Something new - Chainmaille!

Hi all!

Did everyone have a good Thanksgiving and stuff yourselves full of good food?  I know we did!  I have a different sort of post for you today.  I have a ridiculous amount of hobbies/interests other than paper crafts so today I wanted to share one of my latest ones - Chainmaille jewelry.

Here are the pieces that started it - Christmas items I am making as gifts.

First up - Christmas trees.  I had initially thought I would make these and the wreath below as pendants but Once I made them both I decided they are too big so they will be ornaments.  The tree to the left I made to see how a smaller version would look and may still make a few of them as pendants.

And the wreath....

To the right is my attempt at a smaller version of the wreath that could work as a pendant but it is too small to add the little gold bow.  I also used the same pattern of rings to make a slightly larger pendant to see how I liked it.

This is the same pattern as the wreath but is a bracelet.

Pezza recently got a very fancy white and blue dress for the holidays and wanted jewelry to go with it so I made these - a bracelet and a pendant.

I had not finished her bracelet yet...

This is a bracelet I will be giving my mom for Christmas.

And finally - matching pendants for me and Pez.  I have been having quite a bit of fun working on these.  It makes for a nice project to do sitting in front of the TV in the evenings.  What do y'all think?

BBTB Challenge - Thanks!

Hi all!

Are y'all as ready for some Thanksgiving feasting as I am?  We will actually be doing two dinners - one at my in-laws on Thursday and then a second one at my house Saturday with our traditional family fare for my son, daughter in law and grandbabies.

Our challenge this week on Bitten By the Bug 2 is to make a Thanksgiving themed item using the word Thanks or Thankful.  One of my closest friends is heading up our Teacher Appreciation committee at school so I have been helping her each month with different things for our teachers and staff.  This month we are giving them all a pumpkin pie so I made the tags that will go on them:

I needed to cut 65 of them so I needed to keep it fairly simple!  I think it turned out pretty cute!  Stop by the BBTB2 blog to see what the other team members created and then post your own project to our linky!  Have a great holiday!

BBTB - Holiday Nature

Hi all!

Well, Halloween is done so onward we go - and yes I am skipping Thanksgiving and going straight to Christmas!  I don't really need any Thanksgiving stuff but I do need Christmas cards!  I have 3 for this week's challenge on Bitten By the Bug 2 - holiday images from nature.

I LOVE Christmas stuff mostly because it's the only time of the year (except Mardi Gras of course) where the more sparkle you have the better!  In light of that I began this set of cards by mixing up some super sparkly mist using Splash of Color Primary Elements powder, gum arabic and water.  I misted lightly over a stencil - a combination of green and gold for 2 and blue and gold for the center one.

I wanted to keep these clean and simple so the only thing I added were Cricut cuts and a simple stamped sentiment.  You can really see the sparkle!

I only used 2 of the layers for this snowflake - again to keep it simple.

I just love that shimmer!

Be sure to head over to the BBTB2 blog to check out the awesome projects from the other designers and then make something yourself to link to our challenge!