Crocheted Wire Necklace

Okay. I have a husband story slightly related to Valentines Day. One day we found a leak in our ceiling and cute and handy hubby tears through the ceiling to fix the problem. Can't find it, can't find it...and then goes on the roof to find that one of the clay shingles moved and all he had to do was move it back. So for the next 3 years I ask him to fix the hole in my kitchen ceiling....nothin'.  Fast forward to last Wednesday.

I was getting ready for work and thinking about the upcoming events. We were having my friend's surprise birthday party at my house on Saturday so I was thinking about cleaning the house and desserts, etc. The party was with the kids and so I was going to have about 9 kids over and I was thinking that it would be nice to lock them in the bedroom so it was less noisy.  I say to the husband, "Wouldn't it be nice if we had a T.V. in our room so we could lock all the kids in the master bedroom to watch a movie?"

That was it.  Two hours later I was checking my bank balance and saw a very large debit from Costco. I called the husband who said, "You told me to buy a flat panel LCD TV for the bedroom for Saturday, so I did."  Me, "WHAT?!" Him, "Happy Valentine's Day?"

Well, that story has nothing to do with my project for this week, but maybe some of you have a husband just like my model. I thought I'd let you know that you're not alone.

This week I was very surprised to find out how EASY it is to crochet wire.  I literally made this project in like 20 minutes.  All you need to know is how to crochet a chain stitch...and it's a great project to use up all those odds and ends beads you may have.

I found this tutorial on YouTube (click here) and it was simple to follow.

You will see in the tutorial that you crochet three different chains and braid them together. I made one braid with just white beads and the others with random colored beads.

I like this project so much that I'm going to invest in sterling silver wire and then get some glass beads maybe all in one color family or maybe do another one of these hodge-podge designs.  Guess what all the girls in my family are going to get this year!!!

Nordstrom Knock-Off

Last week Melissa talked about how she hated Valentine's Day. Melissa - I can still remember the Valentine's Days of college when we'd dress in black and watch women power movies like....Thelma and Louise (was that really Brad Pitt) or watch Steel Magnolia's and cry and hug and tell each other that we didn't need boyfriends because we had each other. And truth be told, we were more fun...that's why all the "dating" roommates dreaded their dates because we were going to do something fun in their absence. (It's 18 years later and we're still all friends...where are you now Cold-Sore Curt?)

Anyway, at that time I thought I hated Valentine's Day because I didn't have a boyfriend...but that's not the case...I now have a very cute, loving husband and I still don't much love Valentine's Day. Restaurants are booked, babysitters are taken, we feel forced to look lovingly in each other's eyes when, really, we both want to watch the game on the T.V.'s above. [Although, Valentine's Day is perfect for giving each other the things we bought right after Christmas at the sales, but couldn't justify spending money on ourselves. I think that's really why Valentine's Day was invented.]

So in honor of Melissa, I decided NOT to do a Valentine's Day themed post. (Deb's all about Valentine's Day...guess who always had dates in college!)  I guess this can be a Valentine's post if you are going to make this fabulous gift for a friend.

DISCLAIMER: If your name is Lisa and I'm going to your birthday party tonight...don't read on because I'm about to reveal your present.

I was looking for something cool to make my friend for her birthday and I stumbled upon a fabulous tutorial from a fabulous blog.  Here it is!

Basically she recreated a $595 necklace from Nordstrom for less than $20.  Uh...that wasn't a typo...a $595 necklace and there are no real gold, real silver, real pearl parts.

Because she gave such a great tutorial, I didn't document my every step. But I decided to make this necklace instead:

Here's the link to the necklace (click here)

But here's a screen shot in case they don't sell that necklace anymore. CLICK the PIC to see it bigger.

I only had 15 min in Joann's yesterday because I was in a hurry for an appointment. They didn't have everything I really wanted (like a dark chain and glass pearl beads) and I didn't have time to go to any other stores, so I settled on a longer silvery chain and crystals. And this is how it turned out. [Thanks to my friends Elita for modeling & Hazel for photographing.]

FYI, I singed the edges of the blue fake silk to make sure they didn't fray.

Hopefully she likes it! I saved $585 by making this by myself. Maybe I can use that money I saved to get my husband a Valentine's Gift....oh wait, I already have a few things for him.

Be Fri's and Friendship Rings

Be Fri? What does that mean to you? Growing up it was the half of the broken heart that I so desperately wanted. I mean, who wants “st ends”? Now the pitiful part of the story is not that I was stuck with “st ends” but that I didn’t have anyone to have a Best Friends broken heart necklace with. I think I mourned this point for many years until I somehow nabbed 6 Best Friends in college (I’d like to see that heart broken up in 7 pieces).

Now as a mother of a 7 year old little girl who so desperately wants to have a friend to share a charm with, I understand how hard it is for little girls to have a best friend. Each girl is in different activities (sports, music, church) or a different class in school and let’s not even mention the mood swings and extreme emotions!

So, I convinced my daughter that she doesn’t want to be tied down to just one friend. That many friends have lots of different things to offer. (Is this foreshadowing of the dating years?) I told her that we could make friendship rings instead. And do you know how cute she is? She first wanted a matching ring with me…and then I made her include her baby sister.

I tried to make this a project that she could do, but truth be told, I ended up doing most of it. It only took me about 5 minutes to do them…so no big deal, right?

You will need:
Colored craft wire (sometimes comes in sampler kits shown)
Wire snippers
Matching beads
Plastic Ring Mandrel (artbeads.com sells them for $3.77)
Needle nose pliers or crimp pliers

First take a ring you already have and size it on the mandrel.

