Creativity

Starry Nights… and Days

~ Michelle

Today’s blog started years ago. I bought an adorable pair of Murano glass earrings from The Shopping Channel. They were gold foil little stars with clear glass around the foil. They were charming. I got them home and then decided, no, I wanted to change something. (I do that a lot.)

They were strung on Sterling silver, and I didn’t love that. I thought gold foil would look better with gold ear wires. Well, I can’t play with gold, so gold-filled was good enough for me – still gave me the gold look, but not the gold price.

Star Earrings

Unfortunately, the gold doesn’t look very bright, but the gold foil is just shining!  So these little stars started a journey – I wanted something to match.

I looked for a LONG time; not constantly, but on and off for about three years. And then just before Christmas 2012 I found a web site that had the same stars!!! To say I was excited was a complete understatement! My Christmas money was spent before I got it. Thank you, Mum.

Star Pendant

So, I got another star to have a matching set. Yes, I know – Matchy-matchy.

This star is strung with a gold-filled pin and bail. It’s on a leather cord. I love it. I’m so glad I never settled for anything less – this is perfect.

Well, once the necklace and earrings were done, I wanted a bracelet to go along with them. Good thing I’d ordered a few more beads!

Gold Foil Clear Glass beads & Faceted Rock Crystal bracelet

Here’s the medical ID bracelet I made to wear with my Starry set. This has the gold foil beads in different sizes, and clear faceted quartz crystals. It also has Sterling silver clasps. I love it too! But I always love whatever bracelet I’ve just made.

And one last little gold foiled gem:

Moon pendant or charm

I couldn’t resist this little moon bead. I got it so I could interchange the Moon and the Star on my necklace, but it also works really well as a little charm to dangle from the end of my bracelet.

I’m off to play with some patterns.

Happy creating!

This and That Danglez Pattern

~ Michelle

I started the Bra Sew-Along with Amy on her blog. That’s been a little more challenging than I like – due in no way to Amy, her blog, the sew-along or the pattern. It’s all my personal fitting challenges.

Starting a new pattern has all the challenges I first faced with the Pin-Up Girls patterns – which I have worked out for the most part. I keep telling myself once I get these patterns adjusted for me, I’ll have a new pattern that fits too. I haven’t convinced myself to rejoice over this yet, but I am ploughing through.

I’m going to sew the Danglez DB3 pattern. I’ve heard it’s a great pattern for those with smaller frames, but larger cup sizes.

DB3_LRG

A sad little side note, Danglez has closed. Just before they did, I just ordered their DB5 pattern. I’ve seen it done on a couple of blogs (Sigrid’s & Novita’s), and it looks lovely.

The first thing I changed on the Danglez was to use the correct cup size. See that Sewy Rebecca mistake I made has helped me! So, one thing adjusted correctly – and I’m sure it will be the easiest adjustment I make.

Last night I was tracing out my pattern pieces, and adding the seam allowances to them all. That went fine. But then I was trying to figure out how to adjust the Cradle to smaller wire size. Well, maybe I shouldn’t do these things at 11 p.m. It wasn’t going very well. And my brain wasn’t going between European & North American sizes very easily.

I came up with what I thought was correct, but wasn’t really sure. I posted on the Bra Sew-Along about how I was having trouble and hoped someone would be able to help.

Sleeping on it must have helped. I had an idea this morning that I think works. I pulled out my Pin-Up Girls pattern in the correct D size for me and traced that over the Danglez pattern.

Changing Cradle to smaller size

Here you can see the two patterns and how I matched up them up. Using a light table, I could see both patterns and where I needed to change the Danglez to fit me. I re-drew the Danglez on a third piece of tissue paper but with the Pin-Up Girls Cradle. I did keep the lines of the Danglez to more closely look like that pattern. So now my Danglez pattern will have the original, one traced copy of the original, and my adjusted copy.

One other change so far, I changed the back of the band so it won’t ride up. The Bra-Makers Manual describes how to do this by giving it a downward hike. I tried to take a photo of that as well, but my camera really didn’t like the white tissue paper, and it turned out worse than the above picture.

So, next week, I’ll hopefully have figured out if I did the Cradle adjustment correctly or not, and may even have some photos of my progress on the Danglez DB3.

Happy creating!

Baking and Bracelets

~ Michelle

I spent the afternoon baking up a storm. I had gluten-free baking to do as well as diabetic baking. Tarts, pies, muffins and mini muffins. My counter is full of delicious goodies.

After the baking was done, I had some custom jewelry to make.

Here are the two most recent Medical ID bracelets I’ve made. I think they’re  pretty. And they were very fun to make. I made two earlier in the week as well, but they’ve been delivered to the customers already, and I didn’t have my photo tent out to take some pictures before I sent them to their new homes.

The first one here is pink & green Swarovski crystals with Sterling beads and clasps.

100_1562

The second bracelet is a two-tone Swarovski crystal bracelet in purples, with Sterling beads & clasps.

100_1555

I did do some sewing this week. I ‘tweaked’ my pattern and it was perfect – except I didn’t add a seam allowance!!!! I could hardly believe I did that, but I did. I was so focused on making the pattern and then alterations to the pattern, that I overlooked a very basic part. It’s an easy fix, but I don’t think I’ll be doing any sewing now until after Christmas.

Merry Christmas! and have a very Happy New Year!