lay­er has hard­en, the lay­ers under­neath may remain soft and take a while to dry), apply dimen­sion­al mag­ic, wait a cou­ple of hours, apply sec­ond coat to cre­ate as full of a dome shape as pos­si­ble with­out the glaze run­ning over.

5. Let dry overnight, and it’s done! :D

Here’s a super macro pic­ture of them…

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I’m not sure if Mod Podge is water­proof so I would avoid wear­ing them in the show­er. But I’m quite hap­py with how they turned out :) I like that they’re a lot small­er than my oth­er spark­ly ear­rings tutorial.

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Have a bright and beau­ti­ful weekend!

 

heart of the sea

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I recent­ly went to a mille­fiori jew­el­ry work­shop with a good neigh­bour, who spot­ted this Groupon and we jumped at the opportunity.

I’ve always been fas­ci­nat­ed by mille­fiori. I used to be obsessed with mak­ing imi­ta­tion ones with fimo when I was a kid. But I’ve nev­er worked with real glass mille­fiori canes. So here we are! :D

We did­n’t get to make the canes but we used them in kind of a mosa­ic project, fill­ing pen­dant bezel trays with pieces of the glass canes.

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Aren’t they so pretty?

I decid­ed to use blue and green ones. And I found a heart! :D If it were an art­work, I would call it “heart of the sea”.

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The shop own­ers would then pour epoxy or resin into it to seal all the glass pieces in. We left our pieces there for the resin to set, and picked them up a few days later.

Isn’t this beau­ti­ful? I love the air bub­bles in it, and the feel­ing of depth that the epoxy creates.

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With my macro lens :D

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I think it looks great on a long chain :D

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It’s a bit of a trek for me to get to the shop, so while I was there to pick up my project, I went on a small adven­ture near­by :D pic­tures to come, stay tuned!

Have a good rest of the week!

 

treasures from the beach

I don’t swim, or play beach vol­ley, nor do I enjoy sun-tan­ning, and read­ing in the sun hurts my eyes, but I do enjoy going to the beach, comb­ing for beach glass! :D

We’ve vis­it­ed a cou­ple of local beach­es this sum­mer and found some real­ly inter­est­ing beach glass pieces. This piece has some loopy mark­ing on it (super macro pic­ture tak­en with the handy Pho­to­jo­jo macro band :D)

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And the oth­er day I made it into a neck­lace. I was quite pleased with how it turned out :)

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This can­dle hold­er idea from Love­ly Greens has been on my to-make list for a while. Final­ly I got all the mate­r­i­al to put it togeth­er. I used drink­ing glass­es from the dol­lar store, the small­est votive hold­ers I could find, which hap­pened to be at the Muji store, but I think oth­er places like Michaels or Ikea might have them too, and some dol­lar store sea shells for the base, because the votive hold­ers are much short­er than the glasses.

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It’s such a great way to show of the unique pieces of glass. Like this one that seems to come from a screw top bottle.

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Mike took some real­ly nice pic­tures of them with his cam­era :D

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Have a bright and hap­py week, everyone!

 

library love

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Anoth­er rea­son to love and sup­port the pub­lic library <3

I got this 3‑D print­ed at the Toron­to Ref­er­ence Library! :D If you live in Toron­to, the 3D print­ers are also avail­able at the Fort York branch and the Scar­bor­ough Civic Cen­tre branch.

Back in Feb­ru­ary I was feel­ing real­ly blah and stressed out at work. So I decid­ed to sign up for a course that has absolute­ly noth­ing to do with my job, which was the 3D print­ing cer­tifi­cate class at the library. Once peo­ple com­plete the class, they can book the 3D print­ers to use when­ev­er they’re avail­able. They charge a very rea­son­able 5 cents per minute for the use of the print­er, and that was all. One can choose from many colours of plas­tic, and staff is there to help if any­one needs tech­ni­cal support.

I once saw some­one wear­ing a 3D print­ed bracelet and I was real­ly impressed, so I’ve always want­ed to make one. But of course I have not idea how to design one! So I down­loaded one I liked best from Thin­gi­verse, called the Sub­di­vi­sion Bracelet.

I must be hon­est that, after 3 months, I don’t remem­ber much from the cer­tifi­cate course so I had no clue what to do after down­load­ing the file. Kind of embar­rass­ing. Good thing Mike was there as well and he’s very techy. And the library staff were very cool with drop­ping us hints and reminders as we appeared to be clue­less­ly flip­ping through our notes try­ing to fig­ure out what the next steps are and all the set­tings we should be adjusting.

