Steampunk Saturday - Yes, I'm one of THOSE people!

So let me start this post with some nostalgia and a bit of insight into my childhood and what has molded my personality (if you want to skip this part, I don't blame you!) I was a weird kid, from the beginning. The first movie I remember seeing in the theater was Star Wars,
I was three. I wrote my first vampire story at age four, I dictated it to my grandfather who graciously wrote it all down. Starting in about the 5th grade I fell in love with the Victorian era, and carnival freaks. I was a member of SCA (Society for Creative Anachronism) in high school and was thrilled about a summer job at Medieval Times (didn't quite give me the historical interaction I was hoping for though). Also, back in the day, there was no Hot Topic. You had to work to find the alternative stuff; they didn't sell Dr. Martens at Shoe Show.

Where this is all leading to is that I'm a little behind the times on my alternative fashions; had I the resources during my youth I would have been SOOOOOO Steampunk! (Did you hear that? It was the sound of my husband groaning with annoyance and displeasure!)
If you're not familiar with Steampunk, there's a very clinical and brief definition on Wikipedia that will help. If you are familiar, and hate it - too bad! If you're familiar and love it, and I butcher your beloved genre with my crafty attempts - get over it!
A couple of weeks ago I was at the Rings N Things Bead Tour in Norcross. I had seen the little canister of gears in the catalog and had flipped through but wasn't ready to make the leap.

I also kept flipping through this Steampunk inspired jewelry book.













I was getting lots of inspiration but no courage until I found this free tutorial by Christi Friesen. I figured I had lots of clay from previous crafty mishaps, I now had the gears, and I was feeling bold and was ready to share with the world my Steampunk interests!
I made a practice heart earlier in the week that I was pretty proud of. So today, I sat down and worked on my Steampunk hearts that will be made into necklaces.

I bought some more polymer clay; I'm still a novice and don't know what brand I prefer yet so I went with what was on sale at JoAnn's this week. I also found some really fun findings that were on clearance (I love the brass monkeys!)

I forgot to take pictures of the process, but here's how they turned out. Some I like better than others, and actually the first one I made earlier in the week is my favorite.

(before and after baking)

I'm kind of disappointed about this one:

The clay was a really beautiful deep crimson color and I mixed a little black. When it baked, though, it turned really dark. Maybe it will lighten up as it cools. I guess it's still cool in the darker color, but I really liked that red.
I also made a beaded necklace that I would categorize as Steampunk because of the colors and materials: red lampwork beads with blue dots and copper accents, copper beads, and really funky blue cat's eye beads. I was stuck with the lampwork beads (long mother-in-law story) and was in the Steampunk state of mind when this happened:

The question now is whether to put them up for sale now or save them for Dragon Con in September. The folks at Titan Comics are always very generous about letting me sell stuff at their booth, but Eric thinks I should go ahead and put them in the shop now. Maybe I will, and maybe I'll make some more Steampunk gear in the meantime. I've been really inspired by these awesome cuffs on Etsy (I could totally wear, I mean make something like that!)

So, if you're at Dragon Con this year I may not be on the safe side of the table, I may comingle with the weirdos and actually blend in; 'cause guess what! I AM ONE OF THOSE PEOPLE!

Decoupage Day - Update

Just wanted to add some additional learnings to the Decoupage Day post. It is definitive that newsprint comics DO NOT work for the bangle bracelets; it has to be magazine slick. None of my Teen Titans images stayed on. For some reason the adhesive just doesn't hold.
Also, the Aleen's Collage Pauge - still don't like it. There are several spots on the Hellboy bangle that did not smooth down and the paper is very crunchy. I'll stick with my Martha Stewart goo.

Fabric Flowers

I tried to think of something simple to post today since I probably won't get to post much during the week and decided to do some fabric flowers. I actually was really ambitious last night and cut all the pieces out, now I just need to stitch them together (ugh). A little background on me and the fabric arts, I may like them but they certainly don't like me! My grandmother was a fantastic seamstress! She could whip things up without a pattern and every year my Barbies always got a box of new clothes from Granny.

 Sadly, this amazing trait skipped my mom; the story of my brothers' jackets that almost sent her over the edge is a legend. I guess Granny thought she might have better luck with me because sometime around my freshman year in college I got an unsolicited sewing machine for Christmas.

Don't get me wrong, it was a great present and I still have it and (try to) use it, but I think she gave up on her dream of passing on her pinking shears to someone deserving when we spent a good chunk of that Christmas vacation working on a vest together. Over the years, I've pulled out the sewing machine from time to time for little projects but this past October I decided I would put my nose to the grindstone and make my Halloween costume. It was a fairly simple pattern and I didn't think I did too bad of a job, but apparently Granny did. She passed away that week and was buried on Halloween thus saving me from embarassing her with my terrible sewing skills. HA!

