The Little Nuthatch — crafts

When I first started making rubber stamps I was using a regular old x-acto knife, I was doubtful the rubber stamp carving tools were actually worth the money. Well, at this point I made enough stamps to make the investment so I got the carving tools from Speedball (sold at Michaels) and wow, what a difference in makes! I was telling all my friends how easy it was to make stamps, but these tools make it REALLY easy. I made this duck stamp in 20 minutes. And then made a couple more... (Now that I'm looking at them, they all...

I tried out embossing several weeks ago and I finally got around to taking photos of the results! With this type of embossing you: 1) use a rubber stamp and make a stamp with a watermark ink pad 2) sprinkle the watermark stamp with embossing powder and blow off any extra powder 3) set the embossing powder with a heat gun This is the result: It creates nice, raised, dimensional lines. I used the rubber stamps I carved and posted about a while back. One of my favorite parts with embossing is the little powder particles that get left behind...

Over the weekend I did some beading with my Mom. I NEVER do beading, but my Mom had started making these peyote stitch bracelets and she showed me how to do it. Once you start going it's kind of addictive, they take several hours to make but I didn't even notice the time passing. My bracelet turned out pretty crazy. I looked up the peyote stitch on the internet and most of the bracelets are pretty organized. The ones my Mom made have little sections of one type of bead, and they look very elegant. The next bracelet I made...

Here are some pins I recently made out of polymer clay. It was fun to play around with polymer clay again. I hadn't made anything with it in so long- 10 years or more? I only had three colors of clay, so most of these have been painted in some way to ad color. I then sealed them with a glossy finish, and added the scalloped edge which is a piece of stiff dark brown felt cut very carefully and full of imperfection! But I sort of love them. I put a few of the mushrooms in the shop.

I was organizing this week and needed a place to put my balls of yarn- forget the skeins yarn come in, I love a ball of yarn so I always redo mine into a ball. They look so pretty in a basket or bowl! The problem is mine were in an ugly plastic container in the closet. So when I saw the instructions for a shredded paper bowl in the BH&G Do It Yourself Magazine (Winter 2009) I thought, perfect! You cover a bowl in saran wrap to use as a mold and glue the shredded paper to it in...