My G-ma's Bling

When my Grandma died in 2008 (aged 101 - good going!) I got some of her brooches.

They're some serious bling!

I love this little shiny-fest, but the pin on the back is broken, so I thought of an easy way to still wear it.

I pulled off the broken back with a pair of pliers.

Then using my trusty E6000 glue I stuck a ring blank to the back of the brooch.

And there we go. The fanciest ring in town.

Have any of you been doing any up-cycling recently?

Get glueing

When I was in America I bought some cool stuff. Including Brad Paisley's Diary of a Player, an NYPD t-shirt, a guitar shaped fly swat, red party cups, and this stuff...

The blogosphere raves about E6000 glue so when I saw it in a little bead shop on my last morning in New York I didn't hesitate to grab it.

Actually there was some hesitation, over whether to get the big or the small tube.

I went for the big tube. It's not like I'll be going back to the US to re-stock any time soon.

I've used the glue to make these.

And these!

I bought these from Hobbycraft ages ago and they've been sat in a drawer waiting for this moment.

I wiggled the bits of metal off the back and glued them to some similarly coloured ring blanks.

I haven't decided what to put in the middle yet. Decorative paper? Just a whole lot of glitter?

I've still got a lot of Paua shells so I stuck one of them on a ring blank.

And then I stuck anything else I could find on to rings blanks.

And then I told myself to stop.

Cos I could easily get carried away.

Etsy

One of my goals for this summer was to finally get an Etsy shop up and running, and after finishing up some sewing, taking a bazillion photos and finding out posting prices I've done it!

http://www.etsy.com/shop/thecraftartykid

At the moment it's only 3 products, with 5 different versions of each. I just want to test the waters first, and if those sell well then I'll add more.

Please take a look and tell me what you think, constructive criticism welcome as I'm very new to Etsy.

Daisy, daisy

Feeling a little flowery, I made this necklace and matching ring. I must have also been feeling a little insane as I sewed each of the yellow seed beads individually onto a circle of felt. It was worth it though.

The necklace is now available to buy at the Letchworth Arts Centre so if you're local, go and check it out, along with all the other crafts on sale and artwork on display.

Fabric scrap ring

Like a lot of people I have loads of scraps of fabric that aren't big enough to use in my usual crafts but I've still kept them. Using materials I had lying around I came up with this cute fabric ring which is a way of using some of the fabric scraps. It can also double up as a pin cushion. 

I started by drawing a circle on a scrap of fabric. The circle is approximately 6cm in diameter. 

I cut the circle out and folded the edge over slightly and sewed running stitch all the way around. When you pull the two ends of thread the fabric gathers like a drawstring bag.

Then I filled the fabric pouch with scraps of felt. You could also use polyester stuffing, but all I had was felt.

I then put a blob of UHU glue on the pad of a ring. This project would probably work better with a ring that has a bigger pad, but all I had was the small one and I didn't want to buy anything for this. It's all about using up what I already have. 

I stuck the ring onto fabric pouch, pulling the edges tight around the ring pad.

You could stop here, but I wanted to add a little more decoration.

I took a length of ribbon and did running stitch all the way along on one side.

When you pull the thread it gathers the ribbon into a ruffle which I put around the ring.

I then put a small circle of felt on the underside of the ring -both glued and sewn- to tidy it up.

This is a great way of using up little bits of craft materials that aren't good for much else. You could also embellish the ring with different ribbons, beads and sequins.