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It has been a while!

I'm trying to get back into the swing of things! I hope to be posting more, but with the baby and job hunting it will be hard.

Check out my work at www.MomasLilSweetpea.etsy.com if you're interested in seeing what I'm up to!

I think I may be too busy for a blog

I'm going to try to keep it up anyways. So, for a brief summary of what I've been up to this semester:

I'm currently being featured by our school's literary/arts magazine Straylight for a process piece on stained glass, which cam be read here: www.straylightmag.com

I have been working on a bunch of soft cover coptic books, which I'm planning on selling for $5 or 3 for $10 at a concert/ art show on the 30th of this month in Kenosha. I've also been making some hard cover books, some of which will be coptic bound, others will be hidden belgian binding books. All are filled with drawing paper, and would make great sketchbooks, or journals.

I finished several more juice books, and started working on more candy box books. They're a lot of fun, but I can't eat all the candy by myself, so it's difficult to come by candy boxes, as I don't want to waste the candy.

I broke my twist tie ring a few weeks ago, and it's been bothering me that I didn't have a replacement for it (my ring size is 4.5, kind of hard to come by) so I went searching for a cute design that wasn't too large or too obnoxious, and found the perfect one! I came across Distorted Earth on etsy, and their blogger account, and their heart ring was adorable, so I made one of my own!

I should have pictures of my stained glass finished in the next few weeks or so. I will also have more prints I can post. New books will be posted on my etsy site soon, and as always if you see anything you like message me, I am always taking commissions!

This semester is a crazy one!

I'm working on making more books. Also I've been working on prints - my camera is dead or I'd have pics to show. Also, I'm featured in Straylight this month! http://straylightmag.com/?p=1966 It's a process piece on the stained glass project I'm working on this semester. Pretty sweet. I've been really busy, and I'm kinda behind, but I'll have a lot more to post by the end of the semester!

The big news: I'm starting a web comic! There will be a link once I get it up and running!

Mdm. Swirple has RETURNED!

I finally found it!!! Someone had stolen all the copies I had of this print, except one, and I found them stashed up on top of a cupboard. I also got accepted into the print program today! Exciting day. I think I will post more prints later.

Madame Swirple is about 4"x4", and printed on Rieves Light Weight paper in relief. I'm thinking of making a series of women similar to this one.

Sorry I haven't posted in forever... and I'm starting stained glass!

So I'm terrible at keeping up with blogs, but I've also been working hard on my crafts. I've been getting supplies to start with stained glass, so I'll be posting pictures of that as soon as I start, as well as pictures of the prints I have been working on this semester (and some from last semester.) I've been focusing on print making at school now, which is a great way for me to be spending my time.


I've kind of paused on my resin work, and book binding because it was becoming too expensive for just a hobby. I have been working on wire jewelry, and have several pieces on my etsy. I've been working with real silver lately too. Check it out (www.roboerin3000.etsy.com)

Have a good one, I'll be posting again soon!

I'm an ecclectic crafter...

I recently started beading again, but first! My resin treats, there are more!

You may have seen this one before I made it into a pendant, but I really like the way the light blue looks with the silver sparkles! I also had a lot of fun with the new glitter colors I mentioned in my last post.

 As you can see I also started playing with magazine cutouts... There are Earthbound bottle caps, Sonic the Hedgehog and Megaman as well as a Halo 3 bottle cap visible, I also made some Fallout bottle caps, and a Batman one. I'm going to make some into magnets, and others into keychains and necklace pendants. My friend Sarah asked if I'd make her name with hearts in bottle caps for a necklace, which are what the blank purple caps are for. It's going to look killer, but I need to make one more purple cap, then seal them. :) I'd post pictures, but I want Sarah to see it first since she's the one buying it.

Thank you to my friend Stephanie I learned how to make resin black without needing to buy the dyes. These are for a present for Sarah's boyfriend, Ryan. He wanted me to make him a rune necklace, so in green I painted (on the squares) Raidho, and Thurisaz, and (ovals) Dagaz, and Perth. (Perth was because I'm partial to the meaning, but he requested the other 3) Pictures of those will follow in the next few days. The ice cube tray is full of my playing card set too :D I floated wire hearts, diamonds, spades and clubs in the resin and gave it a white ground.

This is a rough test as to how I would connect multiple bottle caps, I don't like it for that, however it would make a cute bracelet if it were for a single bottle cap. It's kind of watch-like.

These copper earrings match a necklace I made with a captive marble - I made other earrings that are the same style with different types of beads, and colors. But now for the captive marble necklaces!!!

I think that I need to make more, but so far I've got the silver with clear and grey beads, green with green beats, green and blue with green and clear beads, green and black with green and black beads, purple with purple and hematite beads, red and black with red and black beads, and the copper with copper and clear as I mentioned before. If you think I should make another color let me know what color you want because I'm making a pink and silver one, but after that I'm stuck. I'm going to try to sell these, but if they don't sell I'll wear them myself because I like them. And now for something completely different!

My little chicken plush I made :D He's about the size of my palm, and all hand sewn. I made the pattern myself based on a plush I saw online, unfortunately I don't remember the blog name, so I can't link it.

I also decided to start beading again, so I've been keeping myself plenty busy. This was a trial, and it's not long enough to do anything with (I didn't string enough beads for it to be a bracelet unfortunately, but it was fun, so I don't mind.)Well, I think I've added enough pictures, although I have more crafts, but I'll save those for next time :D

Resin Treats!

So I wasn't thinking last night, and I ended up working on my resin in the kitchen... I stunk up pretty much the entire apartment building, but I ended up making a bunch of pendants!

I like the way most of them turned out, and I'll be turning them into magnets, key chains and pendants for necklaces. I want to get more colors of glitter though to get more of a variety of pendants and stuff.

I'm thinking $5 for magnets and key chains, and $8 for necklaces, but I'm not sure yet. When I find out how to turn them into necklaces and key chains I think that will decide the price.

I just got more colors of glitter, (I now have silver, pink, purple, blue, teal, orange, lime and light blue) as well as learned new techniques, so look forward to more posts on resin! Oh, and this is what happened when I mixed makeup into resin, I like the effect!

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)