Craft, crafty, crating

I haven't been blogging with much, uh, frequency but I haven't stopped doing blog worthy crafty things. Here are some pictures of things I have made/done.

My fairly successful attempt at ring making. I should probably buy myself some jewelry making pliers because using my old rusty needle nose pliers resulted in my scraping off the black on the wire and revealing the copper color, which doesn't look awful but isn't what I was going for. I also need a ring thing.....you know the cone thing that you can wrap the wire around to get the right size, because I used chapstick tubes for this and the sizing is pretty awful. 

Simple chain earrings. Wore these all day when my mom got married but they are slightly heavy, after this day I took off 2 of the chains (went from 5 strands to 3) and they look just as good and pull less on my ears.  

I love Halloween time and the fabrics that show up. Bought myself this lovely black and silver spider print and made myself a new small purse. Lined it with a lovely purple and gold print and put a decorative skull button on the front. All it took for this bag was 2 fat quarters and it was rather simple to sew together. 

Bag pattern/instructions here. 

 Another simple funky looking necklace. I added a few more safety pins to the lowest chain (had to buy more). Saw this over at Trinkets in Bloom, she has some great things on her blog.

Don't think I posted this already but I may have. This was a lunch bag I made for my mom for her birthday I think. She had asked me to make her one. 

With the extra material I made a headband. 

Skirts! Making skirts is fun and pretty easy!  

I wore the red one to my moms wedding and the day walking around Balboa Park.

This one is sheer and I used an old tshirt of my husbands as a lining. 

(Me and my mom!)

Snake skin print is channeling my inner 80's personality!

From skirt making I moved onto dress making. This one took a few days and I love the way it turned out. These are some pretty crappy pictures of it, the flow and pattern are much nicer in person. 

 A few bracelets I made. 

 I took an old pair of heels that had stretched  a bit and I couldn't really wear anymore, painted the heels silver and added sliver laces too. 

Look at what I finally did, chalkboard paint and storage jars! My cabinet is still full of re-purposed jars but now they have chalkboard paint labels! Woohoo! It only took me years to accomplish this!

That's pretty much how I have been occupying my time this year. I am currently working on ideas for Halloween or Christmas cards, thinking I might skip Halloween cards this year but not sure. I enjoy Halloween much more than Christmas but I think people want/expect Christmas cards from me more than Halloween. Don't have any great ideas for either at this point. Need some inspiration. 

Anyone have any cool/fun things they have done or are planning on doing?

Nail Polish

I think I am done with nail polish again.
When I was young I was an avid nail polish fan like a lot of girls are. I ALWAYS had my nails painted all sorts of colors. They were constantly painted from probably a pre teen age until I was 19. At 19 I had a job at a place that only allowed natural colors, there was no point for me to paint my nails a natural color. I did still paint them on occasion and then forget to take it off, mostly because I ended up sleeping not at home and not having nail polish remover. I would get written up and so I just stopped painting them. Then I got a job with animals and used my hands A LOT and if I did wear nail polish it just got worn off very quickly. At this point I pretty much gave up painting them regularly. On occasion I would but then I got all concerned about the chemicals in nail polish and completely stopped for quite a few years. In the last few years I found some less chemically nail polish and now I am back to using whatever. I like doing designs and things and using funky colors, like always. I took off my bright blue nail polish a few days ago and my nails are stained bluish, only in the center because the bottoms and tips had worn off, I still have that job with animals. They are also quite yellow from being stained from other dark colors I have used.

I think I am going to stop with the nail polish for a while, at least stop with it constantly and only put it on for special occasions, or holidays, I am thinking candy corn looking nails for Halloween and I will probably do the Christmas lights polish again in December. Also nail polish is expensive and I can't find cheap (even overly chemical laden) crazy colors as easy as I used to and me and online shopping is a bad idea so I don't like to go there. I will miss having painted nails for sure but I have always been bad with up keep and am often walking around with barely painted nails, this will probably be a good look for me anyway. Now to resist, I think I will go put my box of nail polish in the back corner under the sink in the bathroom now.