Follow-up to my previous silver-clay post

[rhiannontherose.livejournal.com]

I could almost cry...of course, I have a fever, and that tends to make me rather emotional...

Don't get me wrong...I love to give things to people, to find that perfect something for that perfect someone...and, me being me, I love to be able to make things instead of always buying them. But, as an artist, I have a habit of becomming...attached...to my work. There have been gifts I've put 30 hours into making, nevermind planning, designing, and hunting down resources/materials for. And, with me, it's never just time. Corny? Yes. Have your cheese-cake and eat it too, even. But I really do put a lot of thought, energy, heart and soul into my work. When I was just an artisan as a hobby, giving gifts of my work as I went, there was always, should the work be un-reproducable, a chance for me to stop and consider, fight with myself over whether I'd maybe just maybe keep that one and give away another one. I also always knew the person my work was going to, could continue seeing and enjoying my work through them..and that helped. But now that I am trying to become an artisan for a living, I no longer have that luxury. While I am extremely grateful for them, commissions for original, sometimes un-reproducable works do twist me up a bit inside. It doesn't matter if I fall in love with something I've somehow managed to make...it belonged to someone else before I even made it.

If I make myself think about things (in a fashion which having a fever is not very condusive of), the piece that has me snuffling, can, aside from the fact that natural leaves were used and that ALWAYS makes for some variation, be reproduced, as well as reincarnated in a variety of versions I'm already having a blast planning out. Still, this is, I think, one of the most beautiful and professional things I've ever made. Sending it away was...difficult.



What you see there is a pendant commissioned to go with a particular, silver-purple, shimmer-textured-silk, Mother of the Groom gown. It's made from fine silver, sterling bezels, stones called spectrolite (a labradorite variant with a dull, silver-grey background and plays of purple-blue light inside..think dark moonstone), and highlighting with an oxidation chemical.

::sighs::

Craft Tutorial #584: So you've got a lot of wall space and an addiction to The Dollar Tree

[bitchtransformr.livejournal.com]

( The Frame Project )

(no subject)

[emanonx.livejournal.com]

Does anyone know where to buy skull printed fabric?

Long time, no post, I know. :)

[malytwotails.livejournal.com]

Went out letterboxing today with seiryuu26, to Larrabee State Park, only a few minutes from the house. It's like geocaching, except you use word clues to find the box instead of GPS coordinates. It's like...low-carb geocaching. :) Actually, it's a great way to get started in outdoors treasure hunting, if you don't have a GPS yet.
Anyways, when you letterbox, one of the main differences from geocaching is that it focusses on stamping little "passport books" with a custom stamp that's unique to each letterbox. You bring along your own stamp pad, and if you want, your own stamp, because each box has a passport book that you can leave your own mark in. I'm having these (thanks neogeen!) cut into stamps by this guy (only $3 each, unmounted, which is a PHENOMENAL price). They should be in the mail tomorrow, I'm so excited. :D
Rather than have just a "dollar store" spiral-bound notebook, I wanted to be a little more clever, and with some brave feelings of "I can do it!" (mostly from craftgrrl), I made cool little custom books for myself, Seiryuu, and Soreth.
( Books inside, and how I did it! )

meet me at the train depot! vegan-friendly bag: vinyl meets faux fur

[tummymunkey.livejournal.com]

( (6) )

sewing 101... I hope this works.

[voidedentry.livejournal.com]

I got a sewing machine!!! I've spent the last week and a half teaching myself how to use it.



WARNING: SEVERAL PHOTOS BEHIND CUT! (That is... If I figured out how to link them correctly.)

( I spent 45 minutes organizing my buttons by color and sheen. )

I will feel stupid if a.) the pics don't work and b.) " doesn't mean an inch...

I haven't posted in forever

[crafting-change.livejournal.com]

I've been mostly crafting with yarn, but doing kind of boring stuff, anyway that is no more, and I have 2 cute things I made that I must brag about!!





This is my most 'accomplished' pattern following creation I think. I made this because I have lusted after the pattern for a while, and wanted to show off my back tattoos. Sewing in the elastic was sort of a pain, but in general I am really proud of this.


