Here is my first craft challenge entry!  (and with finals in two days, it was fabulous procrastination ;-)

So I tried to find the funkiest stuff in the hardware store and came across all these little sprockets and doo-hickeys.  They’re only like 5 cents each so I was able to get a whole bunch (a variety of course) for 10 bucks and made this hardcore hardware jewelry set:



  
The set includes two pairs of earrings, a bracelet, and a choker/headband.  The first pair of earrings is just made of two little nut covers that I epoxy’d to some post earring backs.  The dangly earrings have lengths of chain decorated with the little sprockets.  The bracelet I am particularly proud of, as I figured out how to make a toggle closure out of a gasket and wingnut.  The final piece can be worn a number of ways.  It is made of chain and sprockets on a memory wire frame, so it can be worn on the wrist, around the neck choker-style, or my personal fav: in the hair!





Most of the pieces are nuts and chain I picked up at the hardware store.  Additional crafty materials I supplied: jewelry jump rings, memory wire, epoxy, earring backs/loops, and pliers.  Hope you like!

[Bust]

ok so this is not an entirely original idea.

I saw a project idea for a chandelier made from various hanging things in Bust Magazine.  I combined this with an idea I had seen previously ( in ReadyMade i think- just trying to give credit where credit is due ;-) for a lampshade made entirely of linked slides.  this is what i came up with:



sorry, the pic is kinda blurry, but you get the idea.  anyway, it was really pretty easy.  i had a bunch of colorful if not incredibly inspired old slide photos lying around from my brief flirtation with a career in underwater photography.  i drilled a hole in the top and bottom of each slide mount and made strings of them by linking them with jewelry o rings.  then i hung the different length strands from two rings i cut from the top and bottom of a normal lampshade and decorated with some fabric trim.  a lightbulb suspended in the center is the light source and the whole thing is hung with fishing line.  it makes a nice colorful underwater lightshow, and makes me feel better about wasting all that film ;-)

hope you like it!
 ><(((*>  b