If you are making small kids rings, you will need about 27 inches of wire. I happen to have ginormous hands and fingers and to make my size 10 ring, I used 48 inches of wire. 

Take your bead and string it on the wire and when the bead is in the middle, bend the wires on the sides of the bead so the bead won’t move around. 

Then place that on the mandrel one size bigger than you desire. For example, if you are making a size 5 ring, place it at the 6 mark. Begin to wrap the wire around the mandrel. Make sure one wire is wrapping above the bead and the other one is wrapping below the bead.

Sometimes I wrap the bead itself.

Make sure to leave about 2 inches to wrap the sides. When you only have about 2 inches of wire on both sides, pull the ring of the mandrel and wrap the ends of the wire around the sides. You can snip any excess off with your wire cutters and then crimp or squeeze the end of the wire so that it won’t snag your skin or your clothes. 

Then push the ring down the mandrel to the correct size. This tightens all the wires.

There you have it. You can do this with big or small beads. You can match the bead or the wire or both. Hopefully these friendship rings are a hit. Hey roomies, guess what you guys are getting at our next reunion?

Jewelry Box Makeover

As I pondered over what to do for this week's post I found inspiration from the previous post of Noreen's newly refinished dresser. So I decided to do a makeover on a something with drawers as well but just a teeny bit smaller. I found this beauty on a half price shelf at a thrift store. I figured for a buck fifty I could make something out of it.

It needed a little TLC. It had some weird foam pads under the pulls and a couple of the drawers needed some glue.

It had a glossy finish on it so instead of spending all of my time sanding I just gave it a light sanding and then sprayed it with primer. Do you like the shelter my husband built for all of my spray paint projects? I call it my amphitheater!



After I primed it I gave it a nice coat of "Ballerina Slipper" pink.

I removed the strange drawer pulls and painted these tiny wood balls to use as pulls. These suckers were hard to paint. The force of the air from the spray paint kept blowing them away!



I modge podged some scrap book paper onto my drawers and glued the balls on as drawer knobs.



This baby had a lot of drying to do between the spray paint, the modge podge, the knob glue....



But it sure did turn out cute! I'm pretty happy about it. I think it will pretty darn adorable in my daughter's room. It will be great to keep her little hair accessories in!






I joined these link parties!

The Mint that Keeps on Giving: Altoid Tin Ideas

I'm the daughter of a daughter of a Great Depression survivor. I don't get sick very often and I credit to both my grandma and my mother because they are very frugal. When we were little, my mother would cut off the moldy parts of the cheese and keep serving. This gesture isn't that bad, but she'd also scrape mold off a main dish and heat it up and serve. Meat was always left out too long (as if we didn't have a refrigerator), milk was drunk past the expiration date...we had stomachs of steel. But no matter what we were  NEVER, NEVER allowed to waste.

Which brings me to Altoids tins and Ice Breaker containers. I love both of those types of mint and I feel very bad everytime I have to throw away a container. But I can't just keep all those tins and container can I...or can I? I've been mulling this topic around in my head for months. And this past week for my birthday, a dear friend of mine made me this very cute present....isn't this travel candle divine? (Using the word divine make me feel like a Disney Princess.)

So, I dusted off my list and here are some ideas you can do with Altoids tins or Ice Breaker containers.

1. Purse-sized first aid kit...example here,
2. Tooth tin for the tooth fairy
3. Purse-sized sewing kit
4. Earphone container (I love this because now my earphones are never tangled up)
5. Change purse
6. Crayon container
7. Carry your sweetner of choice
8. Carry your pins (hair pins, safety pins, etc.)
9.  Decorate them for party favors (filled with candy or lipgloss, etc)
10.  Emergency candles or decorative (click here for tutorial)
11. Glue some strong magnets to the back and it can hold other magnets on your fridge, or twisty ties (it's those depression girls again that save the twisty ties)
12. Traveling intimacy kit (condoms, chocolates, wipes, etc.)
13. You can create a memory game that fits in the tin (using pictures of your family might be fun).
14. I've used them to hold jewelry when I'm traveling.
15. I've given them to the kids at the beach and say that if it can't fit in there, they can't bring it home.
16. Gift boxes for small presents.
17. Nice snack container for cheerios, etc.
18. When you're in another country it keeps your toilet paper dry and intact as you tour around.
19. Fill it with quarters and give it as a gift to the graduate who is off to college and staying at the dorms...laundry money.
20. Bragbook or Memorybook - see tutorial below
21.  Of course you can always use it to hold mints and candy and stuff...

Now when I decided i was going to do a bragbook/memorybook I looked around at some people have done like this or even this.

But, I am lazy and am not a very good scrap booker...so I'm going to show you the very easy way to make this.

I have a cutter, so it was easy for me to cut out the exact size of paper...but since I know not everyone has a cutter, I made this pdf so you can download it and use these as templates for your project. I traced the shape over the section of the picture I wanted to show. [It's easy to do this if you hold your photo up to the light...you can see exactly what you want to cut out.]

Then I glued the pictures to the cardstock and on the back I glued a slightly smaller piece of paper where I wrote what was on the picture.

I took a piece of ribbon and glued a tiny section to the bottom cover. This is so it's easy to take out the pictures.

I'm sorry...I didn't have very cute cardstock to make this the prettiest project, but you get the idea. I'm going to make one of these for my mom with pictures of the kids all in there. She can carry it in her purse and she'll always have them near...and they won't have to eat moldy cheese.