Something Blue {Custom Wedding Jewelry Set}

Something old, something new

Something borrowed, something blue

And a silver sixpence in her shoe.

This summer I was able to create jewelry for a local wedding, including a custom rhinestone necklace for the bride!

She reacts to most metals, so the necklace is made from silver-plated rhinestones montees which I wirewrapped into flower shapes, a modified silver-plated brooch, and sterling silver filigree chain. The entire piece is decorated with freshwater and Swarovski pearls, glass teardrop crystals, and deep blue Swarovski crystals.

I'm so incredibly excited to have gotten the opportunity to design a necklace like this, and I hope the bride loves it!!!

The above photos are three variation ideas we considered but discarded for a more simple, silver style.

This elegant cuff bracelet is the same design that I used for Aurora's circlet, and I actually have another one available on my Shoppe right now! It, too, is silver plated and completely handmade.

I'm really proud of this necklace design, but credit is due where credit is due: I was heavily inspired by the designs of Thyme 2 Dream, a lovely shop selling fairytale jewelry. 

I created two of these jewelry sets, and I believe that they are for the mother of the bride and the mother of the groom. In any case, they are opulent and make me long for the crisp, sunny afternoons of Autumn.

 

The earrings are a little longer than I usually make (mostly because my personal style features only small earrings, so I rarely think to make larger ones). They remind me of golden forests and fairy dust. :)

The flower girl received an adjustable flower ring in rich bluess.

I forgot to take many pictures of these, but I made a Mermaid Blue Evenstar jewelry set for each of the bridesmaids. These Evenstar necklaces and earrings are reversible; one side is dark blue and the other is shiny, iridescent blue. I added small bead dangles on the back, since I put extenders on the clasp. After all, the bridesmaids should be able to make their necklaces sit at the most flattering length on their neck! As a little surprise, I made adjustable silver swirl rings for each of these sets. :)

Here's the picture of the Evenstar that was on my website, which the bride picked when she messaged me:

I also decorated a box for the bride's necklace. It's a box that my brother's watch came in, and I glued scrapbook pieces over all the labels. :) Everything else I put into baggies and drawstring bags, like normal.

This was an incredibly exciting project to work on and I wish the soon-to-be-married couple the best of luck!

It's a Birthday Thing

 It's my birthday again! Head's up for the overly philosophical, pretentious, and extremely ramble-y un-edited post that I almost always make on my birthday.

This is one of my senior photos taken by my talented friend Jewels, who is getting quite good at using my camera. :) I also look really weird without glasses. 

For some reason, every year on my birthday, I start to get a little freaked out about the fact that, yes, I am, in fact, growing older.

I think that this is the sort of thing that bugs everyone who over-thinks and over-analyses life in general. In the midst of the partying and hanging out with friends, you pause for a moment and realize that time is passing.

It's a strange thing, if you think about it. Every moment is a moment that comes and goes, so why do birthdays make me think so much about time and growing up?

Insert random photo of flowers... because overthinking things makes me think of flowers

I'm one of those weird people who never, ever wanted to grow up. Sure, I loved the freedom I earned from the responsibilities I undertook over the years, but deep down I was Peter Pan. "Don't wanna grow up!"

Part of it was a bit of a prideful thing. As a child (and it is so strange to think that I am no longer a child, nor have I legally been for an entire year!), I was blessed with talent, dedication, and an encouraging family. I loved doing arts and crafts and science and writing and reading. Like everyone else, I appreciated and loved being complimented on the things I worked so hard on.

I always dreaded growing older. Not because I was a morbid kid with a gothic fear or fascination with death or even old age, but because I had this idea that anything I did at a young age was worth more than if I did the same thing when I was older.

So many people would say things like: "WOW! I can't believe you came up with something as creative and detailed as that and you are only 9 years old!"

"No way you drew that! What do you mean, you don't take take art classes? Holy cow, you are only 15?"

Sadly, I always did and still usually do make a point of telling people "oh yeah, I did this way back when I was 15."

While I know they meant well, and while I loved these sorts of compliments, I trapped myself into a weird mindset. I became convinced that my work became less impressive and less meaningful the older I got. To be brutally honest, I'd daydream of being a child prodigy. (This was especially bad one year after reading a book about Akiane, a painting prodigy who is only a year older than me and lived in my old town before I lived there. I wondered what I was doing with my life and why I couldn't be awesome like her.)

