Silver Bass

A silver and mixed metal bass guitar earring.

After finishing the Silver Elephant in the pre-final class of the year, I had to think of a quick project that I could do in 1+2.5 hours. Luckily, when I was trying to decide on the elephant, I’d also found a pin of a somewhat abstract bass guitar that really struck my fancy. My mother plays bass guitar and wears earrings so I figured I might try to make a bass guitar earring for funsies.

To make it, I flattened a piece of silver in that first hour and did the shaping and finishing in the final class. The plan was to bend it into shape, then solder the one pointy bit, drill holes for strings and finish it with sanding and polishing. I knew that it wasn’t going to hold the correct amount of strings for a bass, so I just drilled two holes in top and bottom. At home, I found some metal wire, made those strings and attached the earring hook. It turned out pretty well and so far, she’s enjoying it.

Jingles!

A while ago, I was going around the shops in town and found some really nice beads and a bracelet with rings to hang things on. I also found some bells.. So once I got home, I added bells to the bracelet, and three bells to some earring hooks. I also added the beads to earring hooks, so within an hour I had three sets of earrings and a bracelet.

Since I don’t have holes in my ears, the earrings went on to be presents for my mother and a friend. My mother phoned me a while later telling me that the bell-earrings were impossible to wear, since they jingle so close to the ear. The bracelet is much easier to bear since it’s further away. I do enjoy wearing it every now and again.

Interrobangs and Cats

A while ago, I was browsing the internet (and pinterest) looking for interesting earring inspiration. I found a few pins that I really liked, namely this one, this one and this one. And some others, what the heck, here’s my entire board of crafty things. Anyway, a friend of mine had her birthday a while ago and I still wanted to give her a small present. So I delved into the fimo stash and produced ‘inspired’ by earrings from the three pins above.

Let’s start with interrobang. The interrobang is a symbol used to ask a question in an exited manner, expresses excitement or disbelief in the form of a question, or to end a rhetorical question. It was a marketing idea in the sixties and never really took hold (Wikipedia), but I for one love both the name (BANG!) and the idea it expresses. Nowadays, the interrobang still isn’t used, but we do use the two symbols the interrobang is composed of separately. Say what‽ or She’s pregnant?! (Again Wikipedia). I came across the name at some point in the past when I was reading a post about (potentially) useful punctuation marks. That might also be where I learned that the &-symbol is called an ampersand. Which is information I actually regularly use in my day-to-day life.

So, I didn’t make the interrobang, I just really wanted to talk about it. I did make earrings with a loose ? and !, one for each ear. Black & Metal, a good combination right? I deviated from the original by putting the pin through the question mark completely. I actually like this maybe better? Anyway, here they are:

 Bang! Hanging Bang!

The second was an adaptation from the other two pins, one for each ear. So one dangling cat, and one graceful jumping cat. Well, my cat faces aren’t nearly as nice as the inspiration, but I still quite like them. The friend did say they were heavy, so we’ll see if they work out. It was mainly for fun anyway. So the pictures you’ll see will have a plastic cookie box in them. My ears aren’t pierced and I couldn’t find anything that would work well to show they were supposed to look, so a pierced cookie box it was.

Front Side-ish

 Side Butts

I also need to improve on cat faces and I still want to try the biting shark, and maybe mix it with a surfboard or something. For now though, I liked the results and I think my friend was somewhat interested in them. I had to wait until I’d given them to my friend before I could post them, you understand. On a different note, now I can already tell you that my next installment will be about the pants I finished yesterday and test-wore today. Very high waisted, woolen red pants. I love them.

Bats!

What do you do when you have to housesit the building you work in and literally only have to get up every two hours? Do you also race home to collect your fimo stuff and create little bat earrings with your friend? Well I did, in the first weekend of this month.

We found the inspiration here, and decided to make our own versions. Mine are a little cross eyed, which was exactly was I meant them to look like.

I smoothed over the back such that they are one whole. I like them. But I haven’t got my ears pierced, so I think that I will hand them over to a friend. I think I’ll make some more fimo stuff in the future. I forgot how much I liked it, I also found some more inspiration which I’m gathering here. If you’re ever interested.

 

Jewellery

So the visit to town on Wednesday landed me some other goodies too. I’ve been looking for some big red beads since my mother showed me her necklace.

Red

I made the red plaid skirt some time ago and found that wearing a black/grey is turtle neck with it and that necklace looked really nice. So I’ve wanted to make one for myself. I couldn’t really find any nice red (and affordable) beads, so I opted to go with purple. To add some difference I added some black beads and some white swirly ones. I really like the finished look.

Purple Beads

The other bits I made were two earrings for my mother. She wanted some over the top earrings to wear during samba performances. So they needed to be in the samba colours, yellow and blue. However, we found it was difficult to find some in the shop. So when we were in the bead shop, we got two square donuts and two blue beads for in the donuts, to make her some earrings. I had some feathers at home and some other bits and bobs like the hooks and something to secure the feathers with. And within 5 minutes my mom had some over the top samba earrings.

Earring