I didn’t get home from work until 10:30 last night, but luckily I had a couple of easy crafts ready for just such an occasion. Last night I put the finishing touches on a memo board that I painted a couple of months back. This is an incredibly simple project.

First, I hit up the clearance aisle at the local craft store and found a scratched platter used for candle arrangements. I then went in search of a magnet in the store to make sure it was not made out of some kind of non-magnetic substances (like aluminum – thanks 5th grade environmental science field trip!). The magnets stuck, so the plate came home with me.

Initially, I had bold plans of some sort of antiquing method. But decided it wasn’t necessary and had spray paint at home. Here it is pre-spray paint.

Not pretty.

I searched for quite some time for a ribbon that I liked. When I did find one, I was bothered by the fact that one side was the negative of the print and far too off-white. I took it home with me over the holidays, knowing my Mom would have a solution – and this week’s care package came completed with two-sided ribbon. She had fused the ribbon together. Well done, Mom!

The should-be-simple bow became more complex by my perfectionist bent, but I finally produced a bow I could live with. I then hot glued the ribbon to the back.

Now I have a nifty memo board right by my door in which I can hang reminds. Here’s what it looks like:

Pretty!

I decided to use the Shrinky Dink plastic to create a ring. You all might have seen this version floating around the internet. I think they are awesome, but it’s actually a lot harder to do and do well than it would seem.

I have recently experimented with making rings out of bending molded resin before it’s completely set up and then using wire to complete the ring, and after the success that was last week’s earrings I wondered if that same idea could be applied to shrinky dink.

I have a couple of kinks to work out in the process, but once I do I will post a full tutorial.

Here is the ring after shrinking and bending:

Wee bit lopsided.

After making the medallion for the ring, I realized I about 12 shades too pale to actually wear a white ring. So I decided to paint the back side. The final product with be less of a shockingly bright green, promise:

I’ll keep you posted as to how it turns out.

I’m loving the song, but that video breaks my heart a little.

Holy slow internet, batman. Or perhaps it’s the fact that I dropped my computer last night. I don’t want to get further behind in my posting, so I’m attempting to endure the spinning color wheel of doom.

What must first be address is that my mom is the greatest. And she sends the absolute best holiday care packages. That’s not what makes her the greatest, but it certainly doesn’t hurt.

My Valentine’s package included more jewelry making goodies, so I of course had to immediately use them. I went the simple route last night, and made these cabachon bobby pins. I’m keeping some of these for myself.

Adorable!

Tonight I was going for a zen craft, as despite my best effort to choose my attitude and be positive, the last couple of days were ROUGH. What’s more zen than rolling some paper beads? And how many beads can a person roll during one episode of Parenthood? Answer: 38

In my world vintage Smokey Bear ashtrays become bead holders.

I’ll attempt to bring you something a little more exciting tomorrow. Halfway there!

The amazingly talented Reed Turner will be performing an online show this evening to benefit the Musicians|Volume II project that he is involved in. More about that project coming soon. If you like tremendous voices, incredible songwriting, like to support independent musicians and have access to the internet (which I assume you do because you are reading this), then please join us. The show will be hosted on Stage It, which allows you to pay what you can for the show. And you get to interact with the artists and your fellow concert goers!  Hope to see you at 8 Eastern/5 Pacific tonight. Click here for tickets.

Image borrowed from the fine folks at Musicians|Volume II.

I started out trying to make a shrinky dink necklace with an owl on it and I learned several important lessons. The first being that simple is best when crafting with the magical shrinking plastic, and the second being that it doesn’t always shrink as much as it says it would. So the first attempt was a big giant fail.

Before shrinking -

Traced a drawing in my sketch book.

And after -

Too big and the colors ended up weird...can't win them all.

A little disappointed in the result I quickly traced a tree from a piece of scrapbook paper I had on a smaller circle of plastic. And I LOVED it! So I rushed to make another to turn them into earrings. Here’s the final product.

Tree hugger

All of the things I have made thus far will eventually make its way to my etsy store, but these…they’re staying with me.

I made a couple more domino pendants today. I’m loving how they are turning out. Now I just need to figure out if I can drill through them or just need to put a bail on the back.

She had an adorable red dress on today, so the clips matched perfectly and went straight into her hair. It was pretty exciting. One of my students suggested that I frame the bill that she gave me so that I can say “that’s were it all started” once I make my millions. So many wonderfully supportive people around.

From the beginning we’ve had the most positive reactions from the bird paper. My mom thinks we should look into buying it in bulk. She’s probably right.

In other news, my blog got more hits today than ever before! Thank you to all those that have supported this endeavor from the beginning and all the new readers that have joined us over the past week. I have a lot more to share with you and hope that you will stay tune. Special musical treat coming this weekend.

I need to start selling more jewelry to fund my etsy habit. So many beautiful crafty things to buy. I’ve been looking for fabric for the suitcase project mentioned the other day. So far this is the leading contender -

Send me any suggestions that you have. I’m trying not to spend too much time looking, because I don’t want to be sucked into the black hole of options.

Thanks again for going on this adventure with me.

Here are the papers I used -

A lot of online tutorials have you draw triangles out with rulers and then cut. That’s a ridiculous waste of time. Here’s my easy cheat.

I divide each 12 in piece of paper in half, because I know I want to make two sizes of beads from each pattern. Instead of a ruler I use the grid on my paper cutter. I make a mark at every inch.

Excuse the shadow.

I flip the paper over and make a mark at the 1/2 mark, and mark every inch from that mark, making the marks offset from the other side.

For the smaller beads I mark every 1/2 in on one side, and start the measurements on the other side by going in 1/4 in and then measuring 1/2 in from that mark.

Cutting from one mark to the mark on the other side creates perfect triangles.

So many beads to make!

One of the neat things about paper beads is that you never know quite what they will look like once they are rolled. So far my favorite is the striped one. It almost looks like a panda bear.

This is probably not the last you will see of these.