Preppy Spirit

In preparation for some serious tailgating Labor Day weekend, I made myself a little charm bracelet to rock some school spirit. Appalachian State University is playing Virginia Tech that weekend and it's going to be a fantastic time! We're meeting up with friends, planning an awesome tailgating menu, and hoping for fantastic weather.

So using some things I had on hand (yes, I have abnormally large amount of beads, jewelry findings, and ribbon), I made a charm bangle. I had these bangles in my stash of goodies. I think I found them at Michael's a year or so ago. I pulled out a few black and yellow beads and I love this striped ribbon (this is the last bit of it). The only thing I purchased was a football charm at Hobby Lobby (you can see it in the final photo).

No it's not your blurry monitor, it's my blurry photo. 

Assembly was really simple. Just run a head pin through each of the beads and make a loop. Add them to the bangle. I had those letter beads in my stash too. I just loaded them on a head pin and made a loop at the top end. And I tied that piece of ribbon on to the jump ring I used to attach that black flower (which I also had in my bead collection...yes, I have a problem, but in my defense I used to have a little jewelry making business which is how this whole blog started).

And there you go! 

Clutch Purse

I took a trip down to Hobby Lobby looking for supplies I need to make decorations for my 2 year old's birthday party. While there, I spent way too much time in the aisle with all the bags, purses, and other blank items, along with all the other goodies to dress them up. I had to buy something and I seriously do NOT need another tote bag, although they had some seriously cute linen tote bags that you could dress up for the farmers market or beach trips. I had to try to control myself. It was hard. So back to this little clutch. It's black linen, light, and would also make a cute wallet or a bag for your keys and a card or two to throw in a diaper bag or travel bag. It would also make a really cute Christmas gift for your girlfriends. The best part about this little project is that it required no glue or thread. Or staples. Or tape. Or rubber bands. Or even paper clips.

Here are the items I purchased to make the bag. 1. the bag itself, 2. the flower pin (and they had a variety of different ones including feather pins), 3. the initial pin (you can never have too many pins).

Here is how you put it together: pin the initial into the center of the flower pin. Pin the flower pin anywhere on the clutch. At the top of this post, you can see I have it pinned on the center of the flap. Below, I have pinned it on the side.

Done.

Ribbon Necklace Knock-Off

A few months ago at a VERY good sale at the Ann Taylor Loft Outlet, I picked up this really cute ribbon and bead necklace. I love to wear it and get tons of complements on it. So I decided I would like it different colors (this was the only color option given the sale situation) and maybe I could make some for Christmas gifts (you need something to wear when you're eating the bacon jam you'll also be getting from me for Christmas).

So for the test run, I just wanted to use materials that I already had on hand. So I went with black ribbon and a mix of black beads. I liked the tone on tone effect of the original, but I could also see it transforming into something with fall jewel tones...a teal ribbon...amethyst and amber beads, etc. So, cut two pieces of standard satin ribbon. One about 40 inches and one about 38 inches.

Then you'll need standard jewelry making tools like a pair of wire cutters and small nosed pliers.

Copying the original, you need 18 sets of three bead clusters. One large bead and two small. You need to run a head pin through each, and then make a loop at the top. I'm not going to do the math to figure out how many of those loops I had to make.

Then start putting your beads on the ribbon, starting in the middle of each section (you want 9 groups of beads on each ribbon piece). So tie a knot, add three beads, tie another knot. Then space the bead groups out every two inches. This part of the process goes really quickly.

Pretty soon you have two strands that look like this:

Now for the hard part. This is the part where I just made things up as I went along. I put my two sections of beaded ribbon together and pulled the tails of each through a larger bead. Keeping those tails (not cutting yet) loose, I took two more sections of ribbon (which make the part of the necklace that goes around your neck) that I cut 18 inches long and pulled them through those large beads in the opposite direction of tails of the beaded strands.I then knotted the tails of the beaded pieces and trimmed them. And then knotted the tails of the neck pieces and trimmed them.

