Glowing Hand of the Witch Pendant

Or..... The Drippy Glowing Hand of Death!

Booowa ha ha ha ha!

Sorry...... lost my head for a minute there.

I LOVE Halloween!

So many cool excuses er.... um..... opportunities to dress up and play and make things we wouldn't normally get away with make the time for during the rest of the year.

Here is the first of hopefully many spooktacular projects for this season.

Things you'll need to complete this project:

1 56g block of STAEDTLER fimo effects #04 

1 56g block of STAEDTLER fimo effects #28 metallic red

1 56g block of STAEDTLER fimo soft #09 black

Black chain 85cm long

Black metal jump rings, head and eye pins, lobster claw and large filigree bead topper

Gutermann 3mm and 5mm teardrop beads in dark berry

Jewlery glue

Basic sculpting tools

Three in one pliers with round nose, flat and cutter

Condition some of the glow in the dark fimo and roll it into a 2cm thick worm.

Cut a 6cm length off of the worm to make the hand.

Flatten one end of the worm to about 1/2cm thick making sure the flattened end is blended with the un-flattened end at about the middle of the worm. Cut a mitten shape from the flattened end by removing a wedge from one side.

Cut three even slits into the top of the mitten shape to form four even fingers. The center slit will be shorter than the two outside slits. It's looking a bit more like a hand now!

Smooth the edges of the fingers and thumb by gently rolling the teeny fingers between your fingertips. Take your time and be gentle. 

Grasp the hand at the wrist between your thumb and index finger. Squeeze and roll until you have formed an indent to create a wrist. You can push the fingers into shape where you want them now and add some detail to the shape of the palm.

I used a home made tool that is just a finishing tack pushed into a clay handle to make my finger nails, but you can achieve the same thing by using the basic sculpting tool set to create fingernail shaped indents.

Pose the hand now and cut away any extra clay after the wrist.

For the heart I made a metallic red egg shape and slightly flattened it.

I made three wee balls of metallic red fimo and pushed a pointed tool into the little balls to form cut away vein ends. I pushed these newly formed tubes onto the top of my flat egg shape.

I used a pointed tool to draw some surface veins onto the heart.

Place the heart into the open hand and curl the fingers around the heart to hold it firmly.

Flatten a sheet if black fimo to 1/8th cm thick and tear away one edge.

Wrap the torn black fimo around the wrist of the hand to form a sleeve. Roll the end of the wrist into a cone shape that will fit into you filigree bead cover.

Use the black wire head pins to create some dangles with the Gutermann teardrop beads. I made seven.

Glue the wrist into the filigree bead cover.

Attach the teardrop dangles to small uneven lengths of chain and connect the chain to the middle of the necklace chain hanging the hand pendant in the very center. Finish by attaching the lobster claw finding to the end of the chain.

Check out the glow!

Have fun frightening your friends.

Stay tuned for more Halloween fun.

I'm excited..... are you excited?

Necklace Building 101

Here's the final part of this three part tutorial.

Part one is here... Turning a Double Locked Eye Pin

Part two is here...  Curled End, Locked Head Pin

Here is a link to how we made the STAEDTLER fimo beads

Here are some pictures of how I put it all together.

I chose jump rings that were roughly the same size as the loops in the eye pins we turned. I simply joined each loaded eye pin with a jump ring between. My necklace has fifteen loaded eye pins that are about two and a half cm each.

Make sure the jump rings are closed tight.

On one end of the joined eye pin chain I added ten jump rings. I loaded a dangle, or a loaded turned head pin to the last jump ring. All these jump rings give me some length choice when I'm wearing the piece. I can connect the lobster claw into any one of these jump rings. The dangle makes it easier to find the join on the necklace to undo it and it's pretty on the back of your neck.

On the other end of the piece I loaded a single jump ring and a lobster claw.

Here's a pic of how the connections work.

Hope you try this!

I love making STAEDTLER fimo beads and have heaps of them. This is my favorite way to use them up.

Happy crafting!

Curled End, Locked Head Pin

Today's post will show you how to make the curled end locked eye pin loaded with  my STAEDTLER fimo beads made here in this post. . The next post will show how to complete the project. The previous post will show how to make the double locked head pins.

Cut a 5cm piece of 24 gauge silver wire and begin to tightly curl one end using the flat part of your three and one pliers.

Continue to curl the wire tightly until it's the size you want. Mine was about 1/3cm wide.

Bend the wire away from the curl at a 45 degree angle.

Load your selected beads onto the new head pin largest first. I started with a tiny Gutermann glass bead in silver because my fimo bead had a large hole and would have slipped over the curled head pin end.

finish the drop by creating a locked eye at the top of the wire using the instructions from the previous post.

