More Necklaces!!
I still have more buttons laying around, and more storage space for jewelry. The day I run out of space will be a weird day. I had both of these things that I decided were just too shiny and pretty for me. How should I darken them up?
NAIL POLISH. I don’t just use it so much because I like the smell. I painted some on this metal heart, then rubbed it off with a napkin.
I love this because it looks like tarnished silver, instead of bright shiny new craft store metal.
I followed the same process with this one. I painted on some black nail polish, then rubbed it off. Rather than paint the whole thing black at once, I did each piece in thirds.
I love how the black really defines the detail on the rose, and makes the individual petals visible.
What else was I fooling around with? Nail polish and bottle caps!
I poured a little black nail polish in there, and swirled it around, gently. I used the brush to make sure it coated the sides completely. I love this stuff, because it gives you such a shiny, enameled look.
And here we see the final products: top left is a ceramic star I made and just finally glued a necklace thing onto, top right is a cute chick cut out of a magazine and glued into the black bottle cap (see this tutorial for bottle cap necklaces), bottom left is the swallow button glued onto the back of a black bottle cap, and bottom right is the filigree heart with skull and cross bones! I love having a mess of new jewelry to wear! It’s almost better than new clothes.
Glasses Lenses become Necklaces
I found some broken reading glasses at the thrift store and had an idea. Did it involve making jewelry?? What else? Those lenses are like tiny little frames, perfect for a necklace. I found a cool piece of paper in my Box of Interesting Paper Bits, traced the lens onto it with a pencil, and cut it out. I spread silicon glue on the lens with a toothpick, and then squished the paper down onto it. You have to squeeze all the air bubbles out of the glue, so start in the middle, and squeeze outward. Extra glue may ooze out the sides, but that’s fine. Wipe it off with the toothpick. Make sure the edges are thoroughly glued down once you’re done squishing.
Once the glue was dry-ish, I glued metal loops on. Add jump rings, and then you can hang it from a necklace chain, or follow this process for attaching a chain.
I used this glittery fish button to make it just that much fancier! The blue fish really brings out the blue in the pattern.
I love this necklace because it’s creative, but it is also kind of normal. I can wear this to work without people talking about my “crazy” necklaces (which I take as a compliment, by the way). Since this is just paper, I wanted to water proof the back. What’s my magic solution for everything? Nail polish!! This stuff is magic.
This will dry quickly, and prevent sweat, rain, or spilled box wine from ruining my new awesome necklace.
Button Necklaces
I found these amazing buttons at the fabric store the other day, and once I saw they were only 2 bucks, I had to have them.
I am making these bad boys into jewelry, and there’s nothing you can do to stop me!
You can see most of the backs have those little loop things to sew them onto stuff. I don’t need that on a necklace…
…so I used my wire cutters to chop them off.
All that’s needed now is some kind of necklace holder. Follow my tutorial on this post, and almost anything can become jewelry.
Look at that! One little jump ring and I have a whole new necklace! Because I was running dangerously low.
Hang Stuff Up
I am just covered up with jewelry I love. I have filtered through and gotten rid of some, but the rest is mine, and I’m not sharing. One of the downfalls of jewelry is that we rarely get to see our own; when you’re wearing it, everyone sees it but you, and the rest of the time it’s in a jewelry box, purposely tangling itself up with all your other jewelry. Well, no more! I decided to make a necklace holder, not for charms since I already have one, but for necklaces and bracelets.
I went to Home Depot and bought a pretty piece of wood that was 6 feet long, 2 inches wide, and a half inch thick. It was about $3. I measured it into 1.5 foot segments. I also bought nails, which apprently only come in boxes of 18,000 nails. Fortunately, they were about $3 also, although it was slightly embarrassing asking if Home Depot had any “prettier” nails.
Fortunately, we have a saw, and I have Hubby who protects me from my own clumsiness. Now I have 4 short boards, and all my fingers! Hooray! I marked where I wanted holes drilled in the corners to hang these up:
You can see again, my sweet Hubby does quality work. I was literally headed outside to do this myself when he saw me with the power drill. He gave me his “disapproving look”, and said “Where are you going with that?” I said “Outside. I just need to drill holes in the corners”. He sighed and took it from me, and said something about accidentally drilling through my own hand, and how he didn’t have time to drive me to the hospital today, and then he did it in about 4 minutes.