Today I am 19. This is the first birthday that I am spending away from my family. My new college friends have made my entire birthday weekend an absolute BLAST (and if I weren't in a really thoughtful mood at the moment, this entire post would be nothing but paragraphs worth of exclamation marks because my new friends are really amazing and sweet!!!).

I'm an adult now. I'm old enough that I could get married. I could get a regular job and live on my own. I buy my own groceries now. I'm in college, living in a dorm, and life is so surreal and exciting. I'm taking actual art classes and receiving training from people who are so talented that I am blown away and overwhelmed by their gifts.

And today, for the first time, it struck me how completely stupid my fear of growing up was. Growing up does not invalidate talent. Growing up does not make me less important. Growing up has, instead, made me realize that the world does not revolve around me, and that my goal right now is not to do amazing things and revel in compliments, but to attempt to be humble and learn. Other people are just as important, and in many ways are far, far more important. If I've been blessed with different gifts than many other people, I've been given these gifts to help others and to glorify God-- not to glorify me. I don't know everything and I am not good at everything, and being in college in the midst of new people, places, and ideas is making that really sink in.

Besides, even though I am growing older every second of every day, I never actually have to grow up. Growing up is overrated. One of my best friends came over a month before I moved in to college to take my senior photos. We started taking some cool normal ones:

But then we forgot that we were 18 years old and played dress up for hours and hours outside of an old cemetery.

I'm growing up to be a complete nerd, and I'm totally okay with it. As John Green says:

Graphics credit to ?. Via Pinterest.

As I was writing this, Jason Mraz came up on my playlist. I think the lyrics to this song are fitting, because they certainly fit my mood:

The world as I see it, is a remarkable place
A beautiful house in a forest, of stars in outer space.

And to make this be a triad of quotes:

  "We are perishing for want of wonder, not for want of wonders." --G.K. Chesterton

So this year I am going to work more on appreciating life and being grateful. I'm sounding really cheesy and cliche, but right now I don't care.

Spock out.

Pen Pal Box

Life is so surreal right now-- my baby sister was born this Monday, and I just moved into my dorm room! I am officially a college student now!!!

My little sister and I are really close, and she was very worried about me being gone. She doesn't know how she'll be living in our room by herself! :)

I decided to ask her to be my penpal, and I made her a pen-pal box as a goodbye gift. It's a cheap wooden box from the clearance aisle at Michaels, and I simply decoupaged it with scrapbook paper, pages from destroyable books, and a really pretty Washi tape from JoAnn's. 

I meant to get her stamps and address labels, but forgot to do it in time. Oh, well! My mom can do that, right? :) I can't wait to start writing to her, and hopefully writing me letters will help her to become a more confident writer. She's getting a lot better at spelling and I'm trying to convince her to write letters on her own without any help.

Life is just so surreal... Are any of you lovely readers off to college this year? Are you as excited as I am? It's going to be an epic year!

Sketchbook Cover with Fabric + Mod Podge

Lately I've taken to shoving this little Strathmore sketchbook into every purse, backpack, or lunch bag that I happen to be carrying. I used to bring around a big 9x12 affair, but I've learned the importance of tiny sketchbooks. They are so easy to carry around, and now I find myself doing quick no-pressure sketches when I am out and about.

You can tell I don't create any little masterpieces in here, though, because I don't exactly treat it nicely. The paper cover is bent and wrinkled. It is also SUPER boring.

I decided to cover the front and back covers with fabric to make it prettier and sturdier. :) I found this darling, blue, swirly, brocade-y fabric at JoAnns on super sale and just had to pick some up. Since our sewing machine is broken, what is better than a quick no-sew project when you have delicious fabric just sitting around?

How to Make a No-Sew Fabric Sketchbook Cover

It's really super simple. :) You'll need:

A sketchbook or notebook to cover
Mod Podge
A paintbrush
Fabric
(optional) cardstock

Progress photos courtesy of my little sister!

To begin, cut a piece of fabric close to the size of the cover. Make the length and width of the fabric around 1/2 inch longer than the length and width of the sketchbook.

Next, coat the cover with Mod Podge. They do sell special fabric mod podge, but I found that my regular stuff works just fine.

Like so!

Set the fabric ontop of the Mod Podge glue and press it firmly-- you don't want any air bubbles!

Open the sketchbook cover, fold the excess fabric over, and glue (or tape) the fabric onto the backside of the cover.

