Oops!

Well, rather without realizing it, I've stayed up until six in the morning again. I became aware that it was becoming late when all I was finding on TV were infomercials. Whoops. Well, I was immersed in what I was doing, so I didn't care much as to what time it was, though now that I've slowed down, I'm getting groggy. Too bad the husband has fallen asleep on the bed on the diagonal with all my blankets under him. I guess I'll just have to clear off the couch and sleep here.

The reason why the couch is a mess and why I'm still up is because I've been crafting. I finished the crocheted spider for Tommy, and was debating between crocheting some more or working on another project. I opted for another project and pulled out the Crayola Model Magic modeling material. I had figured on just making a few little things to test out the material (I've not yet decided what modeling material I like best), but the packages say that once opened, you have to use the entire container because it won't keep at all. So I just opened the green and grabbed some round magnets and began working on making leaves with magnets in the middle. I can't remember how many I made (somewhere around eight or nine, I think), but I put those aside to dry and started playing with yarn again. This time I was making tiny balls of yellow yarn, about an inch in diameter with about three or four inches of tail on each. After making about ten or eleven of those, I put them aside and grabbed my gold-colored wire and frosted glass beads and began toying with them. I made about half a dozen small spheres with a glass bead on the inside as well as a half dozen Vs with matching beads on the ends. I also made a number of small hoops with the gold-colored wire. Then I got out the Fimo polymer clay and assembled the spheres and Vs into snails, adding the hoops at the end of the tail. I put those in the oven to bake for thirty minutes. While they were heating up, I made a couple more leaves on magnets using a different type of modeling material called Hearty Super Lightweight Modeling Clay. Like I said, I'm experimenting with which one I like best. While the Fimo has to be baked for thirty minutes, the Crayola Model Magic and Hearty clay have to air dry for twenty-four hours. The Crayola stuff has to be used all in one shot whereas the Hearty stuff can be stored in an airtight container like the Fimo clay. Pros and cons all around.

(Random aside: my stupid spider-bitten toe is at that "I hate you" phase of the night and is thus driving me to distraction. If I lose my train of thought completely in this rant, it's because I'm cursing my toe and probably pausing to try and find something to relieve the annoyance.)

So the plans for all these disparate parts is to make the following items:

1. The green leaves made out of the Crayola and Hearty modeling materials will eventually get snails on top of them once I make them. I'll be using the Crayola stuff (since I haven't any Hearty stuff in blue) which means using it all in one sitting. Oddly, the blue package is twice the size of the green or the yellow, the colors of the leaves and the shells, so I'll be using half the blue with all the yellow to make snails to air dry and later glue onto the leaf magnets.
   
2. The other half of the blue Crayola modeling material will be used with the tiny balls of yarn. I'll sculpt the blue around the magnets, run the long end through the back of the clay as a trail and probably figure out some way of attaching eyes as well. In the end, it'll be a leafless magnet, but it'll be one with an actual ball of yarn on it.
   
3. I think you've already figured out the Fimo snails I made. They're charms for necklaces or whatever. The way the sphere is, it's like a webbing of gold with a little spot of color in it on the back of a snail with glass bead eyes and a hoop in the tail where a necklace chain goes. The next batch I make need to be shorter in length though. The ones cooling in the kitchen are proportionally too long for the spheres attached to their backs. I'll have pictures of those up once I can move them from the pan and take some shots to upload.
   

A snail project I've long since finished a couple weeks ago involved shrinking plastic paper and some lobster clips. I traced my Golden Snail logo onto shrinkable plastic sheets of paper, cut them out, punched a hole in the tops of them, baked them until they were about an inch long, added metal rings and lobster clips, and essentially made stitch markers for crocheters. Crochet stitch markers have to have some sort of opening or clasp because it's the only way they can be removed from the work in progress. Knitters can have solid rings because once going back over a row, the stitch marker comes right off the needles. I think I have pictures of the stitch markers somewhere, but I'm not sure if they're on the computer. I should take some pictures of them as well.

So tomorrow I hope to get the snails made for the magnets, though they probably won't be assembled until sometime Friday when they're all dry. Maybe while I'm waiting on them to dry, I'll come up with a crocheted version of my Golden Snail. Maybe I'll work on that right now. I'm suddenly less tired. Maybe it's the cold ice packs I put on my foot to stop the insane itching sensation in my big toe. It sure as hell isn't the infomercials keeping me awake.