jewels

I thought it would be fun to try making some of my own mom-name tag jewelry and so now I've found a new hobby!  I don't plan on ever being Lisa Leonard, but it's fun for now.  (Check out her jewelry and her blog.  wow.)

I tried a few names and designs with Shrinky Dinks.  I'm a little worried that the Sharpie marker I used to draw on the Shrinky Dinks is going to rub off, but they're fun for now.  If you look closely below, one of the tags has my word of the year on it, and the U is starting to disappear.  I also have some colored Shrinky Dink material, so next time I am going to try cutting some shapes out of it (like maybe the kid's initials) that way I get color & shapes without the writing rubbing off.

I also bought a few charms and added beads to them for a little extra sparkle.  Do you see my logo in Shrinky Dink form?  I was impressed with how it turned out!!!

Then I just put beads together to put on a necklace with charms I already have.

Then I "splurged" at Harbor Freight (there's one about 20 min from my house!) and got myself some metal stamps.  (The next set on my wish list is the 1/8" 40-pc set.  Then I'll probably start shopping Etsy for fun stamps like this.  More expensive, but lots of fun!)  I've read that you're supposed to use a Sharpie to make the letters show up, but when I wipe them down, it wipes out some of the letter darkening too.  I'll just have to keep trying!  I got the blank shapes at Hobby Lobby.

It's going to take a little while to figure out how to get everything to stamp evenly and in a straight line, but for now let's call it "rustic"... "character"... "charming".  This is for Conner's teacher.  He picked out the beads for her.  We've been bead shopping at Hobby Lobby and Joann's.  I don't remember what came from where at this point.

If you look closely on some of them, you can see I've been experimenting with head pins and eye pins.  I'm not really sure if there's some jewelry rule about what you're supposed to use - I just pick one and run with it.  I also have most definitely not perfected the art of closing a jump ring, but practice makes perfect right?