Next, cut out a piece of fabric (or cardstock, as I chose) to the exact dimensions of the sketchbook cover and glue it onto the inside of the cover.

Ta-da! It's a quick and simple project, but it jazzed up my sketchbook quite nicely. :)

The backside of the fabric is lovely, too, so I used that side on the back cover. You can see that some of the wet glue bled through the fabric-- unfortunately that spot shows even when the glue dried. Beware of bleed-through glue!

I've decorated sketchbooks with doodles, collages, and stickers in the past, and I even made a pretty stamped-paper cover for my 30 Day Drawing Challenge book, but this is the first that I've used fabric on!

Also, check out my epic new Noodler's flex fountain pen. I love it. :) I'm starting to become addicted to writing tools, and at $20 this is my single most expensive pen. It's worth it for me, though, because it writes so beautifully and lets me do some unique calligraphy styles. (Ignore the poor calligraphy in this drawing! It's just what I did late at night after decorating my sketchbook with fabric).

What's the most unique thing you've ever done to decorate a notebook or sketchbook?

P.S. I'm starting to pack for college already! I'm overwhelmed in a wonderful way, and I'm so excited for my classes. :) My little sister is going to be born in just a couple of weeks, too, and I'm just bouncing up and down with excitement! Here's to life being crazy but good. :)

The Tale of a Frabjous Present

O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!
He chortled in his joy.



I made this sculpture, designed by George Hart, for my brother's birthday. He wants to study mechanical engineering when he goes to college, but he's always said that his favorite hobbies will be theoretical physics and building fun contraptions in the garage.

In my family we kids don't usually spend money on birthday or Christmas presents for one another. I'm the only one of us with a source of income, and when there are six-soon-to-be-seven kids, none of us have the money! Gifts are always something cheap and handmade.

This particular brother is hard to make gifts for. He makes or already has most of the little things he wants, like 3D tic-tac-toe boards, levitating tops, or science-y desk toys. He even stole my M.C. Escher poster (I had only taken it down for the afternoon to move it to a new part of my wall!!!) so I couldn't give him that. He doesn't use crocheted hats or keychains or cute little painted cards. What to make?

We're all huge fans of Vi Hart, a youtuber who makes ridiculously geeky, mathematical, funny, and epic videos. One day I was re-watching her videos and stumbled upon her father George Hart's channel, and from there his website of sculptures. He's got a template for making the Frabjous sculpture, a geometric art piece which is totally up my brother's alley, so I set to work getting all my other siblings to help me out.

We traced the templates onto the stiff, thin cardboard that comes on the backs of sketchpads and legal pads. (I now have a lot of loose drawings in a folder instead of all attached in their pad, but whatever!)

While the rest of us slaved away, my five year old brother tried to make Sierpinski triangles! Isn't it sweet? Those fractal triangles turned into another distraction, and you can see my second-youngest brother's Sierpinski triangles on his Instagram here.    

And THAT lead to making hexaflexagons. Hexaflexagons are quickly taking over the house.

That cardboard was incredibly difficult to cut, but we finally managed it with box cutters. We spray painted everything black and let it dry overnight.

George Hart's PDF didn't have much in the way of instructions, but I naively assumed that I would be able to assemble the sculpture with ease. I mean, I'm one of those people who leave instruction booklets at the bottom of the box and just figures out how to put things together. Easy peasey, right? Hah.

This thing was hard to put together. I took a solid two hours puzzling the S-curves into the cool star-vortex pattern.

My aha-moment was realizing that the final shape is basically a dodecahedron and that the S-curves go diagonally to different vertices of the dodecahedron.

He took his vorpal sword in hand:
Long time the manxome foe he sought --
So rested he by the Tumtum tree,
And stood awhile in thought.

And as in uffish thought I stood, the Frabjous, with lots of tape, came whiffling to it's final form, and looked awesome as it came.

It looked strange and alien as I put it together (doesn't that first photo look a lot like the Tripods of doom from the Tripods Attack book?).

Next I glued all the vertices to one another using a ton of glue and painted any leftover cardboard spots. Hot glue probably would have worked better.

It's far from perfect (the one on the website was made from laser-cut wood and all the pieces are actually identical), but still looks pretty fun. My brother was so excited and he's hung it on his ceiling.

It looks a bit floppy in this picture... argh!

And, has thou slain the Jabberwock?
Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!'
He chortled in his joy.