From a flea mar­ket! Found it on an ear­ring, with the blue glass bead and met­al bead. Rehung it for a necklace.

There was some rust on it and I kind of scratched it while try­ing to clean it off. But it’s okay, it’s all shiny now :)

 

Wish­ing you a delight­ful week!

 

 

I love get­ting Roy­al Mail :D

This time it car­ries two opalite beads that I ordered from Ker­rie Berrie, a very friend­ly bead shop in Brighton. Not that I’ve been there in per­son (I wish I could be there in per­son), but the ship­ping was fast and when I had ques­tions they replied right away. Very friend­ly ser­vices. And they have teardrop-shaped opalite beads!

I’ve been look­ing for opalite beads in this spe­cif­ic shape for a long time. The local bead stores don’t seem to have them. Of course I could get a string of like 100 on Etsy, but I don’t need that many. (Well, Etsy shops would prob­a­bly sell them in a string of 10 or some­thing, I was exag­ger­at­ing. But I don’t even need 10) I just want­ed one to make a neck­lace with. So I just kept look­ing every time I go to a bead store, hop­ing it would won­drous­ly appear in front of me in a bead tray one day.

And one day I did a Google image search and saw a pic­ture with two per­fect­ly smooth teardrop-shaped opalite beads. I clicked on it and it took me to this bead store in Brighton, where one could shop online and buy as few as ONE opalite bead. I bought two :D

And final­ly a neck­lace was made, fol­low­ing this tuto­r­i­al on how to wrap a briolette.

I love opalites because they glow.

:D

Anoth­er hap­py news! Last Fri­day Sara of Illu­mi­nate Cro­chet post­ed an inter­view that she did with me :D Feel­ing so grate­ful that Sara gave me space on her blog to talk about cro­chet and plush and things I love. You can read the inter­view here, and be sure to browse around her awe­some, infor­ma­tive blog and fea­tures on oth­er crocheters!

Have a won­der­ful week, every­one! :D

 

Thank you so much for your enthu­si­asm and sup­port for the craft-along par­ty! I’m so excit­ed :D Will post more details in the first week of Novem­ber — stay tuned! :D

Had an idea for mak­ing but­ton ear­rings. I have a mixed bag of vin­tage but­tons, many of them make inter­est­ing ear­rings (I think) but there was only one of each. So I made a pile of sin­gle studs for the shop. I often wear dif­fer­ent ear­rings on each ear, so I hope there will be peo­ple who like them as much as I do. But I also would­n’t be too upset if I get to keep all of them. Espe­cial­ly the sweet orange rose. I was so tempt­ed to keep it for myself.

 

And I made pairs of but­ton ear­rings. Very simple.

 

Have a great start to the week, every­one! :D

 

 

 

It would be so much fun to orga­nize a weav­ing par­ty! :D

A com­ment from a blog vis­i­tor, Kate, has moti­vat­ed me to just pick up some yarn and start weav­ing. Thanks, Kate! :D

I found a paper plate and cut notch­es all around it, about 1″ apart, and then taped lengths of cot­ton string across, like so…

Here’s the back of this make-shift loom…

Then I just tied a length of yarn to one of the strings in the mid­dle and start­ed weav­ing between the strings, over and under, over and under, over and under… Until I ran out of the colour of yarn I was using, then I tied a dif­fer­ent colour of yarn to the yarn tail, and con­tin­ued weaving…

When I’ve got­ten a big enough cir­cle (I decid­ed that I want­ed to make a coast­er half way through), I cut the strings near where they’re taped to the plate, one at a time, and tied each loose end to the last round of weaved yarn.

I hid all the loose ends and yarn tails under a piece of felt, which I cut to the size of the fin­ished weav­ing and sewed onto the weav­ing around the edge.

And this is the front!

A fun par­ty coast­er :D

 

Did it all while watch­ing TV. Very relax­ing. I think it would so much fun to orga­nize a weav­ing par­ty, where every­one can weave and chat.

Have a great evening, everyone!

 

 

 

Shrink plas­tic is so much fun. I had long been think­ing about mak­ing some stuff with it for my shop. Final­ly got around to it :D

I like draw­ing cir­cles con­nect­ed to one anoth­er. This par­tic­u­lar shape reminds me of the abalone shells my grand­par­ents gave me when I vis­it­ed them in Hong Kong.

 

More neck­laces. The one on the far left was a bit of an exper­i­ment of plas­tic fus­ing. Accord­ing to the list of “Mind-shrink­ing Ideas” (that’s what it says on the pack­age of shrink plas­tic I have), I can fuse lay­ers of shrunk plas­tic togeth­er under high­er tem­per­a­ture in the oven. The round shapes are actu­al­ly cir­cles from the hole punch. 

The mid­dle one is a fire­fly that glows in the dark! :D And I’ve always been fas­ci­nat­ed by seahorses.

 

More glow in the dark fire­flies, aster­isks, and abalones.

 

Had fun com­ing up with things to draw for the stud ear­rings :D Actu­al­ly, as I’m look­ing at this pic­ture I real­ize that all of these are my favourite things… let’s hope the shop vis­i­tors like them as much as I do. And the starfish glows in the dark too!

Alright, enough of this talk about glow­ing in the dark — wan­na see them in action? :D

That’s the best my point-and-shoot cam­era can do for cap­tur­ing images in the dark, but they real­ly do glow! I was quite impressed. 

(I found out that the emis­sion of light by a liv­ing organ­ism is called bio­lu­mi­nes­cence — isn’t that such a cool word?)

Any­way. And then I thought it would be cool to make a plas­tic feath­er. Kind of like those leather feath­er ear­rings that I’ve seen a lot on craft blogs. But they turned out so much more beau­ti­ful than I thought because of the way the plas­tic twists and turns as it shrinks in the oven…

So I did what most craft sell­ers often do.

I kept it. For myself. 

Ha!

The sin­gle ear­ring goes with my hair­cut :D

 

But of course I made anoth­er set for the shop. Even added a glit­tery but­ton stud ear­ring to make a funky asym­met­ri­cal set! :D

 

I’m hop­ing that this will keep the shop full for a month or two before anoth­er school break. But I’ve got to say that I real­ly, real­ly, real­ly enjoy the oppor­tu­ni­ty to make my favourite things with­out hav­ing to keep (and find place in the apart­ment for) all of it. And mak­ing a bit of mon­ey is always a bonus.

 

Have an awe­some evening! :D

 

 

Was inves­ti­gat­ing the idea of wet felt­ing as a pos­si­ble group activ­i­ty last night. The tuto­ri­als I read said that a felt­ed bead takes about 30 sec­onds to a minute to make, so I thought, I’ll just give it a try now! I have a bunch of rov­ing and there’s plen­ty of dish soap. 

But after an hour of rolling felt between my palms noth­ing real­ly came togeth­er. Just clumps of shape­less fuzz that aren’t stick­ing togeth­er (they will be put into good use as stuff­ing for plush­es). Pos­si­bly because I was try­ing to see if it would work with luke­warm water, because it won’t be pos­si­ble to use boil­ing hot water in group.

Then I read a cou­ple of tuto­ri­als of mak­ing felt bracelet with kids, and it involves warm water, so I thought I’d give it a try. 

It was indeed a lot eas­i­er. Here I am rolling the ends togeth­er on my own wrist. It was quite fun.

 

It turned out a bit big so I thread (or more like force, with the aid of a piece of wire) a red wood­en bead onto it.

 

It feels very soft.

Have a great week­end, everyone!