Skip to main content

Look what I made!

If you'll forgive a bit of bragging about my crafty exploits...

We had a couple of frames that I thought would work well in Toby's room.  All we needed was something to fill them.  Inasmuch as the room has a theme (we never did get around to decorating the nursery) it's probably insects.  There are a few slightly blurry stencils of dragonflies and butterflies on the walls, left by the previous owners of the house.  So I found some cheerful insect pictures on the internet, and enlarged them freehand from the inch-square originals.  Acrylic paint gave the perfect bold effect.



My sister-in-law Kristal has given us many beautiful sewn items, so for her birthday this year I wanted to give her something handmade too.  I discovered the technique of making pendants from glass microscope slides a few years ago, but after a frenzy of Christmas ornament making, I sort of forgot about it.  It was fun to take it up again, and this is the biggest project I've tackled so far.  When I got halfway through I was beginning to wonder why I'd ever started.  My soldering iron was one of those "ladies' tools" with a pretty pastel handle (yes, I know, but it was all the store had) and it was taking 5 minutes at a time to melt the solder.  Not what you want when you're trying to get fiddly little bits of chain into precise positions.  Finally I went to the store to buy a new iron.  The wimpiness of the old one was underlined when I noticed that one was 25 watts, compared to the 100-watt rating of my new model.  Moral of story: always go for the biggest, meanest tool in the shop.  Men have the right idea on this one.



I will get round to a blog on our recent trip to Virginia soon.  I just sifted through all the photos and don't have the mental fortitude to reduce 185 photos to one coherent blog post right now.  We had a lovely time and Toby was a big hit amongst relations, semi-relations and completely non-relations alike.  More to follow...
Labels:

Comments

Sally said…
Can you give me more detail on the microscope slide thing - it looks gorgeous. Cheers Sal
10 July 2011 at 17:49
Kristal Dawn Evens said…
Very cute paintings!!! I love the gift you made for me. I'm still wandering around the house to figure out the best place to put such a beautiful creation!
10 July 2011 at 20:22
Martha said…
Hi Sal, I did a post about it way back in July 2009 (Growing and Making) which gives the basic technique. For the wall hanging I just made lots of 1x3" ones with flower photos and joined them together with bits of chain. I think if you Google "microscope slide jewelry" you come up with some more links.
11 July 2011 at 12:14
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Erewash Valley Trail: Ilkeston

You could spend a lot of time following old canals and railways in the Erewash Valley. This walk included parts of the Erewash Canal, the Nottingham Canal, the Nutbrook Canal, and the Stanton branch line, and I could have continued further along any one of those, if I'd had the time. I started in Kirk Hallam, which is mostly a post-war housing estate with a distinctive outline on the map: the main road to Ilkeston through the middle, and a loop road encircling the village. It looks like the London Underground logo. I parked at the lake at the top of the loop. There was a sculpture commemorating the nearby Stanton Ironworks - the ground remembers the roar of the blast  read the inscription around the base - and the remains of a lock on the Nutbrook Canal. Heading towards Ilkeston, I crossed a former golf course, now a nature reserve called Pewit Coronation Meadows, passed a large sports centre, and was soon in the town centre. There was a general impression of red-brickiness, with l...
Post a Comment
Read more

Mr White Watson of Bakewell

Once upon a time, back in 1795 or so, lived a man who was always asking questions.  The kind of questions like, "Why is glass transparent?" or "Why do fruit trees grow better in that place than in this place?" or "What does the earth look like underneath the surface?"  This last question was one that he was particularly interested in, and he went so far as to work out what the rock layers looked like where he lived, and draw little pictures of them.  Now he was a marble sculptor by trade (as well as fossil hunter, mineral seller, and a few other things) so he thought it would be even better to make his little pictures in stone.  That way he could represent the layers using the actual rocks they were composed of.  Over the course of his lifetime he made almost 100 of these tablets, as he called them. Then he died.  And no one else was quite as interested in all those rocks and minerals as he was.  His collection was sold off, bit by bit, and the table...
Post a Comment
Read more

National Forest Way: Bagworth and Thornton Reservoir

I'd hoped to be further along with my walking by now, but a combination of illness, bad weather, and inset days meant that I couldn't get out for a few weeks. At the first sign of a break in the clouds, I was ready to go. It had rained heavily the day before, and there was still a watery feel to the air. I parked at Thornton Reservoir and donned waterproof trousers and wellies, then started by following a footpath along the back of some houses in Thornton. The village is perched on a ridge, which slopes down to the reservoir on one side, and Bagworth Heath woods on the other. view to Bagworth Heath woods I picked up the Leicestershire Round opposite the village school, and followed it past an old mill, across a railway line, and through the woods. One section of the path was particularly squelchy. At the end of the woods, the footpath sign pointed right, which I assumed meant I should follow the road. It wasn't until afterwards that I realised I could have crossed over and ...
1 comment
Read more