Display boards

I've recently started going to craft fairs and cons i nthe local area. I'll be at Geek the Halls in Portland on the 14th if anyone is interested.

I discovered last event that my set up is not great. When you're sharing space with someone you need to be able to make a cohesive display. Something my partner and i are working on. The problem is she does a lot of big things or space munchers and I make a lot of little things thattend to fade out under the shade of things like her plushies and my scarves. I've been trying to make new displays but it just isn't working. My last one was too high up and before that my stuff just tended to blend together untill it looked like a rainbow had pooped on my table. It just wasn't working. Plus I needed a way to make pricing very obvious.

Into the back stock *clutter room* I went hunting for something. For the record I have a few display shelves I've picked up here and there. I have an earring rack that spins, a tall glasses spinner I just can't use yet, and other misc shelves. We use our black and qhite cubeing shelves to give us table height, but I still needed something that was low enough to not block the bottom cubes.

I found these:

 This is old cut pieces to an old light box that my cats killed, but I'm such a cheapskate that I couldn't toss good pieces. They're foam board. They're faily sturdy, They fit the size of the table space in front of my shelving, and I can build them up just high enough to give lift without blockign the cubes behind them. There was four but one was marked by the cat so I tossed it.

This was part of a roll of foam I tend to cut pieces from for boffer weapons...when I actually make boffers. I have a pretty big roll so I cut down three pieces for the boards. 

My plan is to glue the foam to the boards, cover them with a fabric that matches my sign. (purple cuz I'm not doing more pink and the black in my stall is already overwhelming.)

To give it color I tacked some old fabric over the foam and board after glueing the foam to the board so nothing would slip. The fabric is microsuade which tends to be fairly dirt proof and water proof. Over time I'll have to change it but for now it works with my colors. I chose to pin it in case something does happen to the fabric. This way i can change it easier. 

This is just an image of how i have the necklaces held onto the board. 

Once I cover them I'll add a prop stand in the back. Not sure how yet though. My plan is to make these easy to collapse, pack and set up. So the prop stand needs to fold up or be somthing easily packed.

What I learned after building the boards was they were almost fine flat. They only needed minimal lift. Ineded up just making little blocks to put under them and now i have this. 

The little pink flowers on the corners are the prices for the stuff on the board.

Update: I used the boards this last weekend. they were ok, ut really I think I need to make a spinning rack of some sort. These take up way too much table space.

As always, with a little playing around I managed to fill in a need in my crafts. NEVER THROW USEFUL STUFF AWAY!

Edit: As much as these boards helped with transport, they eat up a ton of space. If you're working by yourself they're great because you can spread them out. However, if you are like me and sharing a table with friends then it doesn't work out so well. I've since added the necklaces and such to a hanging rack and reused these racks as a stepping shelf for my dragons.

For the record this worked out very well, but it needs reinforcing. It wobbles a bit. Also don't have anything above it. Someone will knock stuff down and you will lose product that way.

If you have any questions, comments, critiques feel free to drop me a line. I'm always up for chatting.

Dice Bracelets

SO I make dice bracelets a lot. Unfortunately this isn't going to be a how to. I'm gearing up for Seadogs in Lebanon Oregon this weekend and don't have time to make a post. Sorry.

I will however leave you with a few pics of my fave bracelets.

Feel free to ask questions, leave comments, etc. I"m always up for a chat!

Perfume Sticks and Lockets

This week I was digging around looking for some other supplies for another project and...I got side tracked. As a crafter this happens a lot. Just go with it. I didn't find the supply i was looking for in my crafty stash, but I did stumble across my perfume sticks supplies.

For this project it's rather simple. Finding the supplies is a pain.
You need a scent which is usually found as an essential Oil.
 Technically the walmart oil can work, but always do a skin test. If you feel even remotely itchy don't use them. For me I haven't had any reactions to them yet.
Most of my oils come from a web site designed specifically for making these. http://rusticescentuals.com/
The other item you'll need is something to make the solid base. Some use coconut oil and cooking wax from what I've heard, but I use the base from the above site because I trust it.

Beyond those ingredients you'll need a container of some sort. I had a bag of tubes so I'll be using those but anything can work. I use two lockets as well.

YOu'll need a microwave safe container. I used a pyrex measuring cup.
An optional item is small pipettes to make transferring the melted perfume from the pyrex to the tubes easier, but it isn't necessary. Just keep some rags on hand to clean up the mess if you spill a bit.

