Friday Designs: Hippity Hoppity

Easter Eggs

Easter just passed... we are empty-nesters, nor are we big on holidays....

We did, however, indulge in dyeing eggs!!!

Now we just have to finish eating them....

Quilting

Despite my current obvious infatuation with glass and jewelry, quilting is my true love and the reason that I started this blog….

So here are the quilt pictures of the day (or year), and ones I have promised you for a while…

Cassidy’s quilt – here’s my granddaughter and the Giraffe based quilt that I made for her

And also sort of quilting related…. I cleaned out my office at home, sorted a bunch of things… part of the organization spree involved putting all my patterns into three ring binders and organizing those with quilt books.

In search of paper

Last Saturday, Brandie and I went in search of professional quality paper for a project. Years ago, I had gone to a place called “Paper Depot” in Minneapolis. I remember them as having had a large warehouse with tons of paper – full sheets, etc.

Well, things change….

The place is now basically a decent sized scrap-booking store, with a warehouse that you cannot go wander around. They still have a few papers that they carry in large sizes, represented by a sheet on the wall with 3x4 inch samples….

Yeah….

That will satisfy true paper junkies….

Long story short, we went next to “Anchor Paper” on University in St. Paul (yay my hometown!) and got what we needed and were also allowed to wander around a large warehouse of paper.

However, while still at the Paper Depot, I discovered that they had a commercial die cutter and MANY dies… I left there with die cuts for 52 little boxes. I plan on using them for selling/gifting my jewelry.

Filling the Tiny Boxes

I really should have taken some pictures of this endeavor…. Oh well, cannot document everything!

Anyway, remember a couple weeks back when I got my Mousie metal stamp and went a little crazy with it?

I took six of the small brass discs that I punched and stamped (and put holes in the top). I drug out a few bins from the bead collection that I so thoroughly sorted, and made six pendants/necklaces (not quite sure which description applies – there are multiple things put together, but just suspended from a simple chain). Each unit (safe word), was a disc paired with brass wire which had a few beads on it. I made a spiral out of the wire, loaded the beads, and twist the top to a circle. The two pieces were then connected with a handmade jump ring of the same brass.

Six boxes were folded out of my die cuts (all different pinks), secured with some double-sided tape and filled with a bit of tissue paper and a necklace. Then, the boxes were tied up with some ribbon from my copious collection (yes, I hoard just about everything!), and distributed to my co workers for their daughters.

The whole endeavor was practice of many skills….

Cutting out metal discs and stamping
Filing edges of those discs (thanks to hubby for some files!)
Wire wrapping to create headpins and jump rings rather than buying pre-mades
Construction from die cuts
Presentation skills (the little things count!)

Speaking of Scrap-booking

Copper (and other metals) can be included in fused glass. Copper has a melting point hotter than what glass is fused at so it maintains it shape when sandwiched between two pieces of glass. It does – however – change color. I have showed pieces here that I have made in the kiln before.

Copper foil is cheap and quite easy to cut.

Not as easy as paper, but not what you’d expect from metal… think about aluminum foil, but a bit thicker, like maybe two layers of it.

Somewhere along the line, I discovered that paper punches could be used on copper foil. Not all punches – some work better than others do.

Smaller – larger spaces of the foil are harder to work with
Detailed – amazingly, details punch out pretty well. The finished product also looks better (after kilning)
Receptacles/Punches with less distances for the cut out to fall – the best punches I've seen so far are the ones that have a little receptacle on the bottom to hold the cutouts. Something about that just seems to help.

Saturday evening, I took a piece of my copper foil and punched away! Here are my results…

I'm going to make Ana glass earrings with copper cats in them.....

That will solidify her image as a crazy cat lady....

(evil laugh)

Quick – Show and Tell

There are not enough hours in the day to do everything I want…. Including this blog….. It is already past my bedtime as I write this…. I have several more stories, and I will try to get to them tomorrow or soon… but I will leave you with some pictures here today

Jewelry

Here are all the most recent wire-wrapping pictures:

A glass flower bead and bronze wire:

Glass piece made by me and aluminum wire:

Large Jade "bead" and coated aluminum wire:

Agate cabachon and coated aluminum wire:

Glass piece with millifiore made by me and coated aluminum wire:

Glass piece made by me and aluminum wire:

Crackled glass piece made by me and square copper wire:

Agate cabochon and square aluminum wire:

Glass piece made by me and aluminum wire:

Crackled glass piece made by me and coated aluminum wire:

Glass piece made by me and coated wire:

Glass piece made by me and coated aluminum wire:

Glass piece made by me and aluminum wire:

Glass piece made by me and copper wire:

Glass piece made by me that contains a copper leaf punch out, silver square wire:

Glass piece made by me, silver and bronze square wires:

And a special one with silver wire – this is a 30-carat aquamarine, the birthstone of one of my daughters…. I am making special pendants for each and will keep posting them here…