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Hm, that was a long week wasn’t it?

During my hiatus I got the proper varnish for the Fimo so the wonderland bracelet is almost complete. I had to use turpentine to get the wrong varnish off and it took half the paintwork off the Cheshire Cat so I’ve been putting off getting the acrylics out to fix that, perhaps that’ll be a job for this week. There’s some ribbon waiting to go on there as well.

Those little bottles are ridiculously cute though. I didn’t realise you could buy them that small until I spotted some on DA. I stuck the glitter in using a neat trick I learned from my Dad’s railway modelling involving watered down PVA glue, an eye dropper and a lot of time, and it’s worked pretty well in the end.

Armed with the varnish I set out to make the most colourful toxically cute thing I could possibly think of. There were stars. There was a rack of little stars drying on my table. And it was cute.

I still haven’t decided what to do with all the stars. And yes, the white ones do glow in the dark.

I went nuts for silver charms on my last trip to London and this has been my pet favourite bracelet for the past few months. Shame I didn’t take a photo of it before the fake-suede started to tear but never mind.

I also pulled out some black and red stars I’ve had for ages and finally managed to get them into something workable:

And somewhere along the line this appeared, but I’m not sure when.

Last month on a random day out in Canterbury I finally found some dice beads. I’ve been looking for these for ages; most places only sell them in huge packs and I only wanted a few. So when I found somewhere that not only did them individually but also stocked every colour under the sun, well, that shopping trip was awesome.

I also had an idea to try a lacey wrist cuff which turned my living room into a pile of scissors, elastic and lace for an hour, but I haven’t gotten around to finishing that one yet.

I fell in love with a new craft; needle tatting, which is a lace-making technique that I think looks like an awesome way to use up all those little magatamas I broght when I first started and have hardly used. Finally found the cotton locally yesterday. I couldn’t find any tatting needles so I’ve ended up with doll needles and Perle 8 cotton, and it seems to work pretty well. Conversions from American sizes are a pain in the arse, why can’t anyone measure needles in real mm/inch sizes rather than random numbers? Anyway, I set side an evening with TotusMel’s tutorial on Instructables / Youtube and ended up with this. Not bad.

Oh, and I found another use for the humble CD spindle.

And finally, I made this chainmail bracelet years ago but I must’ve completely forgotten to take a picture of it,  for some reason it’s not in the gallery yet. I love the coloured rings, but they’re a bitch to get together without scraping the enamel off.

Up next I’ve got some more beads from the Canterbury trip that I haven’t put into anything yet, and a whole host of other beads waiting to be made into things. And all the unfinished projects I just covered. So many beads, so little time…

Varnish still isn’t dry; I know if you use the wrong type with polymer clay it reacts and prevents it from setting but I’m pretty sure it’s the right stuff this time…

I wanted to practice making little charms so I’ve been playing with the clay this week, when I came up with this theme I just went with it.

Progress shot from just after baking. Since then I’ve painted on some extra details and am just waiting for the varnish to dry. The drying rack wasn’t feeling very photogenic but the Cheshire Cat was more than happy to smile for the camera.

I need to stop working on the floor, you can’t tell in this picture but the white clay picked up a ridiculous amount of dust. The white rabbit was so bad I’ve had to paint over it, I tried sanding it out but it wasn’t having any of it. So it is now a deep red rabbit and I’ll have to make another one.

It occurred to me that posting an update about a costume long before you wear it anywhere kind of spoils the surprise, so I’ll be saving that post for a while. That and I’ve still got some polymer clay bits to work on so it’s not really finished yet anyway.

Started on the copper bracelet on Friday, to be honest it’s not quite turning out how I’d imagined it in my head. I’ve used too many green beads, I need to go back and drop a few out to let the metal colour take over again. I’ve also realised the wire I’ve got is a completely different colour to the charms; the wire’s a bright shiny copper whereas the charms are much darker and it doesn’t really look that good. There’s this magic goo called Liver of Sulphur that you can use to oxidise it to the darker colour (and apparently yes, it smells as bad as it sounds) so I’ll have to look into getting some of that.

I did however make a rather nice purple wooden bracelet. I’ll add this one to the gallery when the lighting’s good enough to get a decent shot.

This week I’ve been reading through the beginning of the android SDK tutorials. Secretly I’d rather like a smartphone, but it’s such a bit increase on my current phone bill I’m not sure if it’s worth it. So I thought I’d take a peek and see what else I could do with it other than the usual. Still right near the beginning of those but we’ll see.

I’ve been really busy lately so haven’t had much time to work on anything for the past few weeks, but creative-fu hit me like a sack of bricks on Wednesday and out came the craft supplies. Hurrah!

I’ve had some light green beads in my box for a while, I’d planned to do something in copper with them but never quite had enough pieces to make anything of it. So I ran onto eBay and ordered some copper pretties. I’ve also got some large purple wooden beads that I’ve been dying to use for a while, I came up with an idea for them too and I’ve now got some silver spacers on order to put between them, along with a few other general supplies that I’d run out of.

While waiting for that lot to come:

I must be insane.

Say hello to the Leftover Companion Cube. It took forever to put the first one together, but with the leftovers staring back at me I thought a much smaller desk-friendly version would be nice. I have a feeling I’m going to regret this. I’ve had to change the design to accommodate the smaller pieces because I’m using 2″ grey offcuts but it seems to be going okay so far.

Then the first batch of aforementioned jewellery pieces arrived yesterday:

I am over the moon! They are so much nicer than they looked in the seller’s pictures. I’ll be putting that together sometime this weekend.

But before then I have started work on a costume. Because I am strange and when the idea popped into my head on Friday and I had all the materials already in leftovers from other projects I just had to get started. I have no idea if I’m even going to any costume parties this year. Usually I allow 2 weeks to put things together, spend the whole time making props, throw my outfit together at the last minute and end up looking a right state (though I do get a very nice white rabbit to keep out of it). So perhaps starting early is a good thing, even if it gathers dust for a year or two. Expect an update on that sometime this evening.