Our first try did­n’t go so well. For some unknown rea­son the print­er stopped work­ing prop­er­ly. Not only did the kind library staff not charge me for the failed piece, they offered to try print­ing anoth­er for me the next morn­ing on a dif­fer­ent machine, and I’d just have to go and pick it up!

I think the staff were also want­i­ng to take the oppor­tu­ni­ty to test out an intri­cate project on a new machine, but I thought they were super kind to offer!

And it worked! It took just over 2 hours to print and costs about $8. Here’s a dif­fer­ent side of it.

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I under­stand the 3D print­er as kind of like a very pre­cise auto­mat­ed glue gun, which squeezes out thin lines of hot melt­ed glue to build a form. You can see the lines of glue pret­ty clear­ly in the pic­ture above, and under the super macro lens.

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And this is how it looks on an arm :)

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The sur­faces are less smooth than I imag­ined, I think it can be improved by sand­ing, but I think I might be too lazy to do that :S I’m OK with the way it is.

I’m think­ing of going back to make some Christ­mas gifts this year :D

Have a love­ly week­end, everyone!

 

caturday

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Paint­ed some pet rocks one day. Mag­i­cal spark­ly cats! :D

The white one lives on my desk at work now, gift­ed the yel­low one to my desk neigh­bour. Going to pick up more rocks from the beach when the weath­er gets warmer, and paint more cats :D

Also, final­ly vis­it­ed the very first cat cafe in Toron­to!

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As expect­ed, the cats are most­ly sleep­ing when we vis­it­ed. But it’s still nice to hang out :)

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The Cat Cafe takes in cats from the Humane Soci­ety, and the cats can be adopt­ed. These two are best buds and must be adopt­ed together :)

In oth­er news, I bought some rein­deer moss the oth­er day and made some ter­rar­i­um neck­laces for the shop. I thought they looked pret­ty nice. This one had some agate chips and laven­der in it.

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Hope every­one’s hav­ing a good week­end! :D

 

 

Christmas crafting fun :D

Some of the gifts I made for Christmas :)

This was from a pat­tern by the Knit Cafe, I got it while par­tic­i­pat­ing in the annu­al TTC Kni­ta­long. I don’t usu­al­ly knit with such fine yarn, so it took me quite a long time, but the result is well worth the effort!

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I like the con­trast between the sol­id garter stitch and the lacy mesh stitch when it’s all wrapped around. Might make anoth­er one some­times, with a dif­fer­ent colour combination :)

Here’s a much quick­er project I made for Mike, using Bernat Blan­ket. It’s quite a soft but stur­dy yarn with very lit­tle stretch, I thought it’d be per­fect for slip­pers. The pat­tern is from Rain­bows and Sun­shine. Fits him per­fect­ly! :D

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This bon­net was fin­ger knit­ted on the plane, on our way back from the east coast, with a skein of beau­ti­ful Sir­dar Kiko. It’s a baby show­er gift I made it for a friend who used to work as a flight atten­dant on the air­line we flew with :)

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This is one of the stones from Mike’s grand­pa’s col­lec­tion, which I wrapped with wire and made into pen­dants. Mike’s grand­pa passed away a few years ago. He was quite a semi-pre­cious stone and fos­sil enthu­si­ast when he was young!

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I’m not edu­cat­ed in stone iden­ti­fi­ca­tion at all, so if any­one knows what this stone is, please feel free to drop me a note! I made a total of 13 pen­dants for aunts and cousins, but I was too excit­ed about wrap­ping them up and writ­ing notes to go along with them, I neglect­ed to take pic­tures of the fin­ished neck­laces. I fol­lowed this handy tuto­r­i­al for the wire-wrapping.

While vis­it­ing Mike’s par­ents we looked through more of grand­pa’s rock col­lec­tion, includ­ing this piece of pet­ri­fied wood, with trans­par­ent inclu­sions! How cool is that?

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Look at the light shin­ing through. Maybe it can be made into a sun catcher.

