Wrapping Up Blogiversary Week: Final Giveaway from DCWV/Blue Moon Beads

Happy Mother's Day eve everyone. I'm here with the last giveaway celebrating my blogiversary  week. I'm on the design team for Blue Moon Beads which also owns the amazing paper line Die Cuts With a View. I'm super excited that they've offered one of my readers the chance to win a goodie box containing a mix of both! Trust me, you won't be disappointed.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

I'm also behind on announcing the winners for the last two giveaways so here goes.

The winner of the $25 gift certificate to CutCardstock.com is LM. The winner of the bird's nest pendant and leaf charm bracelet is: Angela M. CONGRATS ! Both winners have been emailed. The DCWV / Blue Moon Beads giveaway winner will be announced on Tuesday.

Thanks again SO much for making my blogiversary week fun.

Happy Earth Day: The Tale of the Upcycled Scarf Ring Tree of Life Bangle Bracelet

I’m starting a new meme. “Craftsplaining”. Like when you get an idea in your head to use something for a completely unrelated purpose ( eg I have "craftsplained" my way through Home Depot, Lowes, Dollar Tree, Target…) I've had conversations like : ”oh how old is your baby” because I’m buying baby wipes. “20 but these aren’t for him. I use them to clean up after my Mod Podge projects”

Or when someone says “what made you think of that”. OK sometimes there’s not even a “craftsplanation” for that. Like this project. I received a scarf for Christmas and it came with his big acrylic ring that you could use to tie it different ways. HA! It’s a bangle bracelet DUH!

For this project you will need:

• Plastic or acrylic bangle type device
• Mod Podge
• Paper Scrap
• Metal leaf adhesive
• Metal leafing
• Charm(s)

Since this was an Earth Day project, everything I used came from my stash.

Trace around your bangle on your scrapbook paper scraps. I hadn’t decided yet which paper I was going to use so I cut two paper “bangles”. I also hummed the Olympics theme song.

Rough up your bangle. I just used an emery board. Apply Mod Podge (I used Matte finish, my go to) apply paper, smooth, apply coat on top of paper. Go make dinner or surf our favorite blogs.

Now, once your MP side is dry you’ll want to apply your metal leaf. If you’re not familiar with metal leafing, supplies are available at fine art stores or I know Michaels carries them. Metal leaf is not the same as FOIL. Foil has a dull side and a bright side. If you use foil ( which you could for this project) makes sure to keep the shiny side up. Also, the label is not green and Mona Lisa doesn’t usually look seasick on it. I spilled a green alcohol re-inker on my bottle.

Unlike foil, when you apply metal leafing entire portions of it stick to the adhesive. Lay your foil over your sticky surface ( adhesive takes about 20-30 min to set up before you apply your leafing) and then I just use a stiff stencil brush to pounce on the leafing. Go all over your surface.

As you go around your surface, the portions with nothing to stick to will tear away. If you are a neat freak can’t stand any uncontrolled mess, this is NOT for you. The leafing is very light weight and pieces will fly away. HINT: I lay down a piece of wax paper to help control things and then I can just toss it. You should also save your scrap pieces for other projects.

Once I had my leafing on, I attached a “Tree of Life” pendant from Blue Moon Beads to my bangle using a large jump ring. I thought this was perfect for Earth Day.  I like big clunky jewelry but of course you could use something smaller. You’ll just need a big enough jump ring to hold your bangle. I also used up some little charms from my stash. Yay stashbusting!

I would love to hear some of the "craftsplanations" you've had to give. Share in the comments!

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Elephant Amulet Multi-Strand Necklace

As member of the Blue Moon Bead design team, I  got to play with a new collection of Amulet pieces currently available at Michaels stores. These amulets are large pendants, representing a variety of cultures.  For this project, I chose a silver and black elephant.

These are bold pieces. I had recently picked up some steal deal pieces on one of my Michaels trips and they were a perfect match for my amulet.

The black multi-strand chain  and the earring pieces were on sale for $.99 each!  We’ll get to the earrings in a minute. The first thing I did was change out the clasp on the necklace. I love lobster. I don’t love lobster clasps so I took off the one that was on the chain and replaced it with a silver toggle clasp (also by Blue Moon Beads). Since I was going to use my silver and black amulet, I didn’t care that it didn’t match the chain.

There was some extra chain from the original clasp which I then used to attach my amulet. I attached jump rings to either end, slid the amulet on, and then used more silver jump rings to attach this portion to the multi- strand portion of the necklace.

I’ve mentioned before that I don’t have pierced ears and have to make a lot of my own clip earrings. I often find pierced earrings on sale that I buy intending to take them apart and re-arrange them. That was the case with these:

I took off the ear wire and the flower charm, made the bottom the top, glued on clip earring backs, and attached the black drop pieces I picked up for $.99!

They matched my black and silver amulet necklace perfectly. In case you can’t tell, I’m a big earring kinda girl!

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Thank You For Being A Friend: Earring and Bracelet Sets

So here's the story behind this post. Several years ago, my husband's parents retired to a small town on the Washington coast. To say it's remote is an understatement, but that's where they wanted to be. They quickly settled in and made tons of new friends. A few years after they moved, my father in law's brother joined them and he became part of their bunch. I've never seen retired people keep so busy with so many clubs and activities.


Since we started going to visit them, we've always gone to brunch at a local historic hotel owned by a sweet couple who decided they'd had enough of city life. They've been great friends to my in-laws and present for happy occasions and sad ones like when my mother-in-law passed away.

We recently celebrated my Uncle-in law's 80th birthday and they were no less gracious when we went to brunch at the hotel. They have some equally warm and funny ladies who work there and we have lots of laughs with them . I decided I'd make these ladies some things to show our appreciation for always making our extended family feel so special. I made four sets of coordinating earrings and stretchy bracelets.

The first set is silver, white, grey and gold. Most of the beads and findings are Blue Moon Beads.

The second set is blues and berries, using dichroic glass beads along with faceted acrylic beads:

The third set is shades of toffee and purples with antique gold connectors:

And the last set is copper and amber using more of the copper toggle clasps from my birds nest pendant necklace:

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Spring Fever: Copper and Silver Chain and Bird's Nest Pendant

Maybe it's Spring fever or hearing all of the birds calling to each other. I was excited about my bird's nest Easter cards and had recently seen some wire bird's nest pendants somewhere and was drawn to them and wanted to try making one. As things often do with me, one thing led to another!

As you can see, I made more than one. For the "how-to" on the wire bird's nest pendant, I'll point you to You Tube which has tons of tutorials.  This post is more about what I did with one of the pendants I made.

Included in my Design Team supplies from Blue Moon Beads were these very cool copper leaf clasps. I loved them immediately but hadn't felt the right project for them until I started playing with the nests. What goes better with a bird's nest than leaves? I also had some antique silver and copper chain in my supplies.

I decided to use some of the clasps not as clasps, but as focal pieces in the necklace and joined them together with jump rings.  I did use a clasp as it was intended:

attaching lengths of  the copper and silver chain to it using copper jump rings.

I had some leftover chain ( necklace measures about 20 inches) so decided to make  a matching bracelet. Attached the chain to the leaf clasp, and then just added some of the beads from my nest and charms I had on hand.

The other nest pendant I made I just attached to a ribbon necklace using a silver bail , also by Blue Moon, and antiqued glass pearls for the eggs.

These little wire nests are very forgiving since like real nests, they are not meant to be perfect and they all have slightly different bends and twists. They're also very addicting!

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Disclosure: I am a member of the Blue Moon Beads design team and as such, receive supplies from them to use. Designs and opinions are my own.