Monday was my hubby's birthday. This was one of his gifts. I crocheted this with out a pattern, instead a drawing and a vague idea on how I wanted it to come together. I did the whole project quite covertly, making most of it during my work lunch hour and at the knitting group I attend.

3 new clocks and a hat

[studioloo.livejournal.com]

The Monster's Closet Toy Clocks



And...a new hat

I'm looking for a link

[bubbledragon.livejournal.com]

And I lost it from my bookmarks. It's a science overstock website, where they get random large amounts of random items like glass bottles, stoppers, corks, slides, beads, pipes, rope, etc. I really want it for microscope slides, so if you've got links for that, please let me know. But I just can't remember the name of this site... if you know if it, leave a comment. Thanks in advance!

Let me know if this is off topic, but...

[hotlikearobot-.livejournal.com]

Is Walmart the only chain of stores that considers spray adhesive a "restricted substance"? My friend and I felt like such criminals when the woman came over to the self check-out and ID'd us...

(no subject)

[punkbanana.livejournal.com]

wow.

my friend and i painted my daughters room from 3pm till 11pm yesterday!

anyways...so we're attempting to make it look less... bright..so i'm adding flowers on for accents.... it'll look better with furniture and what-not in there.
really it will.

anyways! so pictures, of the progress, right?


ps... my camera decided to be a pain so the colors aren't accurate... they're a little too light in some pics and too dark in others...

( onto the painting progress! )

Beware of cherubs...

[snarkoutgirl.livejournal.com]

The post about the yard ornament squirrel reminded me of a project I did last Halloween.  We had just moved into our house, and the previous owners had left a couple cherubs in the yard.  I am not a cherub-y kind of person.  (In fact, said cherubs have since been replaced in our yard by two tikis and a gargoyle.)  So I decided to turn them into Halloween decorations...

( Cherub-y badness inside )

red and black satinyness

[the-love-cat.livejournal.com]

in celebration of my birthday (today), i present my awesome craftiness of late:
( lots o' purses )

An intro and a question

[nimiiwin.livejournal.com]

Hi, everyone. I just joined and I'm not particularly "crafty" but I wanna be! :) So I'm trying new things, some with spectacularly bad results! :) That's okay, though, it's all still fun. One thing I want to do is make some postcards with collages on the front. What do you think would be a good thing to "seal" the collage? I don't know if I can use decoupage stuff or what would be the best thing?

(no subject)

[lower-class.livejournal.com]

I made some necklaces and you can't really see them...but I decided to take pictures anyways.
I do not have a scanner, just a crappy digital camera.
Enjoy...enjoy folks.

( Bumblebee )

( Duck Necklace )

They are both done with glass charms. One a bee and one a duck.
They have silver barrel clasps and seed beads and cracked blass or painted glass round beads.
I am too lazy to really give a good description of them.
I will either sell them online or at the flea market if I ever get there....lol

(no subject)

[http://users.livejournal.com/_killthegirl_/]

I was looking for a way to make durable stickers and found a machine by Xiron (?) at Hobby Lobby, but it and the pieces are expensive.

I was wondering if any of you know of a cheaper or better machine that could make some non-crappy stickers (and by non crappy I mean they have laminate or vinyl or something..not just paper and sticky)

any information would be helpful
thanks
-kate

bath bomb question

[skwairpeg.livejournal.com]

Hi everyone, I've been checking through the FAQ for this info but haven't found quite what I need...

I was going to use this recipe for making bath bombs, and picked up the ingredients I thought I needed. Then I read the instructions more closely and see that cornstarch is mentioned in the instructions, but not in the ingredients list. I've looked at some other recipes (linked in the FAQ here) and see that they pretty much all call for corn starch, but I want to use the recipe I originally found because it just seems simple, which is appealing to me today. I can't figure out how much cornstarch I should use in this recipe. Can anyone help?