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And here’s my young nephew wear­ing his present :D

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I fol­lowed the owl hat pat­tern by Kat Goldin. Also made these owl mitts from Down Clover­laine for my oth­er young nephew, this pineap­ple bag for my niece, a cou­ple of knit neckwarmers/cowls that I made up with bulky weight yarn, this casse­role car­ri­er from Moo­gly for my moth­er-in-law, and a cou­ple more projects that I can’t show you just yet because the recip­i­ents haven’t opened them :)

After mak­ing gifts I thought I’d spend the hol­i­days mak­ing some­thing for myself. I recent­ly start­ed on this sweater from the cur­rent issue of Inter­weave Cro­chet. Here I am drink­ing tea, eat­ing Kinder eggs, and watch­ing fam­i­ly play scrab­ble while I cro­chet — hol­i­day at its finest :D

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We’ve also got some very unusu­al weath­er in our cor­ner of the world this Christ­mas. It’s not unusu­al to not have snow, but it was warm enough to find these turkey tails (I think that’s what they are) in the backyard!

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Hap­py about the fun­gi sight­ing, at the same time a bit uneasy about the dou­ble-dig­it tem­per­a­ture :S

Then on the week­end it was very windy, with water splash­ing onto the lake­side road. Reminds me of the roar­ing sea in the east coast! I don’t think I’ve ever seen the lake with waves like that, but then I don’t see the lake very much from where I live.

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But all in all we had a fun time away from the city vis­it­ing fam­i­ly. And I’m grate­ful to have one more week of hol­i­days until the new year, which means more time to write about craft­ing fun here on the blog! :D

Wish­ing you a won­der­ful week!

 

adventure in rock-felting

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I was look­ing up Christ­mas gift ideas and stum­bled upon tuto­ri­als for felt­ed rocks. All I need­ed was some wool rov­ing, some stones, hot water and soap. I had all of those things. So I thought I’d give it a try.

There are many tuto­ri­als for felt­ed stones. I fol­lowed the one from Dai­ly Colours. I was gift­ed two bags of rov­ing some years ago. One bag was in fall colours, and the oth­er was in beau­ti­ful shades of blue. I had real­ly want­ed the blue rov­ing to work, but it just would­n’t felt/bind/shrink around the rock. I thought the water was­n’t hot enough, or I was­n’t rolling the rocks in the right way… then I noticed that the tuto­r­i­al had specif­i­cal­ly not­ed not to use “super­wash” wool, so then I read the label on my rov­ing, and noticed that what I was using was indeed super­wash wool. No won­der it did­n’t work!

For some unknown rea­sons the fall colour rov­ing worked much bet­ter though. It felt like the wool did­n’t bind as firm­ly as it was sup­posed to around the stone, but I thought they still look great! Next time I’ll get some dif­fer­ent wool, and maybe pick up some rocks from the beach! :D

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I think I might try stitch­ing on them. Will keep you post­ed if I do!

Have a hap­py weekend!

 

lately

Made a neck­lace for the shop this week. Prob­a­bly the most elab­o­rate jew­el­ry piece I’ve made so far. Quite proud of it :D

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The feath­er was made with shrink plas­tic. I might make more of these, maybe with dif­fer­ent colour chevron stripes!

And then I made this.

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The stones were gifts from a friend so this is def­i­nite­ly not going to the shop. But this was the first time I tried mak­ing this style of neck­lace and I think it worked out well, so I might make more of this too if I can find sim­i­lar drilled stone chips (not sure if that’s what they’re called :S).

Also want to men­tion that last week­end we went to a new retro malt shop down­town! :D

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Bean and Bak­er! We had a vanil­la malt shake, which was dreamy. They also have pies of both sweet and savory vari­eties, and hand­craft­ed sodas!

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I high­ly rec­om­mend a vis­it if you’re in the neighbourhood!

This is not late­ly, we went there back in May, but haven’t had a chance to post these photos.

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Dur­ing Doors Open Toron­to we went to the Gibral­tar Point Light­house on the Toron­to Islands, which is the old­est light­house of the Great Lakes! (Also sup­pos­ed­ly haunt­ed :S) I fol­lowed the Roundo­graph tuto­r­i­al by Pho­to­jo­jo to mim­ic pho­tos tak­en by the Kodak No. 1 in the 1890s.

Here’s one with a dif­fer­ent fil­ter, which I also like very much.

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I also took the Diana to the light­house. Here is the lad­der lead­ing to the top of the light­house. It’s my favourite pic­ture of the batch.

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And we reached the light of the light­house! :D

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Me at the foot of the lighthouse.

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And on the fer­ry between the island and the city.

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Hap­py Fri­day every­one! :D

weekend wonders

Thrift­ing at a Val­ue Vil­lage while vis­it­ing Mike’s home­town sev­er­al hours away from Toron­to. Found these! :D

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This is a brooch, looks like it’s enamel.