You have a knot on the bottom side of the large bead from the two sections of ribbon that go around your neck. The knot on the top side of the bead is from the two sections of ribbon that are beaded. 

And here is my finished project next to the original. Looks lovely!

The necklaces are about 19 inches long. The beaded section is 12 inches long.

Not the most glamorous shot, but I wanted to give you an idea of what it looks like on.

New Summer Pieces

Inspired by the possibility of warmer weather, I've re-opened my Sadie Priss workshop recently and created a few new pieces!

The flowers on these are attached by pin back, so you can move the flower around or take it off entirely, or wear it on another necklace.

These next two are some of my favorites. So cute for dinner out...some place with an ocean breeze.

This one is longer than the others and is really pretty worn with a tank top and summer skirt.

More flower pin necklaces.

Handmade Holidays

This year, in an attempt to drive myself totally insane, I decided to try to make as many handmade gifts as possible. Please keep in mind when reading this, I have an infant who was born in September. So I'm hoping for Christmas 2010 to take all this up a notch, perhaps with the help of a little set of hands. He needs to work on that hand-eye coordination ASAP!

I did have time to have a little fun with gift wrapping. I played around with that faux-wood contact paper on a few gifts. It was really easy to do (I was worried the contact paper would be about as fun to wrangle as Saran-wrap).


I made food gifts and my husband made soaps for some out-of-town folks and also as smaller gifts to give friends, co-workers, and neighbors.
I made two types of holiday breads--Gingerbread and Orange Cranberry. The Orange Cranberry had dried cranberries inside and I sprinkled candied ginger on top of the gingerbread. I found some really cute mini loaf pans from Bake It Pretty . You make the bread right in the loaf "pan" and you end up with loaves that are a variation on a muffin-sized portion. I just wrapped the mini-loaves in decorative parchment paper and tied with baker's twine. For each package I sent two of each variety.

As you can find in the previous post, I started playing around with making chocolate bark back in the fall. I ended up making two types--White Chocolate with Cranberries and Milk Chocolate Smores. I used the Smores bark at a cookie exhange party but shipped the White Chocolate with Cranberries with the mini tea breads. I was a little worried the milk chocolate wouldn't hold up as well unrefrigerated for very long. I also got these cute little "cookie" boxes from Bake It Pretty.



My husband made a holiday collection of soaps, again this year. The soaps last year were a hit so we played around with a few different scents and then had fun with the packaging using some images and paper from Paper Source.


We did three scents for 2009, stacked them, and tied them with baker's twine.
Snow Day was a mocha/hot chocolate soap
Christmas Cookie was a vanilla and gingersnap scent
Winter Forest was a mix of juniper and blackerry scents

The only Sadie Priss projects I had time to make for the holidays were these really cute fabric flower cuff bracelets. I've really enjoyed wearing the red and black plaid one for the holidays and I think they'll be really cute for gifts again at Valentine's Day and also to wear around in the Spring and Summer.

Holiday gifts

So I did a fun little test run making candy bark--something I will likely give as Christmas gifts this year. I'm trying to work up a collection of candy and/or baked goods to send to some of my out-of-town relatives and other folks on my holiday list. I had lots of fun making this white chocolate bark. It's the best non-baking, baking project I've ever tried!!!

White chocolate with dark chocolate swirl, pecans and orange flavored cranberries. So the question is....I wonder how well it will ship. Hmmmm. The more important question is....how much fun am I going to have making cute little holiday packaging for this stuff!!! I think sometimes I make stuff just to have an excuse to play with packaging.

New necklaces

I made these fun little necklaces for myself this weekend. I hope I can make a few more this Fall either for gifts or to sell with my Sadie Priss goodies. I guess we'll just have to see how cooperative the baby is when it comes to craft time!!!

I've had these two charms (the Empire State Building and the Eiffel Tower) for awhile but never found anything really fun to do with them. I found most of the other beads at Michaels this weekend. They have a HUGE new selection of beads and findings. It was pretty impressive since they had the same or similar to stuff I usually have to go to NYC to find!