Christmas Presents!

It's that time of the year! (The one where anyone making their presents has to start planning, and making the gifts they want to give.) I'm starting to get together all the patterns, and ideas I can, however I forgot how hard manly gifts are to make. I'm not so sure what to make for my boyfriend, or little brother. (I did get a killer idea for my father from my mom though, I'm excited to see how it turns out.) I've started to make some waterlily books, in green and pink right now, and I'll be making a blue one as well, but I don't know who I would be giving them to. I've also found quite a few nerdy knitting sites, which are really cool, but I can't exactly hope to crochet all the Mario characters and hope to have time to make everything I need to have made. I'll start posting pictures once I get things made, with a few exceptions. (I don't want anyone to read this and know what they'll be getting!)


If you have any ideas for "manly" gifts, let me know. I'm kinda stuck at the moment.

Jewelry

I've been keeping myself busy with trying my hand in resin, and working on books, but my real passion is jewelry. I haven't made any new necklaces lately, or any other jewelry, but I think posting some old works will inspire me to work on some new pieces, like my favorite of them, the Queen of Spades necklace:

This was made at the same time as my Pretty in Pink necklace:

I'm currently working on one using old keys, but I'm not done yet, so I don't have any pictures of it. Now for slightly older works...

I like this necklace, but I can't seem to get a good picture of it. It uses some of the same beads as the Queen of Spades, but it's got a more simple pattern, and I think it's a little less formal. I never really named it other than the red and black Fleur de Lis necklace.

Then there are the necklaces that are my mother's favorites, she likes my captive marbles as pendants:

The green captive marbles are my favorite. I make them in different colors though, it's a lot of fun, and you can make a variety of different patterns. The all silver ones look like stars to me. It's also amazing how many different types of marbles there are. I want to start making bigger center links so the marbles show better, I want to use intricate marbles, but right now there is no point to using fancy ones.

I've also been making bracelets, I made several pink chainmail pieces, one with a breast cancer charm, and an other with a ribbon clasp so it implies breast cancer awareness due to the pink links. This is the one I made for my mother:

Silver barrels is one of my favorite chainmail weaves, but I'm going to start branching out I think... I was at the Bristol Renaissance Faire today, and they had mostly European 4 in 1, or Byzantine... neither are really my favorites, nor have I ever really made any European, but I think I'm going to make some similar mail, so I can sell it for Ren Faire costume jewelry.

Juice Books

My professor mentioned to me a few months back that she had seen books made out of juice cartons that used the cap to close the book. She never got the chance to show me pictures of said books, so recently I decided to try my hand at it. This is what I came up with:

They have lined paper, 120 pages. They are perfect for address books, or carrying around to write ideas in because the lines go the same direction as the spine. This is what they look like when they're opened:

I think my attempt at a notebook with juice cartons was fairly successful. I decided to recycle other cardboard packaging as well, I used a box from juice packet single servings:

It either has 156 pages, that are blue lined paper. It is oriented the same way as the juice carton books, so it also would make a good address book, or a notebook for shorter entries. The next book I made from a cream cheese box, because I was making taco dip, and while shopping I realized how much fun the cream cheese boxes would be to make books from.

I'm going to keep looking for more boxes to recycle into books. I found some cute boxes from laundry detergent, and I'm thinking pudding boxes would be pretty fun as well.

Resin Casting

I've started working with resin casting recently. It's kind of a pain, and I haven't been getting the results I had hoped for, but I'm learning, and having a lot of fun with it. I've been making breast cancer awareness pendants/ key chains. I haven't gotten a chance to attach the bale yet, but here's a picture of the pink ribbon resin pendants:

pink ribbon heart pendant

There are cube shaped ones as well, like this one:

I also made a few that are based on Futhark runes, as well as one rune from the game Demon Soul's. I got really interested in runes because in the current D&D campaign I'm playing a dwarven Runepriest. It's a lot of fun, and the runes (although really nerdy) are a lot of fun. I just need to work on painting the tacky resin, because it wasn't thick enough this go around.

This one turned out the best of the ones I made, I'll post pictures of the rest of them later. My first try with resin though was just silver glitter hearts, and some thin cubes. They look fun, I still need to file down the edges of some of them though.

Message me if you're interested in any of them- I'm not sure I'll post them on etsy for a while. (I am, however, offering free shipping on the books available on my etsy right now... check it out here)