I'll write about how I assembled the piece in the next post.

Halloween's only 34 days away!

Do you have any costume plans?

Turning a Double Locked Head Pin

I've been swamped!!!

But I still found time to take some process shots of how I turn my double locked head pins.

I used up my STAEDTLER fimo beads I made here in this post.

Today's post will show you how to make the double locked eye pin loaded with beads. The next two posts will show how to complete the project.

 Supplies you will need to gather up for this project:

pre-made STAEDTLER fimo beads

some accent beads, I used Gutermann matte glass

silver jewelry wire, 24 gauge

three in one pliers (cutters, double round nose, flat)

an extra set of flat nose pliers

jump rings to match your turned eyes

lobster claw

Cut a 10cm piece of wire and straighten it with your fingers.

3cm from one end turn a 25degree bend.

Curl the wire up and over the top jaw of your double round nose pliers to create a loop. I held the wire about half way up the tapered tips of my pliers to create a medium sized ring. The pliers are graduated so you can create the loop size of your choice by holding the wire further up the pliers for a larger loop or near the tip for a smaller loop.

Remove the wire loop from the top jaw of the pliers and insert the bottom jaw of the pliers into the loop. Continue to bend the wire around the bottom jaw to create a complete loop that ends with the wire ends at a 45 degree angle.

Turn the shorter loose wire end around the longer wire base to make a tight spiral of wire turning around another straight wire. Keep the whole business tight.

Use another pair of flat pliers to finish turning the wire end completely if you need to.

Load some beads onto the head pin. Keep at least 3cm of wire free at the end of the beads to turn another locked eye.

1/2cm from the end of the beads, turn a 25 degree angle in the wire.

Continue to create a locked eye as before by curling the wire up around the top jaw of the double round nose pliers.

Insert the bottom jaw of the pliers into the newly created loop and continue to turn the wire loop ending with the wire ends at 45 degree angles to each other.

Turn the short loose end of wire around the wire body. Keep the wire body straight and the coil of the end wire tight. Trim off any extra wire if needed. Use extra set of flat nose pliers to tighten the coil and finish the eye.

Stay tuned for more installments to complete a piece of jewelry.

(Click here for part two)

See you soon!

Fall Doodles

 Got my hands on these STAEDTLER marsgraphic markers and have been doodling up a storm.

They've got a brush tip and a fine marker tip in one marker. The colours are bright and blend-able. I think I could quite happily sit here and doodle all weekend! Ok, ok.... I know..... I have work to do. Don't worry. Doodling is just a break. But it's so much fun.

It's been fallish outside and I love it! Just look at all those leaves. 

Sigh......

Well, back to work!

New STAEDTLER Fimo Colour Sneak Peek

 Oh My Goodness!

I'm showing you just one of the soon to be released STAEDTLER fimo colours.

It's STAEDTLER fimo effect #306 called ice blue quartz

The white clay shown to the left is STAEDTLER fimo effect #014 translucent

The clay on the right is a mix of the new ice blue quartz and the translucent in equal parts.

This clay is GORGEOUS!!!!

I don't know how I'm going to get any sleep knowing this is in the house just waiting for me to play with it.

Unbelievably, this is what the clay looked like before I baked and varnished it.......

So cool!

(pun intended)

Just wait till you see the other soon to be released STAEDTLER fimo colours.....

The Wall

Retro-vations still loom. 

I am submitting various stage photos of our progress so those of you going through the same thing won't feel so alone.

Here is the wall with the fireplace just removed. It was bricked right into the wall and support beam. We added support beams to either side of the old beam and tightened everything right up. Then we added insulation as far as we could reach. 

 We got hold of some 1/4 inch drywall (Thanks Mr. B) and filled in the uneven cracks left over with quite a bit of mud.

It all sanded out just fine and you can barley even tell there was a fireplace there at all. Well..... except for the huge hole left in the floor and baseboards where the hearth was. It is a vast improvement as far as space goes already. Just need to fill it up with some interesting pieces. 

Dining Room Chairs Recovered

We're still working away on our little corner of paradise.

Trying to make things comfy and homey for ourselves.

This weekend it was dry-walling in the living room and finishing up the chairs in the dining room.

Here's the result of the hard work so far.

 I covered some rope with turquoise cotton......

Sewed it to the edge of the seat covers.....

Made sure they fit by slipping them on over the old cover.

Here they are all done. 

James an I removed hundreds of staples and teeny tacks to get the old covers off. Once the new covers were on I decided I liked the look of the covered cord along the bottom edge of the cushion too. I'm pretty happy with these.

Now..... on to more dry wall repairs and painting.

Hope you all had a productive and relaxing weekend too.