So you can see I tried to do it myself; he just has more first-hand experience with my clumsiness than anyone else on the planet, other than me, and he prefers to prevent trouble before it starts. My brain seems to be in denial about the constant injuries I inflict on myself. And Hubby. And the pets, sometimes. And friends standing nearby.
I used a measuring tape to space my nails out evenly.
I space mine 1.5 inches apart. When measuring this out, take into account what you’ll be hanging on this rack. For necklaces, fairly close together is fine. For belts or purses, not only should you get longer nails, spacing them further apart makes them easier to use.
Look! I hammered a nail in! By myself! Because Hubby wasn’t home to protect me from myself. Let’s all pretend I didn’t smash a two fingers, then swear like a sailor. Let’s also pretend I hammered that nail in securely, and it didn’t fall out when I hammered the next one in, and this did NOT happen repeatedly, like a freaking cartoon.
Finally! Success! Although it took awhile to find an angle for the picture that wouldn’t show how horrifically crooked my nails are. They appear to be doing the wave.
I spray painted it glossy black to go with the frame it will be hanging next to. There are lots of design options, though, to make it match your style and tastes.
You could glue beer tops to the end of each nail!
You could use tops from your favorite brand! Here I have several varieties of Shiner Bock. You could use all the same kind, or use only tops of similar colors, or whatever you like.
I don’t know about you, but I have buttons and pins galore at my place. You could glue some of those bad boys on there, or use ticky tac if you don’t want them on there permanently.
Here’s an idea of what this would look like with beer tops. You can see that they make the space between the nails rather small. If you were making this to hold ties, belts, scarves, or purses, you should probably space the nails out some.
Here it is, in all its sparkly glory! You can see I very cleverly hung bracelets on the left, so I still have access to the outlet.
Variations:
For kind of a country, quaint look, you could either leave the wood as is, or paint it white and sandpaper the edges a bit. You could glue buttons to the ends of the nails to “class it up”.
This one I completed as a necklace holder. I plan to make the others into a tie/belt holder for Hubby, a key/leash rack for the front door, and a scarf holder for the hall closet. For all of those I will space the nails out further than I did on this one. I definitely won’t decorate the nails on the key rack, since that will make it hard to get the keys on and off.
When you are making something like this for yourself, think about what your needs are, and plan accordingly. If you’re going to take the time to make something for yourself, you may as well make sure you’ll want to keep it. Don’t make something a specific way because you think you should, or because that’s what you’ve seen before. You can just get a piece of junk at Wal-mart if that’s your goal. Make something that will meet your needs, be nice to look at, and that you’ll be proud to show off to people.
Fancy Bat Necklace
I made this little bat into a necklace charm awhile ago, and I love it. The rings it hangs from are on the tip of each wing, and I didn’t like how the cecklace chain went between them when I was wearing it. I decided to attach a chain to each end to make a necklace. I got a 60″ black chain (on sale) at Hobby Lobby. There’s plenty of chain there for a couple projects. I used the jump rings that were already on the necklace, and used a necklace clasp I scavenged off of some stuff Mi Madre had given me.
The first thing I did was use my pliers to open up 2 links in the chain to get a segment about the length I wanted.
I then folded it in half, and removed the middle link, to give me two pieces the same length. I then measeured it around my neck, and ended up removing about an inch from each so the necklace would be the right length.
I attached one end of each to the bat using the jump rings already on it (see how to in this post). On the other ends I attached the necklace clasp parts. While you’re attaching them, make sure you put the clasp on the correct side. Most necklaces are made so that you use your right hand to open the clasp and put the necklace on. I used a giant jump ring to clasp onto because I hate fiddling around with necklaces trying to get the clasp onto a tiny little ring. This method works great.
I just love this necklace now, even more than I did before. A little more Halloween in my wardrobe.
