There is this bold design made with blue rope in a gold and black motif from the Albrecht.

This pretty one from Sweet Bay using nail polish instead of paint. Love the crocheted cord on this one.

This pretty rad gold and black necklace from KYD Found.

And another version from her accented with cat fur. Meooow!

Have you tried it yet? Let me know in the comments!

It’s really simple. Using #84 rubber bands (which are the widest variety I could find), you can make simple and awesome pieces of jewelry that no one would ever think were formerly a mere office supply. You can get them at Staples – a bag of 45 bands for 3 bucks. Unfortunately they only come in beige, but I found that you can paint them with acrylic craft paint to get more interesting color. For the pieces above, just snip rubber bands into squares and thread them on your necklace cord or wire for the earrings.

You can bunch them together in a lot of ways to get a variety of different shapes.

For these, all you do is arrange the rubber band formation the way you want and pierce it with a large sewing needle through all layers. Then take a piece of jewelry wire and thread it through the holes. All these above could be strung on a chain or cord to create a necklace.

If you try this project, please let me know! I would love to see how yours turn out. Have fun!

Who knew that penne pasta was the perfect shape for making chevron patterns? Now, I experimented with different necklace bases – I used jersey fabric pretty successfully, but I settled on a knit i-cord for the strap, which let me control much better how they hang. I’m sure if used an actual necklace chain, you could also get pretty good results.

Simply paint the pasta with acrylic craft paint and string onto whatever you’d like to use as your necklace strap. If you have four rows like the photo above, you will need four lengths of fabric/chain/i-cord to attach onto the necklace base.

Large ditaloni pasta makes for great bracelet beads. Just string a few painted pieces of pasta on a strip of jersey and tie around your wrist.

When I was having doubts about using pasta, I tried to recreate the shape using fabric, stiffened with glue and rolled into a bead. Then I cut the bead at an angle to achieve the same look. I’ll probably explore fabric beads a little more, it was a fun experiment.

So what do you all think? Is this something you’ll try?

To make your own, all you need is mod podge, needle, metallic gold thread, scissors, two sequins, two beads, and a couple of earring hooks.

Step 1: Start by painting a layer of mod podge on both sides of your dried leaves. Allow to dry. This makes them plyable and resistant to breakage. (To dry leaves, try pressing them in a heavy book for about a week.)
Step 2: Take a strand of metallic gold thread and thread both ends through the needle. (Make sure it’s a single strand)
Step 3: Gently pierce a hole through the top of the leaves and thread them on your string, followed by the sequin.
Step 4: If your leaves have a pointy top, snip off the top so it’s flat. Otherwise your leaf won’t hang down, it will hang to the side.
Step 5: With both tail ends of the string, make a knot right above your leaves/sequins – double knot to keep it secure. Cut off the excess tail.
Step 6: Pinch the top loop and slide on a bead through the loop – you need this weight on the earring, otherwise it will be too light.

That’s it! Put on a pair of earring hooks using the loop and wear with care.

All you need is wool.

I used Lion Brand Yarn’s Wool Ease Thick and Quick yarn in Fisherman. You need six strands of it.

Divide the six strands into thirds – so two strands each for your 3 braid sections. Knot the top, secure it under something heavy, and braid all the way down the length of your yarn. Finish with a knot at the end to secure it. You can make it as long or short as you want. Then just use thumbtacks at either end to secure it on your wall.

Play with variations of this idea, the sky is the limit. Make several of varying lengths and stack them. You can hang earrings, clip on hair pins, bobby pins, clip on earrings, and even brooches.

It’s such a lovely and inexpensive way to display your jewelry, and it’s so accessible! This one hangs above my bathroom sink. Go try it!

Here’s what you need:

• Hemp cord – I got mine from the dollar store (or other cord)
• Glossy Photo paper
• hole punch in 2 different sizes – standard and a 1/16 punch (Fiskars makes both)
• metallic paint

Step 1: Paint your photo paper on the glossy side with your metallic paint. It doesn’t have to be perfect! Let dry.

Step 2: Start by punching holes with your 1/16 punch evenly spaced.

Step 3: Next, take your standard hole punch a center the punch over the tiny punches you just made. Repeat this until you have your desired amount of sequins.

Step 4: Cut a length of cord long enough to wrap around your wrist three times (this gives you plenty of length to wrap the bracelet around your wrist twice, and make your finishing knots). Thread your new sparkly sequins onto your cord. Using this tutorial, create sliding knots on your bracelet.  Try not to laugh as she talks about how wearing big beads can hurt you when you hug someone. :)

Wear your new bracelet. The sliding knots make it super easy to put on and take off. You could also try different color sequins. Please let me know if you try it and I love seeing pictures too!

So on to the good stuff. This shape has been reappearing alot in my designs lately and I’ve been slowly working on things that incorporate it. So here’s a little tutorial on how to make your own and run with it! You can really do so much with it. Below I made the larger one with paper in 1″ size circles. The tiny one is made with hole-punched dots. If you make the flower shape large enough, it would also make great paper coasters if you coat it with mod podge.

Here’s how to make em.

Loved this excerpt from one of Robert Frost’s poems. Seemed to fit the photo so well. But isn’t it lovely! Let me show you what else you can do with it!

