This is Mr. Scrumpy. I was going to send him to my nephew but changed my mind because of his button eyes. (I know just take the eyes off and sew different eyes on but the creative juices are flowing so I'll just make other toys =D ) He was dubbed Mr. Scrumpy because my husband said that he reminded him of the doll named Scrump from Lilo & Stitch.

These are my favorite pair of earrings. I wear them almost everyday. They're on surgical steel french hooks. I made them out of bright aluminum jump rings. I connected byzantine links to get the pattern. I played around with the weave to get the design. Mind you I'm not claiming to have come up with the design, I'm sure someone else before me already has. Chainmaille is pretty old. Thanks for looking & ENJOY!

I'm half Athabascan (Alaska Native) and live in Alaska. A few years ago my grams passed away. This spring is her traditional funeral in the village our family is from. Something that the surviving family does is makes gifts for the members of the village, because they pay for the funeral or help organize it. I think also it helps with the mourning process. A traditional funeral is typically held 3 years after a person dies (at least what my aunties and uncles tell me). These gifts are given out at a large potlach. I'm not very good at beadwork or other traditional Athabascan crafts, so I decided to do a little chainmaille. I've been doing chainmaille for about 5 years now.

Here are a couple examples of earrings that I made. My husband and 13 year old daughter helped me out. We made 100 pairs of earrings. (There's about 330 peaople in the village total.) I'll take more pics in the morning and share.  All of the earrings are on surgical steel french hooks.





Those are a little half byzantine pattern I guess you could call them.  I made other designs but didn't really think about taking pics until tonight. All the earrings made were super simple, since we needed to make a bunch.

More earring.
These are called Shaggy Loops. I put beads on the dangling jump rings.


Byzantine


Some people like to call this a Japanese variant, but I call it a chain. Made with Bright Aluminum and Anodized Aluminum.


The whole cluster together.


I put them in their own baggies to make it easier to hand out. I considered just tying them with a piece of cotton yarn or punching holes in a blank business card, but before they can be handed out they have to sit outside over night. Being spring in interior Alaska, it could rain or possibly snow, so I settled on biodegradable plastic baggies. I'll be mailing them off on Friday from Fairbanks.

So I've been enjoying everyone else's projects here for a while. This is my first post sharing my projects. It's been pretty cold here in Fairbanks, AK -40 F is freaking cold to me. My husband and I have had to put insulating plastic on all the windows. Even our bay window, wich makes it pretty much useless. We decided to decorate the bay window this weekend before we sealed it up. I couldn't put any holes in the woodwork, (we're renting) so I tied yarn on both ends of the curtain rod and hung paper cranes across it. I folded a bunch of origami lotus and put them all over the bottom, along with a few other things.








*****I'm sorry for posting this in the wrong place. I just realized that I did. ****