Combining the details and photos of two Saturdays at SCRAP in one post since I have been so busy lately!  The jewelry bin was overflowing, so I spent most of one Saturday untangling necklaces and separating earrings from pins. Lots of bling-y costume jewelry that would be perfect for playing dress-up!  I found a beaded bracelet that someone obviously spent a lot of time on.  It was strung with elastic thread and had some cool texture, but from a distance it sort of looked like a sweat band wristlet.  There were many sewing notions to sort through, and we found pieces of a galloping horses wall plaque.

My fellow volunteers have caught on to my habit of taking pictures of the odd things we find when sorting.  When they find something interesting they will often bring it to me so I can snap a photo for my “archives”. They are also willing to take pictures of me. Rather, I will find something, and they will say, “There needs to be a picture of you with that,” which explains the photos of me in an Anne Geddes-esque sunflower headband as well as a Chinese dragon mask.

I had a nice chat yesterday with Mike, a gentleman looking for a hand-cranked pencil sharpener. He has one in his personal studio, and needs one for his grandchildren. He is having difficulty finding one, and he refuses to purchase an electric one. His reasoning is that electric ones can easily break or be lost, and he can bolt down the hand-cranked pencil sharpener. Makes sense to me. Unfortunately, we didn’t have one on hand for him yesterday. Perhaps next time?

More fun with scrap materials

Originally uploaded by illusionary_one

I’ve been working on bracelets and brooches this week to get ready for the Holiday Bazaar at SCRAP on December 19th. This will be my third time participating in this event, and historically smaller items sell better.

These are made from leather and vinyl scraps as well as button box findings and miscellaneous hardware. I am very pleased with the leather flower pins. My hole punch has really come in handy this week! Glad to finally find a use for the little buckles that have been hanging out in my notions box for years.

El Diablo necklace

Originally uploaded by illusionary_one

This is an example of the shrunken plastic pendant necklaces I have been working on. And yes, there is a good chance those are rosary beads.

(also testing out posting here from my mobile phone – if it works, rejoice, as it will mean more frequent updates. This time I am using Flickr as an intermediary.)

Running far behind on keeping this blog updated, but I’m not going to make any apologies for it since it has left me more time for crafting.  Anyway, the Hallowe’en Bazaar was terrific.  Aaron got a lot of responses to his comic book preview, and I had an excuse to work day and night to prep jewelry inventory for the show.

I’ve been collecting vintage and estate costume jewelry, breaking it down into components, then re-assembling as I see fit.  I have also been making shrunken plastic pendants to accompany the necklaces and bracelets.  Nope, not “Shrinky Dinks”, although the same premise.  I use recycled plastic pieces instead of buying the kits.

Muchas gracias to Frykitty for inspiration on the plastics.  She has been hand-carving stamps to use on the plastics – the end result is pretty freaking amazing!  I’ve been going a different route and using Prismacolors and Sharpies with (mostly) my own sketches.  Hey, it gave me an excuse to buy a very pretty set of the pencils!  I haven’t had a full set since high school, and I’ve been wondering what took me so long.

I also made custom skull beads from Sculpey, then hand painted them with acrylics.  I am very pleased with the results, and you should be able to see more of these in the near future.