Pictures!

I've got pictures of my more recent snail-related products as well as some of the other things I've been working on.  I don't have the greatest pictures in the world; pretty much everything I take a picture of looks ten times better in real life.  The husband says it probably has something to do with the difference between digital and real film, and I think I might try playing around with the flash to see if that might have something to do with it.

At any rate, the first picture is of stitch markers I made a while back using shrinkable plastic paper.  I traced my logo onto it a lot of times, colored it, cut it out, punched holes in the tops for the metal rings, and after they were all baked, I attached the metal hoops and lobster clips.  They're pretty cute, but because they all melted in a convex fashion, taking a picture was hard because the flash bounced off them at funny angles.

Next up is a mix of Halloween-themed toys (or decorations, depending on how you use them) that I've made for family members.  I'm still working on getting the pattern down right; they turn out a little too cylindrical for my tastes.  Still, they're cute and I'm going to make some more today.

The last project with the snails that I have completed (and have images of) are little charms I made.  I used gold-colored wire to make a little mesh sphere for the shells with a bead inside.  Then I made the eyestalks with more wire and beads.  I put the whole thing together with Fimo clay and baked it.  They are a lot larger than they should be in proportion to their shells, but at least my first batch is successfully cute.  :)  Now I just need to get pictures of them on a chain to show what they'd look like on a necklace.

I do have other snails that I've recently made, but they're not quite done yet.  I made a lot yesterday using yarn and Crayola Model Magic, but they're drying.  I also made leaves and bodies for more snails that will be magnets, but I'm letting them dry before adding the shells later today.  I'll take pictures, of course!  The snail magnets made with yarn balls for their shells?  Extremely cute!!  I can't wait to get pictures of them up to show people.

At any rate, it's time to get back to watching my World War II documentaries and working on pumpkins and spiders.  Since my cat doesn't seem to want to go outside today (I think it's going to rain, and she knows it), I guess I'll just have to do all this from the comfort of my couch instead of my porch.  Have a great day!

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.

Loads of shopping!

Generally, I'm not the biggest fan of shopping trips.  I'm a homebody by nature, so hours spent wandering around where there are dozens if not hundreds of other people isn't exactly my cup of tea (and since I own about seventy different varieties of tea, I know my tea).  Sometimes I think it's a touch of agoraphobia (fear of crowds and wide open spaces), but mostly I figure it's because I have difficulty finding exactly what I want.  It's part of the reason why I shop on-line so much, I guess.

So at any rate, I did a lot of shopping Friday.  I hit Staples and picked up a scale so I can weigh things for shipping and handling prices as well as a ledger to keep track of the stuff I'm buying and then how I'm using it.  I like to think it's some form of organization, but it's likely to not last long.  I hit Wal-Mart for some more basic things like ribbon and wire cutters and safety goggles.  You know, typical crafting gear.  :)  I was hoping the store would have Fimo polymer clay and Shrink-it plastic paper, but I could find neither.  I swung by the local Ben Franklin's and found both.  Hooray!  Then since I was two doors down from True Value, I ran by there to see if they carried an attachment for our Dremel, but they don't carry it.  After all that, I came home and recorded all my pertinent purchases in my new ledger.

So I've gotten more of the basic supplies and tools needed for Golden Snail Designs.  I even made a bunch of little Shrink-it snails by tracing my logo and coloring it before shrinking it in the oven.  I'm going to turn them into charms for stitch markers or keyrings.  I think I'm going to have to spray them with a clear coat though because the marker I used to color them comes off when scratched hard enough.

Back to crafting though, I crocheted a pillowcase today and am halfway through a second.  I still need to sew the buttons on them for closures then take pictures of each with and without pillows in them.  I won't be selling the pillows; they're just for modeling.  I still need to sew the elastic into the hats I made as well as the button embellishments.  To take a break from crocheting pillowcases, I worked on the heather blue afghan for my sister.  So I took a break from crocheting to...crochet.  Go figure, lol.  I've noticed that a lot of crafts are simply addictive.  I do, however, need to get some more yarn because so far all the pillowcases I'm making are green because that's the yarn I bought in bulk.  Also, one of these days I need to start getting my products up on Etsy!