Refashioning jewellery

Someone gave me a bag of broken jewellery recently and it was like Christmas. I love getting these kind of donations because they spark all sorts of ideas, it's recycling and save things being thrown away.
The round links below....

... will be going into a beach glass necklace.
And the chain and leaf necklace? Pulled apart into several components and used to make multiple new items:
1. Beach glass hair clip

2. Long necklace

3. Leafy necklace

 I've always like black and green as a combination.

Even a humble key ring can be remade into something fun.

You can see the pink beads from the keyring in this necklace.

 The middle two white flowers? Also an old pair of earrings!

 A couple of the keyring beads made it into this necklace, too.

 Some of the pink ones!

The moonstone bracelet at the top of this necklace matches the other beads nicely. I had it for years before a link broke in the middle. Now it has another life.

 The middle rose of this necklace used to be an earring.

 It's pair was used in another necklace ages ago,

 This fake amber has been the centre piece of a few necklaces.

Add it to the old bracelet and it's a chunky statement piece.

I wonder what I can make next?

#lovelypennypatterns

Recycled Beach Glass Hair Clips

I've gotten back into wire work recently, particularly working with recycled glass that my family have helped me pick up from the local beaches. I don't have a permanent setup for beading and wire like I do for sewing, so I usually drag it all down to the kitchen table.

A friend asked me to make her some hair clips for her birthday, so that was a nice thing to work towards. She shares my tastes in clips, so I knew I could be creative for her. 
I wrap the wire around the bits of glass, using the odd edges to make it secure. Thicker wire also helps a lot. This fish has been in my bead box for years, so it was nice to be able to put it on something.

It's hard sometimes to avoid compromising the teeth of the comb: you want it to stay in, particularly as the beach glass is quite heavy for a hair clip. I try to only wrap around the very top of the comb.

Matching pins? Why not!

The decorative bobby pins were a good base to attached the glass to. I wrapped the glass and then slid the pin into the wrap, before securing it.

One set done!

I went for different colours in the next piece. The silver leaves came off an old, broken piece of jewellery that was donated to me for upcycling. I think the tassle came off an earring of mine, too.

While I was playing around I put this one together, too, to go in the craft stall box. See the bottle neck in there? I pick quite a few up on the beach, mostly brown ones.

It kind of reminds me of a coral reef, one of those odd combinations you sometimes find in nature.

Lots of combs leftover, so I'll have to sit down and make some more soon. I need more of the rare colours in the glass, the greens and dark blues, so we might have to go walking again soon!

Masquerade Masks

These masks were a commission. I was given a photo of a dress to match and asked to make a pair of masks on sticks, rather than elastic. It was a fun trip to Spotlight with a budget and a colour scheme!

Bought materials:

• Two green masks
• Two pieces of dowel (wood sticks)
• Green velvet ribbon
• Paper flowers in yellow
• Pre-made mini dragonflies
• Green feathers
• Yellow feathers
• Big gold sequins
• Small gold sequins
• Green glass leaves
• Packet of mixed gems
• Packet of glass eyes
• Green puff paint
• Gold puff paint

Own materials:

• Glue gun
• Fabric
• Beach glass
• Random beads
• Fake leaves

I bought the base mask in green and had to attach the sticks myself. I got two short pieces of dowel and wrapped them in velvet ribbon. The ribbon was secured with a glue gun, but I also stitched the ends in place to cover the glue up. I used a lot of glue to attach them to the back of the masks, and had to glue a fabric patch over them to make it more secure: my first attempt simply popped off!

Female Mask
I've made a few masks before and find that they are a great creative medium. You can pretty much stick anything on them! With the green theme this was always going to be a garden: flowers, leaves and dragonflies. 
There was no plan, I simply started sticking leaves on and it evolved from there. The dragonflies were too cute to pass up and they perched nicely on the mask. Butterflies would have been too big, I think.
You can't load the masks up with too many things, as they become to heavy to wear or carry. I try to use light materials.

I like to add touches of other colours because it can make the whole item pop. Though a certain green and gold were the main colours from the dress, I could also use a range of greens and yellows that would blend in nicely. Puff paint covered up and odd bits of glue that were visible and added extra glitter too.

The feathers and flowers on the side helped to disguise the stitches and glue that kept the stick attached to the mask. The paper flowers mean that the mask can't get wet, but you tend to avoid that anyway! I just thought they were nicer than the plastic and silk flowers.

Female masks are easier to make in a lot of ways. What is 'feminine' is more easily defined than masculine: flowers, feathers, sequins. Of course everyone is an individual, but generally the women that I have made masks for don't object to glitter. 

