More LARP tat

I don't know quite what it is about this hobby, but LARP provides so many opportunities to be creative! One of the main themes of my character's experiences over the last four years has been falling in love with people, only for them to die in incredibly harrowing circumstances. Before I went to Renewal, I had been idly considering making a locket containing a drawing of one of those characters, who had died almost two years previously.

This is us three years ago.
Copyright Iain Sewell

I didn't get a chance to do it before the event, as for once there weren't any decent lockets on sale in Claire's Accessories! It's usually such a handy place for LARP suitable jewellery tat. So I went to the event without my locket, and figured I'd sort it out when I got back.

What I didn't realise was that at some point during the event, the other characters I was extremely fond of would also end up dying! (Seriously, it appears to be a really bad thing for you to have my character like you. It's like an accelerated death sentence. I think I might have to become a nun or something to stop it happening again!). So when I got home, after I'd recovered from the event, I decided to rethink my locket idea. I found one on eBay that could hold four pictures, and set about finding a decent IC head shot of all four of the friends I'd lost.

I used Picasa to edit the photos to make them look like pencil drawings, and mucked about with the photo printing settings in Microsoft Picture Viewer to print them as small as I could. Ten minutes carefully cutting them out and sticking them into the locket (protected with that fab stickyback see through plastic stuff you can buy) and I have a gorgeous piece of kit that I cannot wait to wear to the next event (if only for the lovely roleplay it will generate when someone asks to see what is inside).

I am so pleased with how this has turned out. And it only cost me a fiver!

Adventures in jewellery making

I have hardly knitted a stitch this past week. However, that doesn't mean that I haven't been crafting! For once, I have been indulging in the other crafts I profess to enjoy, the ones that knitting has pushed to one side  for the last couple of years.

I broke out my shiny new jewellery making supplies, and finally got around to making the necklace for the wedding. I had already decided that the earrings I will be wearing on the day will be my oldest pair of earrings, Swarovski crystal hearts that my Gran bought me after I got my ears pierced (I was probably seven or eight at the time). When I found similar Swarovski crystals on sale at Blue Streak Beads, I decided to make myself a necklace to match.

The crystal is so pretty, the colour changes from pale pink through to a darker purple, depending on the angle you look at it. I've paired it up with some clear round beads, and cream coloured pearls. It was very much a trial and error experiment, but it came together very quickly.

This is the best photo I could get of it. I can't wait till the end of April, when I pick up my dress and can finally try on all the elements of my outfit together!

Once I'd done that, I wanted to carry on and make something else. Before I knew it, I had these:

By this point, I was keen to carry on with the jewellery theme, but was rapidly running out of pretty beads! I went stash diving through my craft supplies, and pulled out my bag of felt and some embroidery floss. Which became this brooch:

It's a good thing I'd dismantled the dining table to make space for the hen night, otherwise I'd have got my sewing machine out as well!

FO Friday - Jewellery rack tutorial(ish)

Everything I'm working on at the moment is something of a longer-term project. So there won't be a yarny FO for another couple of weeks (so if it's yarny FOs you're after, head over to Tami's to see what the rest of the gang have created!)

But, to fill the gaps, I'm going to try and dig up old finished projects that I can share with you all. Up today is something I made a few years ago as a way of storing my jewellery. I was reminded of it when hunting around on Pinterest for interesting things I spotted this interesting project:

Silverwear trays repurposed as necklace cases
original source here

Mine isn't quite as fancy, but it certainly does the job (and has done for a while now).

Welcome to the corner of my bedroom

I didn't follow a pattern or a tutorial or anything; I pretty much just made it up as I went along, based on the image I had in my head of what I wanted it to do. It was a fairly inexpensive project.

Necklace rack

I took a length of balsa or bass wood (not sure which, it was that long ago) and cut it into lengths. For the earring rack, three lengths of 12 inches. The necklace race is two lengths of 24 inches. The piece of wood I bought is half an inch square in profile.

I measured the distance required between each row by measuring the longest item I wanted to hang (so you can customise it to fit your own jewellery). Having acquired some rather lovely pink thonging from somewhere, I decided to paint the wood to match.