Here are the scents I chose to use this time around. I have about 20 scents, but that's due to the web site doing a batch scents sale so I kinda splurged them. These little bottles go a long way. You don't want to add too much to a batch or it'll be over powering. that being said, I followed my old instructions to the letter. I only used a pipette or two full of scent per batch, but it wasn't enough.  I got quite a few comments about not smelling the perfume. So the ratio of scent to base is up to your own preferences really. 

 These are two of my containers. The small tube to the left is a basic lip balm tube. the clear one on the right is a bigger one. I like varioation. these can also be found at the web site linked above.

I chose this base from the web site because it was listed as all natural. With more and more people shying away from things that have weird chemicals in them I figured it would be a good idea to choose something natural just to be safe. Theoretically you can use coconut oil but I haven't used it yet so I don't know how it reacts. I do know coconut oil has a lower melt temp than this, so hot days will cause it to melt. This stuff wont.

What it looks like on the inside. it feels like well oil really, just hard. As you can see I'm almost out. For this project I used up what was left.

 YOu don't need to use a lot for one tube to be honest. This is...maybe one spoonful? Maybe just a bit over. I microwave this in intervals starting with 40 seconds. This round that was enough but some of my other batches required multiple rounds of time. Be careful, the cup will be hot.

 I didn't get any pics of the pour stage because this stuff has to be done fast. What you do is pour your scents into the melted wax and stire for about a minute or so. It's up to you. Then you need to pour these into tubes. This was the first batch and because i chose to do the bigger tube I didn't quite have enough. It's ok since this was one I was keeping.

Blurry image right after a pour. Someday I'll get a better camera. :P

These were some other containers I wanted to use. They're lockets. As I said you can use anything. These will allow someone to wear the perfume without having the get the oils on them if they wish. 

Another option, if you don't want to make a solid perfume stick, is to take a little bit of your essential oil and put it into a bottle with a cork. The cork sucks up the scent and you can wear it around. However I'd suggest diluting the oil. Oils have a high potency without diluting them.

These are all of the perfumes after I ran out of base. My last batch ended up with quite a few tiny tubes.

Overall, this is a lot of guessing. Have fun with it. You can get exact measurements if you want, but I sort of just winged it after a while because the exactness was giving me very mild scents and i have quite a few friends who like more powerful scents.

Feel free to ask questions, leave comments, etc. I"m always up for a chat!

Winter is Coming Glass Pendants

In this post I'm trying something new. I keep seeing those focal pieces with the picture behind the glass bubbles. I have a big batch of them so I plan to make a few Game of Thrones House pendants.

What you'll need:

Round glass focal
Your design to be placed on the back
Cork for magnets
Moleskin for necklaces
Bails
E6000 glue
Modge Podge
necklace or cord for necklace


The first thing you need to do is print out your images. I used some Game of Thrones pictures. You need to size them to the focal you are using. The easiest way to do this is to place the focal over the image and trace around the focal as closely as you can. Once you cut out your circle glue it to the back somehow. Depending on your printer the image shouldn't smudge when you put Modge Podge over it.

To start with you want to use your glass cabochon to make a circle on your paper. Once you get that circle cut out (and may scavenge the rest of the image for more cabochons like i had to) you'll have to put Modge Podge on the back. I used a paint brush. Place the cabochon to you paper and use more Modge Podge on it to glue it in place. If you're getting a milkiness in your image place the whole thing paper down before repainting it and press, that'll push all the bubbles out and give you a clearer image. 

The back will look something like this once its glued down and re-glued. It'll feel a bit plastic-like on the back, don't worry about it. If you have edges that didn't stay flat clip them with tiny scissors and do another gluing.

This is how they should turn out if you did everything right. How the image sits is up to you. It's all a matter of preference.

This is what you'll get if you scavenged the rest of the images. I made ones with the house sayings and ones with the house names. I have plans for another post on how to clear up the blank space, but really you can do anything there.

Other examples of images that came be used. I had some glass cabochon's left so I filled them. Then I discovered some of my metal backs left with their glass so I made a whole set of Sailor Scouts! I think I like the glass ones better because the glass magnifies the picture.

The last thing you'll need to do to these before finishing the backs is to attach bails so you can hang them on necklaces if you'd like. Bails are little metal pieces with a loop that you can use to make these into necklaces. They look like this. And a good, non-asian market, seller with a good price can be found here: https://www.etsy.com/transaction/208041901

You'll want to glue these on with E6000. In some cases it might have been best to glue them on first, but I'll have to experiment with that to say one way or the other. Give them a day to fully dry.