Male Mask My challenge with this project was only having met the gentleman the once. I didn't want to give him a plain mask, but I didn't think that leaves and flowers were the way to go. What I did was still a bit out there, but in a different way. 
Crocodiles.
We have a lot of reptiles in our area of the world. A LOT. So when I saw the packet of glass eyes at the shop I was inspired. Now to make the 'skin'.

The fabric was a stroke of genius (I thought): it was from the same print workshop as the dress I was matching, but in different colours. I tore my entire fabric stash apart looking for it, because I knew that I had that one little scrap somewhere. It linked the masks and the dress together nicely.

All of the pieces of glass are the size of coins, picked up from the beach in my town. The light piece right in the middle is the neck of a bottle! Some of what we pick up are fascinating shapes, or still have writing on them.
I used the glue gun to set the glass in place and then added super glue to keep it there. The glass is very smooth, so the glue had a hard time sticking to it. The first couple of 'shake tests' that I did on it had a few pieces falling off.
As with the first mask, I used more than just one colour. I thought that the skin effect was quite good and that the mask was masculine enough. 

Unfortunately it was a little tight across the face when it was first tried on, so I had to carefully bend it out and a few of the glass pieces popped off again. I was able to glue them back on though.

The masks were apparently a success on the night, so another happy customer!

Holding a craft stall

A few years back I was doing multiple craft fairs in a year. I also entered work in local exhibitions and made items on request. It takes a lot of time and effort to get yourself out there and create a following, to make your hobby make money.

Life got busier and I stopped doing so much creating, but also in 2007/2008 when we had the global financial crisis people stopped buying crafts. There is a bottom line for what you create, between the material cost and the time it took you to make it: usually you lose money on the time element. This was the case for craft stalls and I. Hours of time creating and a whole day sitting behind a table was netting very little profit and draining some of the love for what I did.

Something that can be hard to manage even when hosting a single craft stall is creativity vs. output. You can have a couple of different kinds of stalls: few products and higher prices, where even selling a couple of pieces leaves you breaking even; or a lot of products of lower values that collectively will make your profit. I've always had the latter. Often the basket of $2 bracelet would be what sold the most, to all of the little girls looking to buy something with their own money.

My beach glass dragons were higher value items, but materials aside (the glass did come free from the beach, though it took a lot of collecting time) they took hours and hours to make and people weren't very willing to pay what they were worth. It's a bit insulting when people try to bargain you down on the day! 

I buy from local artists whenever I can, particularly friends. It pays to support each other and I generally found that was the attitude at craft fairs. I often did swaps with other stallholders, for items of equal value that we eyed off from each other.

I sew more than bead these days and do a bit of fabric printing and eco-dyeing. I don't want to compete with other artists in Darwin who sell a lot of the latter, but I also don't make clothes for other people, only myself. I think about having a stall again and there are certainly opportunities around. I would stick with my beach glass necklaces, because I haven't ever come across anyone who wires them together into collars and decorates them like I do, so they are a unique product. 

It would take me weeks of dedicated time, or months of less dedicated time, to create enough for a stall and that hasn't been something I've been willing to do. If I knew someone who wanted to share with me it would be easier, as I wouldn't have to fill a whole table myself. But the craft fairs are also on Sundays when I have archery...
Aren't priorities hard when we want to do everything in life?

Beach Glass Necklaces & Jewellery

As I have said before, I love beach glass. I went through a period of making lovely hairclips and big, chunky necklaces from it, and I still do the odd one now and then.

Here are some of my creations, with plans for more in the very near future. 

I think it's about time I had a craft stall again!

Glass, paua shell, 150 yen worth of Japanese coins 💰

 

Red bamboo coral, jasper, beach glass 🌊

 

White and blue beach glass

 

I called this "Coral me Christmas" for an exhibition. Beach glass, shell dangles, and bamboo coral pieces. 🎄

 

This was called 'Fun and Happy'. I made it to donate to the Cancer Council for a fundraising auction.

White and brown beach glass goes well together, particularly with a dash of blue and silver.

Another hair clip with beach glass and jasper.

This was made to match a dress. Onyx in the centre, with beach glass and paua shell.

Beach glass and pink quartz.

 

One of my favourite pieces, this was a heavy collar using several different colours of glass. I made a second, similar one on commission as well, after the first sold at the gallery exhibition. 

White and brown glass again, with a shell piece and some brass love hearts. It decorates my mum's house.

I often make forest/leafy-themed necklaces. This has white and green glass, wooden circles, and green glass leaves.

These next two necklaces are more recent, and were donated to a charity auction. Both sold, proceeds to a good cause.

Skull ring and white glass.

 Winter-theme, with seed bead strands and dangling snowflakes. The middle pendant is a piece of coke-bottle glass, nice and heavy.