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)

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…

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.

Have a bright and beau­ti­ful weekend!

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.

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”.

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.

With my macro lens :D

I think it looks great on a long chain :D

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!

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)

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

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.

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.

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

Have a bright and hap­py week, everyone!

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.

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.

And this is how it looks on an arm :)

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!

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

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

Have a hap­py weekend!