Sunday, April 29, 2012

Rework of Earrings

      I enjoyed a day out with my parent yesterday at Old Mystick Village for their sidewalk sale. We got to see the new ducklings that hatched. Sadly we found out that out of eleven ducklings that hatched there are only six left. Apparently the sea gulls will swoop in and take one of the babies. The remaining six were adorable as heck. I wish I would have had my camera with me so I could post a picture of them. They were still soft and fluffy looking.
      Anyway...I digress...As we were looking around at the items shops had on sale we came a cross some really neat jewelry. My mother really like the earrings but was not happy with the ear wires. She has a problem with hooks falling out even with the little rubber backs. Surprised, I guess it's not an uncommon problem. Unsure about them we walked on down the way. After stopping in and grabbing some drinks from another shop we headed on back up the walk way and back on by those earrings. Mom stopped and looked again. Took took some convincing but she got them after I told her that I could change them up to how ever she would like them.
      I wanted to share with you how I went about transforming the earrings.

Here the earrings are before I did anything to them:


One little snip where the solder was holding the dangle on and I removed the original hooks. (Left is the original hooks, right the dangle separated from the hooks.) You'll notice that one of the cool things about these earrings is that the glass balls come out and are interchangeable. I have removed the balls while I work on them to keep from damaging them or loosing them.


I had to find something that would work for mom. She wanted to keep them as a dangle earring. I showed her some posts that I could put them on or some ear wires with a back that comes up and closes the wire, lever earrings. She decided on the lever earrings. Here are the 14K gold wires with the dangle from the original earrings:


Next I had to get out my gold findings. I thought I'd show you what I store my main gold findings in. I found these nice little stack-able snap containers in the dollar bin at Target and they work perfectly.


I thought about dressing them up for her a little so she could wear the out or just with some everyday clothes. I decided on an AB Swarovski crystal and a gold eye pin that I would just make another loop to connect it with. I decided on the AB crystals because they will pick up and reflect whatever color glass balls she has in the earrings.


I attached the original dangle to one of the eyes of the crystal. I then connected the other eye of the crystal to the new lever ear wires with a gold jump ring so that they would hang so you wouldn't see the connector that goes from the top of the glass ball to the bottom. Here they are all done:


Sunday, April 15, 2012

Bookmarks

      I've been super busy lately and slacked on writing. I worked on the garden a little, it still has a long way to go even for this year. I still have two more boxes to build, get into place, fill with dirt and plant in. I've planted all my seeds in newspaper cups I made and put them in the starter greenhouse, (it's tiny only 4 small tiers. One day I'll have a big one!) It's still getting kind of cold here at night so I worry about planting the seeds too early. One year I planted my plants apparently too early and it got to cold for them and they all died. I had to buy plants twice that year. This year I want to make sure I don't loose any or as little as possible. We still have leeks growing from last year. They survived the winter. Parsnips are coming up from last year already. The celery is sprouting again from plants that almost made it though the winter. Garlic and chives are already growing. So some things are well under way. The only unfortunate part is I wanted to move the bed with the leeks and parsnips in it but now can't because they decided to keep growing.

      Besides playing in the garden I've been busy making all sorts of things, one being a ton more bookmarks. I came into rather suddenly a bunch of beautiful beads and things and the ideas just kept flowing for different bookmarks.

Here are some of the large bookmarks I made. The Shepard's hooks on these measure just under 5" long. The left bookmark is beaded with light green glass leaf beads, green stone and pearl beads, a silver foil glass leaf bead and a silver dragon fly charm. The middle bookmark has different lengths of pewter colored chain with glass beads in black, green and clear blue colors. It also has a metal bird and feather charm hanging from the chains as well. The right bookmark has upcycled vintage gold puff hearts on a gold chain beaded with gold ball beads and light green Swarovski crystals. To find out more information on these and to see their listings click HERE



I made some smaller bookmarks too. These Shepard's hook bookmarks are just over 3" in length. They are more ideal for smaller hard cover books or paperback books but they will also work for the larger books too.


Along with all of these a really brilliant idea hit me (at least I think it was brilliant.) I love my Pandora bracelet and all the different charms that I have for it. This got me thinking. Why not make something for my Pandora/Pandora style beads and charms. I thus came up with these customizable bookmarks. You can customize them with your very own Pandora style beads and charms. Have your bookmark with a personal touch that's all your own. So far I have made these two: