I've been hoarding junk for years! I made a necklace... it's not even that heavy!






I used button covers, key and feather charms, beads, a soft pretzel charm, vintage buckles, vintage buttons, rhinestone charms, a pink apple, a wedding cake charm, and this cool rhinestone connector piece with two flowers connected by a rhinestone chain. Whatcha think?

I've recently gotten into steampunk... here are the results!

This one is a vintage watch movement with a vintage amber colored cabochon and wire-wrapped gears and seed-beading.





This one uses a really cool resin fish pendant my friend gave me from a single earring. I also used a vintage key and a brass button that, due to an odd glue job, can be turned 360 degrees without falling off.





More to come later! What do you think?

Boy do I love shrinky dinks! I've been meaning to post these for a while. Here's all the shrinky dink shenanigans I've been up to lately:





Here's some variations on the original science bracelet:

That one has a Cylon head from Startrek!
.. the cupcake and scissors were added to the original bracelet. This is what happens when you bake em too long, you get bubbles! But it came out well anyway. What do you guys think?

I made these earrings ages ago... I inherited my grandmother's sewing basket and it had all this great stuff in it... bobbins, zippers, charms, great buttons. I loved these bobbins because they had holes all around, not like the lame plastic ones my machine takes. And since my machine won't work with these bobbins, I made earrings out of them, with little safety pins and vintage snaps I found in the basket too. I love found object jewelry! Always makes my day.

I was inspired by several projects on Craftster to make a table for my sister's college graduation present, for her to put in her new house. I liked the idea of a resin top over something interesting and papery but I didn't know what to use. These projects were my inspiration:

http://www.craftster.org/forum/index.php?topic=244455.0
http://www.craftster.org/forum/index.php?topic=234840.0

But neither project had a way to take a normal table that had no depression and to use resin with it... I ended up using wood moulding to make a place to fill with resin. I chose postal stamps because they were colorful, I think I used about 250 or 300 of them. Bought them on Ebay and got  vintage ones from Germany, Indonesia and India. I ended up being like five stamps short though! Which sucked. So I used the stamps on the envelopes they came in, because I bought them from Canada and Sweden, and steamed them off the envelopes over a kettle, which worked great! So here's the amazing transformation... (PICS ARE AT THE WAAAAY END, skip down there first if you like, it's a long explanation.)

I started with an ordinary end table and sanded the top off and spray painted it a dusky pink.
Then I stained and nailed the wood moulding to the table. I recommend gluing it though, I ended up chipping the moulding with the hammer and having to use wood filler and then stained that too. Glue=much better.

After I glued the moulding, I glued the stamps to the table so they wouldn't float around when I poured the resin. I just used mod podge. I had to really space them out, I didn't buy enough. 

Then I mixed up my resin and poured it over. I did this twice. I was originally going to fill it with resin until it reached the top of the moulding, but that would have been about $300 in resin. So I just did two coats and it looks fine. The resin made the vintage stamps bleed... I recommend using new stamps if you do this because the bleeding is rather unattractive. You can't notice it from far away though. Anyway, then I just let it cure and it was done! She loves it, I'm so happy!

I bought this great lamp at my thrift store to use to make a slide lampshade and I used the lampshade fabric to make a clutch. I used this great tutorial for the shade:

http://www.craftster.org/forum/index.php?topic=46294.0

But you don't need to go buy a lampshade frame, because you will have a lot of trouble finding one, trust me! You can take an existing lampshade and essentially rip it apart. Here it is!




Now this is the clutch I made. The fabric was so cute, I couldn't throw it out, even though my clutch now probably hasn't been washed in 40 years or so. I used an easy pattern that came with an ugly dress, I'll look it up later and put it in. My first pleats!

I love love love my new dress. Bought the sheet for a dollar at a flea market, and the zipper and ricrac were free. Yay $1 dress! I used New Look pattern 6557. This is the first dress I've sewn, and only the second pattern I've ever followed. I added the back tie in to make it fit better and made the waist band thinner for more of a babydoll. Sorry for the bra shot.









Comments appreciated and loved!

I got this cute girl scout shirt at a national sing-a-long and it was begging to be redone. Actually this shirt is the best thing that came out of that trip. I made it too tight so I had to add side panels, but I like it this way. Whatcha think?

(boob shot!)









Hooray for girl scouts! And t-shirt recons.

I bought an old lady cardigan on sale at Target for like ten bucks thinking that it was cute. Then I looked in a mirror. Anyway, I decided it would be better tighter, and as a v-neck. I know it's a really simple project but I thought people might like to see.

Here's the final result:

 



Thanks for checking it out. What do you think?

I don't really know what to call this. But I like it. I took a giant grandpa sweater and took it in and cut off most of the sleeves.. the eerie part is that the new sleeves are actual part of what used to be the hugeness of the front section. They just flopped over into sleeves on their own. It's so simple to make.. a good pick me up project for when you want somthing fast and cute.





whatever that white thing in the second pic is, it's on the mirror and not the sweater.

so what do you think?