Well the long ramble was to get me to the point of today's project. Just because I don't sew well doesn't mean I don't love fabrics and patterns and am incredibly envious of people who do so well. So I'm thrilled when a sewing project comes up that requires very little stitchery, and in fact the worse the stitching the better the project looks! I got my pattern and instructions from the Wise Craft blog.
Now for the fabrics... I saw one of these pins in an antique/variety store (Queen of Hearts in Suwanee - awesome place!) a couple of weeks ago and thought they would be great to make. Most of the ones I saw looked to be made of upholstery fabric and I've been trying to figure out where I could get some on the cheap. I happened to walk into my JoAnns two weeks ago and there they were! They were selling the swatches of their discontinued home decor fabrics for $1 a swatch (and I can probably get 4 or 5 from each swatch)! I tried not to go crazy and narrowed down my choices to 8 swatches that I thought would be good colors for the summer and brought them home. They've been sitting in a bag on the floor of my craft room since then...

I did whip one up Wednesday night as a test and it was fairly simple, so I decided to do one of each swatch today.

I don't have a jar of buttons like most people, but rather a drawer of buttons. It's a shallow drawer in some odd Ikea piece of furniture meant for jewelry and lacy things, but the top drawer is reserved for buttons.

These pins would be really cool if I had some vintage buttons to put on them, but alas I think the oldest one I have is about 18 years old (that's close to vintage!) and was salvaged from one of my favorite rayon shirts (do they still make rayon?). Anyway, I chose some of the funkier ones and voila! Here are my fabric flowers.

(before stitching them together)

I stitched a pin back on each of these, but they could easily be used as pendants... if you like fraying fabric ends tickling your neck. I thought about using some fray stop on the ends, but that takes away from the shabbyness of them. Hope you enjoy - they'll be on my Etsy site soon!

I may get a post or two in this week, but my next big project will be on Steampunk Saturday!!!

Decoupage Day - Lessons Learned

Alright, I've been productive this morning with my chores: cleaned the shower, bathed the dog (see fur pile),

did some laundry and there's a dishwasher load running, I even cleared off some space on my craft worktable (pic is before the cleanup).

Normally I work in the 6 inches in front of and 12 inches to the side of my keyboard despite the fact that I have a whole table to work on.
Now it's time to get crafty. I wanted to work on my decoupage comic book bangle bracelets today. I have images cut for Hellboy, Teen Titans, and Sandman Endless bracelets.

These sold like crazy at Heroes Con this year.

I had never really decoupaged before but I had some Martha Stewart Crafts Decoupage Glue and Sealer

 

leftover from some project years ago that I used for my first batch of bracelets. This product worked really well, it's thick and clear so it holds onto the paper and lets you manipulate it without soaking through and tearing it - this is REALLY important for folding the paper around the bangle. It's also really glossy and there's a bristle brush included in the bottle. However, I was running low and decided to try a different product. I bought a good size bottle of Collage Pauge (Aleene's)

at Hobby Lobby with a coupon (40% off - sign up for their emails!). I DON'T LIKE IT! It's very thin and soaks through the paper quickly, which means it tears easily, which means it doesn't work very well on the bangles. The instructions say to dip your finger in water and smooth out the wrinkles; this made the paper even more apt to tear. It also seems to dry very quickly once you spread it on and it gets all flaky on my fingers and does not wash off easily (yuck). Looks like I'm headed to Michaels today to stock up on the Martha Stewart goop. And it looks like the Hellboy bracelet will be a discount item since the wrinkles look not so pretty.

I'll use the Martha Stewart product on the Teen Titans and Sandman Endless bracelets that are up next.

(bracelets are drying)

By the way, I got the basics for these bracelets from this great video series on YouTube. The instructions are with tissue paper (which I've used) but I had to do something with comics, so voila!

First Entry

Okay, I bit the bullet and now I have to start writing. My skills are a little rusty, but hopefully with time they'll get better. I plan to keep you all informed about my crafty projects and my kids (hope you like dogs and cats).

A word about my title - Big Girl Baubles... it's actually the name of my Etsy shop and when I was talking about it with a friend of mine he asked if I was being degrading to myself. Well, despite the fact that I am a big girl, the title for the shop came more from the saying about "putting on your big girl panties and deal with it". My favorite phrase in college was, "Suck it up, camper" (I worked at a summer camp and there was a lot of whining) and the big girl panties thing seemed along the same lines. Now in retrospect I'm owning both aspects of "Big Girl"! So, back to the shop - I mainly sell jewelry and I love the word "bauble" so add it all up and you get where I'm coming from... hopefully.

Tonight I've been working on listing more of my jewelry on Etsy. I met a lot of great folks at Heroes Con in Charlotte a couple of weeks ago but I had forgotten my business cards. I ended up scribbling my shop address on lots of scrap paper; but even if they did go to my site there wasn't much listed (I had gotten a little disenchanted with Etsy lately). Anyway, I'm back in the saddle and listing my stuff and hopefully someone will find it.

So yeah, back to the blog - you'll learn very quickly I tend to ramble and write in a stream of consciousness, not that there's anything wrong with that, so hang on and enjoy the ride.

On tap for tomorrow - decoupage comic book bangle bracelets. I'll take some pics and post.

Okay, gotta run, dogs are barking at the neighbors. Hope you all have a good night.