EDIT: Upon further investigation, maybe I don't have to use cornstarch after all. If you click the link that says "Bath Fizzies" at the top of the page I linked to, there is another recipe that doesn't call for it. I'm just gonna try it. I'll let you know how it goes!

Well, I could go to uni today, or...

[viszy.livejournal.com]

( A couple more pics and ranting inside. )

spark the sun off.

[bjorkdoll.livejournal.com]

a couple random things.



the body of this bag has been lying around my room like a bloating corpse because i'm not decisive and couldn't settle on how to finish it. finally just went the lazyman (or girl in this case) route and cut a slit in the fulled fabric for the handle and attached random sequin'ness to one side.

( also, a crocheted hat that's being eaten by a monster pompom. )

success!

[skwairpeg.livejournal.com]

Welp, I made a few bath bombs using the recipe I linked to a few posts down (minus the cornstarch) and it looks like they came out pretty well. I spritzed the stuff very lightly with witch hazel as I was stirring it, and once it got just damp enough that it would stick together a bit, I packed it into some soap molds I have. I popped them out maybe 20 minutes later and spritzed them again with witch hazel (to help them get a bit of a crust), but I overdid it and they fizzed a little. Practice makes perfect, I guess!

So now that I've made them, I realize that I don't want to use soap molds for them. I want to make them in spheres. I think they'd look better that way and I'd like them all to be pretty much uniform in size and shape rather than an assortment of shapes. Does anybody know where I could find some? I'm not finding them online so far...

ID magazine wallet and purse.

[ritterisgod911.livejournal.com]

used the idea from jenkel and made a packing tape wallet using a ID magazine [the internation design magazine] and then expanded on it and made a purse to go with it.

( the goods. )

(no subject)

[stolenjunk.livejournal.com]

what is heaven's name is interfacing? why would i want to put it in my purse? can someone help?

(no subject)

[twotrees.livejournal.com]

I hit a local thrift store and fell onto some back patent leather clutch/short-handled bag motherlode. Can I paint something on them? What kind of paint should I use? How can I make a stencil? I remember someone painting a picture onto white patent leather, but I don't know about black.

I have other ideas for embellishment but I wanted to know about whether I can paint them.

Or can I sew something onto them? Some of them need embellishment badly as some of them are scratched.

(no subject)

[squarerootoftwo.livejournal.com]

i have a question for you all. i've been making some pretty easy earrings for the past couple of days and i was wondering if anyone had made those feather earrings that are kind of popular. i have feathers and earring parts but i wasn't sure how to put them together. i'm assuming you just glue the end of the feathers inside beads and attach them that way, but that seems kind of sketchy. does anyone have any suggestions?

thanks a lot :)

"Everbody loves a..."

[balamuthia.livejournal.com]

**edit- We were talking in another community about the Urban Outfitters "Everybody loves a Jewish/Italian/etc, etc. girl" t-shirts. Someone made one that said "black girl" since it didn't exist, which sparked a storm of ideas...this was mine.


My contribution to the "everybody loves a" craze (plus cuff)...

This started out as a plain white Hanes t-shirt...

( Read more... )

today's adventures in duct taping

[merlfish.livejournal.com]

take three rolls of duct tape, one deck of cards, and one bored girl, and you get:

( one purse and one cell phone case )

I'm extremely proud of these.

(no subject)

[p-p-cakes.livejournal.com]

( Read more... )

(no subject)

[puddlemere.livejournal.com]

I've been working on this shirt lately. It used to be a big XL t-shirt and I'm pretty proud of it. That's white ribbon on the bottom and as the strap. I'll probably end up selling it though.

( pics. )

Have an omlette?

[nezchan.livejournal.com]

More productivity, can the woman be stopped? This time, ferret toys!

Ferrets love things they can pick up and hide away, usually in the middle of the night. So what you want is something easy to grab with little ferret teeth, and amusing to roll around and such. Soft helps too. So I found a pattern for crocheted Easter eggs, and here's the result.

( goodness, Easter already? )

I'm working on something else now that'll take a few days, but I'm amazed by how productive I've been recently. I tell you, it's a good thing I'm on our side!