Hanging Decor.
How to make it: this is a large dimensional piece I made by interlocking two flower shapes together (see below photo for example on how to do this). They’d be great for party decorations!

A necklace.
How to make it: Use fabric stiffener (make sure you coat both sides of the fabric to make it really stiff) to stiffen the fabric so you can punch through it with a craft punch. I used a 1″ craft punch. Then I created a second flower (no stiffener) and hot glued it on top of my stiffened flower. You can see I just used some hemp cord to make a necklace out of it. But you could also use a pretty chain. These would also make beautiful earrings!

Hairpin.
How to make it: See above tutorial on how to make the large flower. The tiny center is made of hole punched dots. Just hot glue or sew onto a hair clip or bobby pin. This would also make a great pin for your coat!

Whew! Sorry that was so lengthy. Hope you enjoyed it though. Happy creating!

During a rare date with my husband to Barnes & Noble one evening, I meandered to (where else!) the craft section and pulled out a few knitting books. Most of them were pretty ho-hum, until I picked up More Last-Minute Knitted Gifts, written by Purl Soho owner, Joelle Hoverson. I  oohed and aahed over every beautiful page. The projects use colorful yarns and they are fantastic (and easy) patterns that any modern knitter would appreciate. The photos are fresh, vibrant, and really makes you want to knit every single project. So I was extremely excited when the publisher said she would send me a copy.

{ Stay tuned because I will be auctioning off this beautiful scarf to raise money for the victims affected by the earthquake in Japan. }

Cascade Yarns was generous enough to send me a skein of their beautiful Magnum yarn (which the book referenced) and I used it to knit up the Big Lace Scarf. I’ve never knitted a full-length scarf before. I always thought the repetition would deaden me with boredom and I’d never want to knit again. But, the chunky yarn, chunky needles and breezy openwork pattern made this such a quick easy knit.

Can we talk about the yarn? I’ve honestly never bought premium yarn – I just stick with the fairly cheap stuff from the craft store or estate sale finds. But this was a treat. It’s soo soft. So beautiful. Made from 100% Peruvian Highland Wool, it’s very fun to work with. It’s giant! One skein was all I needed to create this big bulky scarf. Isn’t the color so pretty?

A few more projects I’d like to try right away:  Linen stitch bookmark // soft baskets

Sideways fingerless gloves // Seed Stitch bracelet

With 30 different patterns to choose from, this book is a must for any knitters library. It also includes inspiring gift wrapping ideas, finishing techniques, and templates.

Can you believe it’s just paper? They are delicate, no doubt. I wouldn’t jump into a swimming pool with them on, but if you baby them, they should hold up decently. But who cares if they only last one wearing. They are awesome and practically free.

It’s like a party on your ears!

All you need is a hole punch, some pretty paper (the thicker the better, as long as your hole punch will go through it), hot glue, really thin wire (I used 32 gauge) and some earring hooks.

Step 1: Punch out your circles. I used 9-10 circles for mine. (A friend of mine suggested using shellac or spray varnish on the dots to make them for longer wear.)

Step 2: Using just tiny dabs of hot glue, start arranging and glueing your dots together in a random, but linear fashion. You want them to look like they are falling.

Step 3: Clip a small piece of wire and hot glue onto your bottom circle. This is what will connect the final dangling circle to give it the illusion of falling.

Step 4: Hot glue the final dot to the other end of the wire.

Step 5: Attach your earring hooks by punching a tiny hole in your finished piece with a straight pin. I’m not a jeweler, so there may be a better way to do it, but I just latched mine directly onto the hook.

That’s it! Sorry I don’t have any step-by-step photos of the process. But if you have questions, just leave them in the comments!

On a side note, I will be extending my Art from Everyday Objects Challenge as a regular part of my posting every month. But to add some closure to February’s challenge, here is a wrap up of the projects:

Mini Matchstick Arrows // Snow Cake // Paperclip Earrings // Flowers from Paper Napkins

So today I thought it would be a fun challenge to work with paperclips. You can’t get much more mundane than a paperclip! After much thought, I came up with paperclip earrings. If you have paperclips and some pretty cotton string, you can create these beauties. They’d probably look pretty cool as a necklace too.

Here is a diagram to show you where to open the paperclip to create this triangular shape.

You are basically unbending the clip at all three of the curves. Does that make sense?

Once you’ve got the triangular shape, you need to glue the ends together. Use a fast drying epoxy or hot glue. Next you can start winding your cotton thread around the wire. I started out using hot glue, then I tried Liquid Stitch and liked it way more. It’s a permanent, clear drying adhesive that didn’t cause any bumps of dried hot glue along the way.

Fig 1: Winding the string around // Fig 2:  Starting to wrap the string around the earring, secured with Liquid Stitch

Once you’ve wound all the way round and secured with glue, you can then take another length of string and wind around the width of the “earring” creating horizontal stripes or you can create a more messy look by creating a “net” design (see below).

Then just clamp on a pair of earring hooks. I just stole mine from a couple pairs of earrings I didn’t wear anymore. The results are beautiful and surprisingly modern. I love how light they are too. I like big earrings, but I don’t like it when they weigh down my earlobe. I don’t want them to hang to my knees when I’m old!

Let me know if you have any questions or I didn’t explain something well enough. I’d love to hear or see them if you try it for yourself!