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There’s some­thing hilar­i­ous about the way he looks, I just had to take him home. Looks like a road run­ner, but it might well be a dinosaur — giv­en that appar­ent­ly most dinosaurs were feath­ered! (accord­ing to this article)

Then I did some apart­ment gar­den­ing at home, and repot­ted the suc­cu­lent we brought home from our trip to Mon­tre­al.

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I fol­lowed this tuto­r­i­al to make the dinosaur planter. The dinosaur toy was already a pret­ty bright pink, which I liked, so I did­n’t spray paint it. It did­n’t have much room for the roots, so I hope the suc­cu­lent does well in there.

I cov­ered the top with the seashells I got for the aspara­gus fern to help sta­bi­lize the plant.

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Will be back with the sec­ond part of the tiny sushi series! Stay tuned :) Hope every­one had a good week­end, wish­ing you a good start to the week!

 

holiday crafting

I was wait­ing until the last presents were opened to post this :D And by the way, if you’re vis­it­ing because of the grown-up cardi­gan, thanks so much for drop­ping by! I don’t think I’ve ever had that many views in a day before. Thanks so much for check­ing out the pattern!

So, hol­i­day craft­ing! This bon­sai is a cus­tom order. I’ve nev­er made any­thing like this so it was all an exper­i­ment. I nev­er real­ly do prepara­to­ry sketch­es (or check gauge, or make swatch­es) but I actu­al­ly drew a pic­ture of how I want­ed the branch­es to twist this way and that. It did­n’t turn out look­ing like the pic­ture at all after I insert­ed the sculpt­ing wires, they seem to have a mind of their own? But I’m glad it worked out look­ing like a bon­sai any­way :D

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And we even had a bon­sai pot hid­den away in our clos­et, wait­ing for years to be used for this of course! It was from a bon­sai that did­n’t live :( appar­ent­ly few peo­ple can keep a bon­sai alive for long — hence the need for a bon­sai that nev­er dies!

And I added a tiny gnome because I thought the bon­sai looked a bit lone­ly. Here’s a close up of the gnome. It was cro­cheted with embroi­dery floss with a 2.3mm hook (2.3 is kind of an odd size for a cro­chet hook don’t you think? But that’s what it says on the hook… any­way, I digress).

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He’s kind of like a can­dy corn, except with eyes and a beard. Maybe I can even make a can­dy corn gnome in the fall… I like the gnome so much that I put him in the shop :D With a new and improved extra fuzzy beard. He is a pin :)

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And then Mike request­ed a tiny yeti pin for his co-work­er who is rather fond of yetis. So I thought I could use the same method as the tiny yeti, except with the thinnest yarn I have and the trusty 2.3mm hook…

Behold the tini­est yeti!

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Does­n’t he look like he’s ready to give the most sin­cere hug? :D He’s in the shop as well. Both the gnome and the yeti are about an inch tall. My hand is in the pic­tures for scale.

And I made these for Mike — they’re soot spir­it hand warm­ers :D

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I decid­ed to make hand warm­ers for Mike because his hands get real­ly cold in the win­ter, to the point where he has dif­fi­cul­ties typ­ing when he first gets into work in the morn­ing. So I thought these would work great if he pops them in the microwave for 30 sec­onds before he heads out to sub­way to work in the morn­ing and before he heads home from the office at night. There are many tuto­ri­als on the web show­ing how to make them (with rice inside). But because I have black flan­nel on hand I thought it would make real­ly great soot spir­its! They appear in My Neigh­bour Totoro and Spir­it­ed Away. Here’s a love­ly video mon­tage of them in action if you haven’t seen the movies already :D

Also made these for my friend’s shop, cat ear­rings and necklace!

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I bought them from a local Etsy sell­er, Yum Yum Objects. The shop own­er is super friend­ly, and the pack­age was wrapped in book pages and pat­tern tis­sue, with extra cat beads! The cat beads are a beau­ti­ful translu­cent grey that have an iri­des­cent qual­i­ty to it in the light. And so of course I have to imme­di­ate­ly make myself a neck­lace (and a pair of ear­rings) when the beads came in the mail! :D I’ve been wear­ing it for the past few days. So excited.

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I also knit­ted and cro­cheted an assort­ment of scarfs/neckwarmers, a shawl, a hat, a few brooches and a loop stitch bath­mat for var­i­ous fam­i­ly mem­bers, but did­n’t take pic­tures of them. Aaaand there’s one more gift that I haven’t yet men­tioned because it will come with a pat­tern! So stay tuned! :D

Have a won­der­ful week everyone!