Thing-a-day.com

Dear Blog,
Today was a pretty good day.

I made these earrings by cutting up a cd, putting it in the microwave for a few seconds, then baking the crackly bits in the oven for a few minutes.  Drilled holes when they cooled down.

Also, my brother and I made a subversive gingerbread house for Cale’s birthday:
<– Happy house eats happy gingerbread man. Has third eye.
<–Ben was in charge of the candy kill side.
<– My side may be a little more traditional…
<– Yep.

Also, the amaryllis is getting huge!

AND I made my first sale on etsy today! Huzzah!

AND I started an alternate blog, to keep going with this thing-a-day stuff. I suspect it’ll be like a cross between thing-a-day and a photo journal. Whatever form it takes, it’ll be: colorful, illustrated, full of flash photography and a little bit tacky.
If you liked what I did this month, come check it out

http://molliefabric.wordpress.com

I’ve had a great time “getting to know you” through your crafts, you guys, and I do hope to keep in touch with some of you, and keep up with the wonderful things you are making!
Such an amazing body of work here, really.

Cheers to all, see you next year!

Wow. It’s over. hm, the time flew by!

Today I made an attempt at wire wrapping. Still not convinced I’m doing it correctly, but it looks ok. It’s a shame the photos do not do the stones justice - in real life they have such depth and flash within. The bottom stones are labradorite (my fav) and I was told the top was a darker version of it, but I’m not sure. It is pretty, though! These will be on my etsy shop, rubyzu, but I want to try and get some better photos.

It’s been fun - see ya’ll next year!

Well, I did it. I made a thing a day for 29 days. I decided to sign off from TAD2 with another shrinky-dink-magnifying necklace. The charm says “create beauty,” and has a bird carrying an olive branch. I included the bird because I had been thinking about “cultural diplomacy” today. I heard the term being used to describe what the New York Philharmonic’s performance in North Korea was all about. I like the idea of vastly different communities coming together around cultural activities (i.e. art) in a way that fosters constructive conversations - who wouldn’t. These conversations may ultimately lead to peaceful solutions to foreign policy problems. The whole world could use some of that these days.

However my necklace came from a place much more personal than cultural diplomacy. My husband tells me that one of the reasons he loves me is that I “make our life beautiful.” He is not talking about my habit of spending evenings in stained pjs, with my hair piled on top of my head, while I eat Chinese food out of the container. He is talking about how I like to fill the room with sunshine, how I point out details in the world that he may not have noticed, how I make pretty jewelry and stationary, and how I love to throw theme parties. He is talking about my approach to life in general, and it is a most lovely compliment.

I love beautiful things. I like to create them. I like to share them. I like to keep them. I must continue to make them without TAD, because beautiful objects inspire me and making things energizes me.

For future musings and creations by yours truly (I have a handful I did not even get to tackle during TAD), check out my new blog Lady Lulu’s Braindump Hut and Craftarium. Although I will not be posting a thing a day, I do intend to keep up the good work. So set up an RSS feed and keep tabs on me.

-Lu

A last touch of Spring to end the month.

This challenge has been such fun. I’m going to challenge myself to keep this up - though probably not at an item a day pace!

Shirley

A touch of pink to make grey appear cheery!

Shirley

I reworked my thing from the other day into a necklace. I like it much better. As much as I would like to keep it, it will end up for sale in my etsy shop, rubyzu. The necklace part is reticulated quartz in little diamond and rod shapes.

I can’t believe TAD is almost over already! It’s gone by so quickly. As someone else said, it is so nice to be able to look back on your day and see that yes, you WERE productive! Even if you weren’t acutely aware of it at the time.

Today I was antsing to play with the beads I used yesterday, and the other order I placed arrived in the mail so I had that as well. I’m not totally done, but a work in progress is part of my thing today. I want to add a strand of strung beads above the chain.  I LOVE these beads, not sure why, but they have apparently found a way to firmly entrench themselves into my heart and I want more, more, more! You can’t see on the pics so well, but the clear beads (Czech fire polished, faceted) have a bright shiny bronze lining. They add a bit of sparkle to the more earthy colored squares and ovals.

The link is hard to see, the sun was shining so brightly (sorrry, Sarah!) so here’s a close up. Still a bit of glare/too much contrast.

My other thing is cooking. It is something new so I say it counts Butternut squash soup/bisque with a horseradish cream. Heavy cream, whipped, with some horseradish and a dash of curry. Recipes are from my ‘Soup Bible’.

Pretty cranberry pearls, with a matching flower.

Shirley

I can’t believe I haven’t totally skipped a day. Granted, I don’t like using cooking as my ‘thing’ since I have to cook no matter what, but sometimes it’s just a little more/extra/different than normal so in my head, that rationalizes it a tad.