– That Clever Chick
Earrings Become Necklaces
My awesome friend Jessica and I went to the citywide garage sale months ago, and there were some earrings I saw that I loved, but didn’t buy, since I’m trying to cut down on the amount of stuff I have. Jessica bought them for me, and we both promptly forgot about it. She found them again, and gave them to me, and I was super excited. That’s the benefit of having a friend with a goldfish brain: you can buy gifts in front of them and they will still be surprised.
So these are the earrings. They are clip-ons, and just crying out for Adam West Batman type words on them.
See what I mean? So that was my inspiration. First thing was pulling the flippy parts of the clip-ons off.
By just pinching at the base with some pliers, the flippy parts popped off easily.
I then bent that part back so the necklace wouldn’t stick out too far when I was wearing it.
This was also easily done with the pliers. I then just used shirt paint to write the words on the front.
I love how they came out. Once they were dry, I threaded a piece of wire through the two holes on the back to hang the necklace from. I didn’t take a picture because I forgot (goldfish brain, remember?). I wore one the other day, and I just love it. I want to spread nerd-dom far and wide!
At this moment, I am at the Community Renaissance Market for the Rockin’ Mama’s Day Celebration, a benefit for SafePlace. Come on by and help a great cause, and buy a bunch of jewelry from me so I don’t have to carry it back home.
Yes, even more skulls!!
I guess you guys have figured out by this point, that I’m a little obsessed with skulls (as you can see here, and here, and here, oh and here, here, and here). I could wear a different skull t-shirt everyday for a week, and now, I can also accessorize with skulls! When Beans and I went to the thrift store, we found a tangled pile of mardi gras beads with skull and crossbones on them. Of COURSE I brought them home.
I simply cut the skulls loose from the rest of the beads, and threw those away. Yes, they are shiny silver, but that’s nothing some matte white spray paint can’t fix! A few of them, like those in the picture, were missing a bone or two. Hubby snapped the extras off for me, and sanded down the sides.
I decided Day of the Dead was the way to go with these (especially appropriate for Cinco de Mayo). I pulled out my paints and tiny brushes and went nuts! Here’s a mid-way through work picture:
And a couple of finished ones:
I used a fine point sharpee to do the detail work. The one with blood pouring out of its eye sockets is my favorite!
I just mixed small amounts of the colors I wanted, and went from skull to skull adding flowers, leaves, hearts, and other details. I just googled images of Day of the Dead to get inspiration. I can’t wait to do more stuff like this!
Several of these will be for sale at the Rockin’ Mama’s Day Celebration this Saturday, May 7, to benefit SafePlace. I hope to see you there!
Rockin’ Mama’s Day Celebration!
I have been invited to have a booth selling my handicrafts at the Rockin’ Mama’s Day Celebration put on by Objects of Confection this weekend! That’s right, Saturday, May 7th from 10 am to 4 pm I will be at the Community Renaissance Market, peddling my wares.
Part of the proceeds go to support SafePlace, a charity that helps support abused women and children. It’s at 6800 West Gate Blvd, here in Austin. So come out and say hi, and support a great cause: my wallet! Just kidding. I will have mostly jewelry, and possible some crocheted goods. Ooh-la-la! I can’t wait to see you all there!
Necklace Holder
Now that you have undoubtedly made lots of necklaces, because you obviously do whatever I say, and you read this, this and this post, you now need somewhere to put them. I happen to have lots of junk laying around my house, constantly, so I reused a bit of it to solve my too-much-necklace-having problem.
Oh no! Too many necklaces!
I used a picture frame that we had accidentally broken the glass out of, some fleece fabric, a glue gun, and black fabric.
This particular frame has wood backing, which worked out really well for this project. The sturdiness was really helpful. I measured about five layers of this fleece fabric to be the padding. You could use some quilt batting also, but I wouldn’t recommend polyfill, or any regular stuffing. You need something that will stay completely flat. 4 of the layers were cut exactly to the edges of the wood. The last layer is shown here. The first 4 layers are between the wood and the larger layer. The larger piece will wrap around to the back of the wood, holding in all the edges of the smaller pieces. If you had all those layers wrapped around the side it would be too fat to fit back in the frame.
