Category: Jewelry

Christmas, Craft Projects, DIY GIFT GUIDE, Gift Idea, Holiday, Jewelry, Quick and Easy Crafts, Wine Crafts

DIY GIFT GUIDE: Wine Cork Necklace

Jessica Smith

Wine Cork Cover

Day 5! This project is so versatile, depending on the corks you save. From a dark brown cork to a stark black cork to a lighter neutral cork, this necklace can turn out so many different ways.

I know I do a lot of wine cork projects, but I really love this one.

Supplies:Ā 

  • Cork
  • Drill
  • Wire
  • Beads
  • Chain

Steps:

  1. Drill a hole straight through your cork, top down.
  2. Bend the wire in half and place a single bead on one strand. This acts as a stopper so the remaining beads don’t fall off.
  3. Place other beads onto both wires, feeding both wires through the same end of the bead.
  4. Bend the top of the wire and insert the bent wires through the cork. By bending a small part at the top in half, this allows the wires to go more smoothly through the cork.
  5. Once the wires are through, place beads on the other end.
  6. Twist both wires into a loop, then secure the wires by twisting them around the base of the loop.
  7. Thread chain through the loop and secure both ends with a jump ring. If you’d prefer a shorter chain, attach a clasp to each end instead.

Wine Cork Necklace

I like this black necklace because you don’t realize what it is immediately.

My favorite is a necklace I made out of a cork from one of my favorite wines. It has an armored knight riding a horse and it is SO COOL.

Cork Necklace

Really, I like them all.

What do you think? Would you wear it? I brought them to my craft fair thinking people would eat them up, but no one bought any. Who knows. I apparently haven’t a clue about my market haha.

Craft Projects, Furniture, Jewelry

Jewelry Box reveal… finally!

Jessica Smith

How sad is it that I’ve had this project complete for months and still haven’t shared it!? Very sad.

Oh well! The time has come to share my jewelry box project that took me months to do because I couldn’t decide what the heck I wanted.

Jewelry box before

I found this jewelry box in an antique store for 50% off, so I got it for a steal of $20-some bucks. Some of the jewelry boxes I was looking into buying cost more than $100, so that seemed like a great price.

I wanted to get rid of the gold tone to the wood and the stinky smell in the drawers so I decided to paint the whole think and rip out the fabric liner.

Jewelry box drawers

It’s not that the liner wasn’t nice… it just was horrendous haha. And scratchy! The only really nice piece of jewelry I own is a strand of pearls that my hubby gave me at our wedding, and it would be ruined resting on that. So yeah, it had to go.

Jewelry box white

Once the drawers were cleaned out, I started to paint. And paint. And paint. And paint.

Sometimes I forget how many coats white paint takes to cover. Holy cow. When I was pleased with the coverage, I added a stencil.

Turns out, I am god awful at stenciling, so I messed up the paint job pretty badly. Once it dried, I decided to just distress the whole thing. Good choice!

I stained over the paint and gave the whole thing a coat of polyurethane.

For the knobs, I reused the same knobs that came on the jewelry box. They fit perfectly and I thought they looked nice with the distressed vibe. For the drawers, I lined each with jewelry making mat (after I botched lining it with velvet. That was just terrible).

After months of working on it off and on, I finally finished the darn thing.

jewelry box4

I am in love.

Jewelry box

jewelry box2

So it took me forever to show you, but was it worth the wait?!

Jewelry box finished

I hope so šŸ™‚

Jewelry

Turquoise necklace and craft night

Jessica Smith

{A Smith of All Trades} Turquoise Necklace

It had been four months since our last craft night, but last weekend my girlfriends and I finally got together again for some good food, yummy wine, fun crafting and much-needed girl time. We decided to keep it low-key and make jewelry. Since I have more beads than any one human being could possibly ever need or use, I happily hosted.

We made necklaces inspired by a Pinterest find; and although they took a while, they turned out great.

To make your own necklace you’ll need ribbon, two oversized jump rings, beads and eye pins. Simply string an individual bead onto an eye pin, then close the pin at the open end. Loop each new eye pin into the previous one, creating a chain as you go.

Once your chain is long enough, attach each end to an oversized jump rings. Do not connect your jump rings to one another.

If you want your necklace to have multiple chains, which I did, create and attach them to the existing jump rings as before. It helps to make each subsequent chain longer than the first so they hang nicely.

As a last step, add your ribbon. Loop both ends through the jump ring and back through itself on the other side (does that makeĀ any sense?).

Voila!

{A Smith of All Trades} Turquoise Necklace

So pretty šŸ™‚

In other news, if you can call it news, I amĀ almost finished reading my Harry Potter books. I flew through the sixth book and am about 200 pages shy of the end of the seventh. They are seriously my favorite books ever and I am already planning on when I should reread the entire series again. The point is, as soon as I’m done reading this book, I’m free! I’ll actually stop being a book worm and do something crafty! Woo!

What do I have in the works?

  • Shutters for the house — purchased, but not installed
  • New lattice enclosure for our garbage cans because ours is hideous and falling apart
  • Ripping up the rocks along our driveway so I can lay weed barrier and make it look lessĀ atrociousĀ (Thankfully, my dad already started on this for us.)
  • Maybe doing a weed treatment to our yard because it’s abhorrent… who knows about this though
  • I still want to make an ottoman for our family room, but I need pallets again