Today’s Thing is for my son’s school fund raiser. They have an ice cream social where you go, eat ice cream (woohoo!), listen to the kidlets sing some songs and bid on baskets put together by all the different classes. His class (1st grade) is making a few small baskets so you can bid with a 1 dollar ticket instead of a 5 dollar ticket. These will be part of a small basket. Hopefully they’ll rake in a couple of bucks I’m including a candle as well, maybe a bookmark (I just remembered the mom asked if I could make a matching bookmark…eeek!). Any ideas for a name? Crappy photo, too dark outside for the clothesline

The cutest little spring blossoms to dangle from your ear.

Shirley

Made some earrings today (big surprise) to go with a necklace I made myself the other day. I really like the little sterling silver dragonfly.

This TAD should go through the next month because I swear, I would have gone straight to bed this evening. But instead, I HAD to get a ‘thing’ done so here it is. Simple, yet still a thing. Hooray. I think I’m going to open an etsy shop. I have a website but I don’t like updating it and I don’t like making things when I ‘have’ to per someone’s order. I’d rather make what I feel like, and then someone can buy it, instead of vice versa. And it makes more sense to have a site that I only pay when I actually sell something versus one that I pay monthly and do nothing, right? Ok, I’m too tired to be at the comp. I’ll ramble on all night. The Baby is actually asleep right now, which is already better than last night, I should go to sleep myself. Or enjoy the silence. Ahhh, the dilemma. At least I got my thing done.

I guess I’m a fan…

During the Oscars last night, I made this project with some leftover pegboard and the Tiffany Blue Boxes I’ve been saving for a few years. I didn’t have the heart to throw them away, but I also didn’t have the heart to give them with gifts, either. What do you do when this happens? Make some damn art. This is a technique I cam up with for a housewarming gift, and it worked well here, just on a larger scale with the boxes.

I like pop art. I think it shows…

Too tired to care. BUT apparently TAD is addictive b/c I just could not totally let go. So I sat down and made this bracelet. Not exactly what I wanted, but it was a bit off the beaten path for me. I fell in love with the rectangle links and have been waiting to use them, just not sure this is the use they were meant for. However, I can buy more in the future. If I remember.

I wanted a somewhat random look w/the beads, but sort of screwed that up when I wasn’t paying attention to what I was doing. Since they links were wire wrapped, I couldn’t just take them apart without ruining the entire link so I just left it. I suppose some patterns occur in natural randomness, don’t they? Two similar beads side by side aren’t really a big problem in the grand plan of life. I’ll take that any day if it means The Baby will sleep through the night. And not tease me with a good nap here and there.

So here is my fatigue pattern. Enjoy :)  Sorry for the poor photo.

Another glass pendant with matching earrings. I should have taken a photo from another angle, because the piece I used is slag glass and it looks almost like malachite. Faith and begorra! Wouldn’t that be a fine thing to be wearin’ on St. Paddy’s Day?

I started a memory wire bracelet yesterday. These things are so darned hard to photograph. (If you want to see what a finished one looks like, go back to my second post.) I string a base course of crow or tile beads onto the memory wire and then bead over top of that.

These did not come out exactly like I had hoped. I do like the fact that they can read differently depending on how the individual charms hang. The backs even have a design in case they get turned around. Going to keep trying…

These fuschia frangia beads look like feathers, thus the name

Shirley

So as usual instead of taking pictures and posting things as I do them, I am just posting in one big grouping all the daily things I’ve been doing.

I decided it would be cool to make some things on photoshop with positive messages on them, my idea being to eventually print them out and frame them or something and post them around my apartment to encourage positivitiy or whatever.

So here are 3 of them, there was one more but my fucking computer appparently hates me and decicded to just lose the jpeg version of it -_-
And it already took me for fucking ever to upload those onto here because my computer is being so fucking slow and annoying.

These are some quotes I found online on some website.

Made banana bread And some earrings I made, not a good picture of them, but yeah…..

And my spelling is probablyu completely horrible right now because as usual my computer won’t recognize typing any quicker than 1 wpm and I type at an average speed of 60 wpm and if I slow down for the computer right now I am going to lose what little patients I have for this peive of shit and break it….. and that would not be good because I NEED a computer for school even if it is fucking shitty.

Spent today having a mother and daughter day - shopping, haircut, lunch out, running errands. I was supposed to work all day, but that was absolutely a better way to spend the day! I did manage to squeeze these in. LOVE THEM!

Ready for Spring???

Spring mixed with chocolate brown!

And my son working with me this morning…

Shirley