Thing-a-day.com

I’ve been inspired to do shrinky dinks after seeing all the cool things people are doing here at thing-a-day. thefabricator had fun with them yesterday, shinwa made a really cool keychain for her husband on the 19th, craftkeg made some neat buttons on the 18th, and before rakka made the awesome cheeto Britney and Bender Easter egg, there was the terribly cute shrinky dink cloud necklace, and of course, Lu’s been having a field day with it, the shrinky dink owl necklace being my favorite of her many creations. I had just had to join all the cool kids just to see what the fun is all about.

I used some number 6 plastic I had from some store bought food items, sanded them down, and drew/colored them in with pencils. I did the two square ones with a black sharpie just to see the difference in sharpness in color variation, both the squares being one inch squares to measure the shrinkage. Just to see how the metal pin would fair, I made the five pipped die side with the pin stuck inside per instructions on wee wonderfuls shrinky dink pins. They all came out pretty good for a first time, I think. In the future, I’m going to invest in a nice set of permanent markers to do these in. I think they’d come out looking more vivid instead of dulled like my robot kind of does.

Made this flower pins out of Shrinky-dink plastic and straight pins. Some warped a bit more than I’d like, but I still like ‘em

Yup, despite being really sick and feverish & the fact that I am sitting in a house without heat, I actually managed to make a few things today.

I also designed a card to sell them on. I went ahead and used the credit card to order them. As soon as the cards come in, they will be made available in my etsy shop. The prices for these handcrafted fabric brooches will range from $10 - $25 depending on the materials used and the time spent on them. The average price with be $15.

I will be carrying a full line of these handcrafted flowers in my etsy shop at all times. If you are interested in a custom order, let me know. These would be a great gift for a teacher in her school colors. I ordered some little bulldogs and will be making some up in purple and white with a bulldog in the center for my son’s school. As soon as they come in and I make them I will post pictures!

I am so excited to share these with you! While I was sick today I knew I still needed to get a few things done — especially because of the February Thing A Day *smiles*.  My mom has been bugging me for well over a year to make some brooches & I kept procrastinating.  Well, for some reason I finally listened today.

These little buggers are a lot of fun to make because I can focus on them one at a time and make them all totally different.  They take a lot longer than I thought they would because they are completely handcrafted, but it is well worth it.

I am going to have to take better pictures before I list them for sale.  I have already designed the card that they will be sold on so now all I need to do is either buy the right paper to print them myself or go to the printer to have them done.  That or I will use vistaprint cause I can spend relatively little with them and get exactly what I want.

Anyways, I will be carrying a line of brooches from now on in my etsy shop.  Here’s my first batch:

I love that I can use buttons and trims and beads AND I get to play with my fabric stash. I know there aren’t very many there, but I did work for 8 hours today (if that tells you how long they take on average).  I hand stitch them and I also use liquid stitch (fabric glue) on them because I am paranoid about them staying put together.  A lot of them are more dimensional than the photo shows.  I will have to make sure that when I photograph them for sale that I figure out how to show how cool they are.

I’m really proud of them!!  Oh, I almost forgot this one:

That one is my favorite because of the special beads I used on it.  It is also made out of the prettiest hand dyed egyptian cotton.  I am a sucker for peach *smiles*

I’ve been lazy about posting, sometimes I don’t feel like scanning or taking pictures. Whatever. Here they are, I’ve been trying real hard to do something, at least a little bit, everyday. It’s a lot harder than I thought it would be. I think one of my goals would be to organize my room. It is an absolute mess. Anyway….here you go.

Day 2

Day 3

Day 4