Crafty revival and future creation possibilities.

Hmm... my earlier craft project is still to be completed, it seems I need to improve my skills for the last part. A challenge is good though, I'll get there!

In the meantime, I've been doing some other bits and pieces. I've fallen out of the crafty habit for a while so it's good to try a few things out.

Using the templates in this photobucket album I've made myself a cardboard Katamari. I'll make a prince to match too - I need to downscale the original, that'll make it fiddly but I don't mind that at all. After that will have fun with cameras and paper models.... possibly also with glue. We'll see...

I've also put together this necklace. I'm not quite sure who it'll be for yet. Although I do like the colour combination it's not one I'm likely to wear.

Please excuse the rather grotty cutting mat. It's seen hard service in paper, jewelery and fabric crafting and both glue and a myriad of not-quite-healed cuts are starting to show. It still does the job craft-wise. I might have to rig myself up a better photo station. I have a great solution for very small objects but it limits my angles a great deal and isn't big enough for larger objects like the two crafts shown today. Time to learn how to do that...

Also, I'm seriously considering taking on another photographic project next year. I did a 365 photo a day which turned into 536 photos (on a previous blog). I'm not yet sure if I'll attempt another 365 or if I'll come up with something else. The last project I did was the found alphabet, it a great project though a few letters proved trickier than expected - that's not exactly a bad thing but didn't do wonders for keeping to schedule. There's also the possibility of experimenting with my interest in stop-motion though that'd be an entirely different creature. I've got a month or so to think on it.

Twilight Sparkle colour scheme bracelet

Something new to show you today - this bracelet is the first of a set I'm making using colour schemes from My Little Pony : Friendship is Magic as a theme. I've been wanting to do some themed work and with such bold colour combinations I thought this might be a good candidate. While basic colours/themes are used I'm not trying to make these a highly accurate, just having a bit of fun with them.

This one uses the colour scheme of Twilight Sparkle.

I have a few other themes I'd like to work with too but I haven't really developed the ideas for those yet.

Now back to the workbench...

A skirt waiting to happen

Late last summer I came to the awful realisation that my favourite dress to wear on a really stinking hot day had deteriorated into a terrible condition. This made me quite sad as it was a pretty dress with very nice embroidery. I did notice that the damage was almost entirely on the top half so I put the dress aside intending on working out how to turn it into a basic skirt. I've done some machine sewing before so know my way around a basic machine but I've not done any work on clothes or with elastic before, so this was new. Many thanks go to Mum for helping me out here.

This is the old, tired dress with quite a bit of yellowing around the top and a lot of elastic that had given up and died. It took a bit of courage to take the scissors to a favourite item of clothing, but with a bit of courage...

After this I naturally forgot to take more photos, but I made a waistband from inch wide elastic, sewed it into the top and rolled it over. I did this with Mum's whiz-bang sewing machine as my 30-or-so-year-old ol' faithful sewing machine is in storage. Its a very nice machine. Even cuts the threads for me.The skirt might not be winning any competitions for refashioning, but it's nice to have it back in my wardrobe.

I'm also working on Etsy listings for these two necklaces. They should be posted this evening. I'll put a shout out on the TTL facebook page when they're up.

Shrinkage

Do I sound too childish if I tell you that I'm easily fascinated by watching plastic shrink?

I'm working on things for an upcoming fête at the moment. I wanted to make more jewellery and make it fairly affordable. At the moment I don't really have the space or set-up to get out all of my jewellery stuff so I decided to have a go at shrink plastic.

My first few sheets were so bad they didn't even make it to the oven - I'm having tremendous difficulty getting stamps to transfer the entire image, and at first I did not know what kind of ink to use. I found that a waterproof fineliner worked just fine for the black lines - although it doesn't truly set until baked so needs to be handled carefully it comes with the bonus of being able to redo difficult bits. Coloured pencils provide great colour, especially as baking concentrates the colour. I also now sand one side before I start.

These are destined to be necklaces and earrings, the 50c piece is for scale. The cherries will probably go onto a bracelet - one on each chain link. I'll have plenty more time to do this when I get back.

I'm off now for a week and a half. I'll return in early November with a TARDIS card tutorial and photos of Uluru.

Until then, adios!