Once I had all the fleece fabric cut and measured, I squirted some tacky glue onto the wood to hold the fabric on. I also went a little crazy putting some glue between the layers. That was a bit of an issue later, and I’m still on the fence about whether or not to use it. If you do put glue between the layers, use it sparingly, and don’t make any globbies. Oh, that’s not a word spell checker? What about blobbies? No?! Well then what the hell should I call them?
I cut the black fabric about a half inch bigger than the fleece fabric. I folded the raw edges under, and secured everything with loads of hot glue. If the fabric were not going back into the frame, I would have used something else that would secure this better. Since the frame will be holding everything in place, I’m not that worried about it.
I folded it over all nice and pretty, even knowing that this would never show, because I’m neurotic like that. Once everything is dry, and I cannot emphasize that enough, once it is COMPLETELY DRY, pop that bad boy back in its frame. I lined my new necklaces up all pretty-like, and used needles stabbed into all that padding to hold them up. This makes it really easy to hang them up and rearrange them, provided you waited until the glue dried!
My not-so-clever confessions: I used big glue blobbies, and didn’t wait for them to fully dry. As a result, some of the needles were really hard to get out, and even put back in, because glue had either dried onto them, or in bog globs under the surface. The whole thing looks fantastic though, and I barely had to move the needles at all to avoid glue glops. Learn from my fail.
It’s Necklace Time
I love making jewelry. When I made the bottle cap necklaces, and the random objects necklaces, I made several others using scrabble tiles and dominoes. The cool thing about those, is that I can cut out cute pictures and glue them on, also!
In both of the previous posts, I went over how to attach the backing that will make this a necklace charm. If you already read that, you will not be punished by having me repeat it all again. If you haven’t read it, you’re a bad minion, and must send me gifts as retribution!
Anyway, I glued the necklace holder do-hickey onto the front of the domino, which becomes the back of the necklace. I did the same with the scrabble tiles. Sorry it’s a bit blurry.
I used the letter, or domino to trace over the picture I was going to use. I then cut it out, and measured it against the necklace several times to make sure it would fit. I did a lot of trimming. I used the same silicon glue and toothpick to spread glue on, then pressed the picture onto the glue really hard. Glue will probably squish out from the sides, but just wipe it off. Make sure the corners are stuck down securely. Once the necklaces had fully dried, I painted clear nail polish over them.
This is one of the finished scrabble tiles. It came out so cute! I just use magazines I’ve had for years. Just be sure to let everything dry a lot, and make certain the corners of the magazine pieces are glued firmly down. Soon you will get to see the massive number of necklaces I made during this one session all lined up together!
Bottle Cap Necklaces
As I mentioned in a previous post, I have a bunch of random stuff around the house that I decided to start making into jewelry. Why does it get to laze around the house for free while Hubby and I are busting our booties at work all the time? Time for all this junk to start pulling its weight!
Over the years I have collected, and then thrown out, and collected again a bunch of beer bottle caps. I have seen so many cool things made from them, but most of the projects require hundreds of bottle tops. I always get sick of the clutter and chuck them all before I have enough to complete anything. Finally I have a project I can complete with each beer I finish!
I have always collected cool magazine pictures, so I have plenty of resources to pull from. To make a necklace you need some kind of cute picture, a bottle cap, silicon glue, a tooth pick, and the necklace hanger I used in the other post. A quarter is the perfect size template to trace the paper to go in the bottle cap. After I cut out what I wanted to use, I spread the glue into the cap with the tooth pick.
I made sure to press the picture down really hard into the glue. Squish it around to make sure there are no air bubbles trapped.
I let it dry thoroughly, then attached the necklace holder on the back. In the future, I plan to experiment with filling these with resin, but for now I decided I would use up some old clear nail polish. I poured a bunch in there, and let it dry over night.
It ended up looking really awesome. I now have several complete, with plans for a bunch more. I may even make some with magnets on the back instead of the necklace holder. I promise, I’m not using this as an excuse to drink more beer. Seriously. I’m just…recycling.
