Lisa--No Peeking Either!

My sister-in-law had a birthday a week and a half ago. I still haven't sent her the present I made for her. I'm a bit behind.

Yeah yeah yeah. AND I need to do something about my photography. These were taken the same day the last ones were. I WILL improve these, I just haven't had a chance to yet.

















These are glass pebbles which I painted to spell out her name. Fortunately two of the letters are the same when reversed, so I only had to twist my brain around for the L and the S, so that they looked right from the front.

The paint just a standard acrylic paint (Reeves, actually). It took three or four coats to get the letters opaque enough, and in retrospect, I think I should have outlined them in black for clarity.
















Once they were dry, I painted the designs across the backs, and then filled the last color across the entire back of the pebble.

















I used E6000 to glue on rare earth magnets, but those were so strong they pulled each other off the backs of the pebbles. I had to go back and use regular black magnets, which will probably work better at holding paper anyway.

Hey, Mom! No Peeking!

Exhibit A as to why I need to improve my jewelry photography.


















This is actually a set of four silver tags I made for my mother's Mother's Day present. Using a hammer and a 3mm set of letter punches, I punched the names of her four grandchildren into the blanks, then picked out a 4mm (I think) Swarovski bicone crystal to attach. The crystals are threaded onto a long headpin, and the end is wrapped both to secure the dang thing, and to give the crystal some roughness to better match the look of the punched letters.

Here is a slightly better photograph.

















Again, you can see that the unevenness of the letters is the result of my relative inexperience with the punches. But I think that also gives the pieces a certain rustic charm.

I created the holes at the top of the tags by putting each tag on a stack of balsa wood shingles and just hammering a nail through them. Rustic, but effective!

So, now I have four tags, which would make for a nice charm bracelet, except that she doesn't really wear that kind of jewelry. Instead, I put them onto differing lengths of chain, then built a double eye shank from silver wire which I ran through a large glass bead I had on hand.

















(Exhibit B in the need to improve my photography skillz.) At least, you can see the color of the bead, which is about 3" across. I took three lengths of jewelry cord (two turquoise, one navy) and threaded a silver cube bead on either side.

I tried a lobster clasp, but they kept breaking. Cheap material--I think I bought them for a Girl Scout activity three years ago, so I substituted a toggle and ring clasp.

















So, the final test is whether the entire piece is chunky and nifty, or entirely too overblown. The good news is that if it's the latter, I can just reclaim the components and create something else.