I used Citadel Miniature paints, because that's what I had! In tentacle pink, warlock purple and liche purple. For the earring rack I did one length in each colour; the necklace rack I painted a third in each colour.

The earring rack had holes drilled into the ends to allow the pink thonging through, and I used that to attach the three pieces of wood together. I tied a knot above and below each piece of wood to hold it in place.

Earring rack

For the necklace rack, an inexpensive pack of short tacks provided the hooks to hang the necklaces from.

Oh dear, I think my silver needs a polish

For the earrings, I knew this wouldn't be good enough, so I picked up some packs of screw eyes.

Oops! Maybe I should have cleaned first. Ignore the dust! Focus on the
pretty parrot earrings and feathers instead!

I alternated large and small across the three lengths of wood. The weight of the earrings forces the wood to hang at an angle, but I don't really mind that.

I used some left-over large screw eyes to hang the racks from nails hammered into the wall.

Quick, easy and very handy! Now all I need to do is get back into the habit of actually putting my jewellery away on them when I take it off. Both racks were full to bursting when I first made them, so who knows where all my necklaces are hiding!

I made bling!

Firstly, today is Wednesday, so I should be posting all about my WIPs. Especially today, as Tami is celebrating a whole year of WIP Wednesday link ups over on her blog. Go check it out, it's amazing. Plus, there's a fab giveaway for a skein of Candy Skein yarn!

But my WIP progress report would be extremely dull. A row here, a row there. No progress at all on some projects. So instead, here's an update on my foray into jewellery making, as introduced on Saturday.

With the wedding fast approaching, I have devoted most of the small amount of crafting time I've had available this week to making 50 of these pretty dangly beady things to decorate my Sweet Pea Shawl.



So hard to get a good photo!



Last night, I finished the last one. I had exactly enough lobster clasps, way too many head pins, and slightly too many beads in both sizes, so my earlier worry about breaking one of the smaller glass beads wasn't necessary. I did have to get creative with my colour choices towards the end, as the mix of colours in each bag of beads wasn't exactly the same. I kept to the same colours for each one, but overall there is a nice mix between reds, greens, blues, yellows, blacks and pinks.

A selection of some of the prettiest ones.
I seem to have missed out the green!

I'm still not sure on the best way to wear the shawl on Saturday. My dress is quite short, so just wearing it over my shoulders with the point down the back isn't going to work. I will have to have a bit of a play between now and Saturday.

A New Craft

As if I didn't have enough on my plate, between my Year of Projects list, the War on WIPs and several crazy ideas I've had for Rugby World Cup themed crocheting... I've thrown another craft into the mix and am having a play with jewellery making! Well, not actual jewellery, but the principles are the same.

You remember my Sweet Pea Shawl? I had decided to forgoe the tassles in favour of beaded dangly things. Having ordered my supplies from various eBay bead and jewellery supplies shops, I left it all to one side, reasoning that I had plenty of time until the shawl was needed, and I'd much rather get on with knitting and crocheting projects from my list. I had a bit of a panicky realisation the other day, when I looked at the calendar and discovered that July was almost over, and the wedding I plan to wear the shawl to is in a week's time! So away has gone the knitting and the crochet, out has come the jewellery making supplies, and I've been zipping through my dangly beady things. 



My supplies! Millefiori beads in two different sizes, plain silver beads,
silver headpins and silver lobster clasps.



Colour matching



Two finished beady dangly things



And an arty shot of them attached to the shawl



I need 50 in total, so far I've made 14. I'm rapidly running out of the same colours between my big and small beads, so I think I will have a fair few with sort-of colour matches. I'm sure it will look ok, if I spread them out inbetween the ones with complete colour matches. I've also successfully broken one small bead (the hole was too small for my pin, and as I tried to put it on, the bead split in half) so there is one too few small beads now as well (I only had 100 to start with).

I had bought some clear glass beads as well, which I was going to use as a spacer inbetween the large and small coloured beads, but they don't fit on my headpins!