This is what mine looks like once I glued the bail on.

After you're happy with you pieces and your bails are glued on tight you can cover the backs with moleskin so nothing rubs on your skin. I've seen other do this with cork or regular cloth, but over all moleskin fabric or even scraps pieces of mirco suede is nicer on your skin.

This follows the same process of construction as the circles. Trace your glass cabochon, cut, and glue the piece on. Don't do a second outer layer of glue though. That'll take away the nice feeling of the fabric.

These glass cabochons can be anything from necklaces to magnets to whatever you want. You could even decorate an entire table with them, resin it over, and have something fun to look at. It's all up to you.

Feel free to ask questions, leave comments, etc. I"m always up for a chat!

In the Name of the Moon

Shrinky Dinks.

If you don't know what these are you're possibly too young for quite a few things, or you spend too much time on a phone/computer/electronic device and what are you doing on my blog? I'm kidding. I live on my computer too. Don't worry. I assume if you are here you're looking for a craft. A simple one at that.

Well you can't get any simpler than Shrinky Dink charms. Seriously it's very simple. However it does take a little precision.
For the record this is a new craft to me. I had no idea what I was doing. Be WARNED: DO some research first. I'm still perfecting this as I go because I didn't look things up.

I had to learn the hard way:
to lighten up the brightness of my images or they bleed and get really dark when they shrink.
that if I want a certain size charm then I may need to make my images bigger.
that my printer hates the shrinky dink papers size that comes in the little Joann's craft refill packets.
touching the image will smudge it.
finding a proper sealer or it'll fade

Anyway, lets begin. Find a picture that maximizes your sheet of plastic.
I used a rip from the sailor moon games so I'd have little 8bit figures.
I then opened them in gimp cuz I'm too poor for photoshop lol and brightened the image. for me my chosen number was 111 but it might be different for you.
After brightnening the image I resized it till it looked like it would print. This might take some work on your part. Everyone's printer is different and I can't figure out how to set my margins for mine.

Once it was set to a decent size and I didn't feel like my printer would cut it off in a weird place I sent it to print.
A lot of people online will say you can only use this or that type, but I use the generic refill packets from Joann's crafts cuz it was the easiest to get a hold of. I'll be looking into finding bigger sheets though.

After it's printed you'll have to trim it. Make sure you hole punch first or your might make a mistake like I did and cut your edges too short leaving no room for a punch. With the punch already in it'll be easy to cut around it.

After all the trimming is done the heating can begin. Lay your pieces out on a baking sheet. For now I'm using a pizza sheet. Not such a great option really cuz the edges curve but it works. A flat sheet is best. Put a piece of paper on it and make sure your put your cut pieces with the rough side down or the plastic might stick to the paper.

As the pieces go in the over at 350 degrees you'll notice they'll curl in on themselves and even flip. Don't freak out this is all how it works lol.

When they look as flat as they'll get or they stop shrinking pull them out and try to get something heavy on top of them quick. I haven't managed to perfect this yet so mine still curl a bit. The baking part takes me about 1 maybe 2 minutes? However all ovens differ so play around.

When they are done a cooled then you can put little o rings on them for necklaces or what not.

Have fun!

As always, Feel free to ask questions, leave comments, etc. I"m always up for a chat!

Cabochon Focals

I'm starting this blog in the hopes that i can keep up with my crafts. Like many, but not all, crafters I have a habit of starting a project only to have the next project grab my interest before i finish the first. I'm hoping to curtail this habit this year. Call it my New Year's Resolution. :)

Beyond that this is just a fun little blog to showcase my crafts. If I do tutorials cool, if not boo. Either way hopefully I'll have something to show for this by the end of the year. My second goal is to post once a week, hopefully on fridays.

Wish me luck!

For starters I'll post my current short project, cabachon pendants.

These are fairly easy. You don't need the tools I use. Something that fits nicely inside your backing would work just fine for cutting too, or use the glass cabachon. Either way works.

It's a fairly simple process. use a cutter to cut out a part of the paper you like, fit it into the silver back to make sure its snug. Then pull it out and glue it down. I use whatever glue is available. In this case modge podge cuz it dries clear and is rather secure. After that rub some glue on the glass piece and fit into the silver back.

What you get is pieces like these. 

The variety is endless. I'll be experimenting later on with just using resin or modge podge inside, to put in different things like beads or little bits of glitter or even words and phrases. The options are as endless as your imagination.

Feel free to ask questions, leave comments, etc. I"m always up for a chat!