Tag: glitter

Craft Projects

GLITTER TRAY!

Jessica Smith

Have you ever thought of mixing epoxy with glitter and making magnificent things with it? I hadn’t until recently! I was trying to figure out how to spruce up a boring and shallow silver tray. It wasn’t deep enough to inset many cool objects in it, so I thought, why not mix in my favorite color of glitter?

Winning!

Yes, yes…. I chose an aqua glitter. You wouldn’t have been able to guess, right?

Glitter tray1

So for this project you need a tray, epoxy and glitter. Mix your two parts of epoxy together really well, then add glitter.

Once your concoction is thoroughly mixed, pour it into your tray.

**Important Tip: Your tray needs to be on a level surface, or your epoxy will dry with an angle to it. Bad news bears, huh?

Glitter tray2

The hardest part is waiting. Wait 72 hours for the epoxy to cure completely. It’s important for your project to cure in a warmer area, and covered up. I stuck mine under an aluminum tray for baking. It will keep dust, dog hair, etc., from sticking into your project.

Once your tray is dry, you are ready to use it. I clean mine with Clorox wipes when it gets messy — they hold up great.

Glitter tray3

Check out some of the other cool trays I have made in the past:

Look out for my next craft post — I made the CUTEST gift for my sister’s wedding, which is on Sunday 🙂

Craft Projects

Key and Crystal Wind Chime

Jessica Smith

As promised — new craft project!!!

Remember how I altered my aunt’s beautiful wind chime to match her preexisting one? That project inspired me to think out of the box to create her a final wind chime to complete her set. Both of her chimes are copper with key and crystal accents, and I happened to have a ton of old keys and chandelier crystals in my craft room. What luck!

{A Smith of All Trades} Old wind chime

{A Smith of All Trades} New wind chime

I set out to make my own wind chime using  keys, crystals, wire, chain and an embroidery hoop.

{A Smith of All Trades} Hoop unpainted

First, I separated my hoop into two pieces. I went outside and hit each side with some copper spray paint to match my aunt’s existing chimes.

{A Smith of All Trades} Hoops painted

Once the hoop was dry, I brought it inside and drilled six holes around the inner of the two hoops. This is where I attached the actual chimes, using the outer ring as a safety measure against the wire getting too much wear and tear.

{A Smith of All Trades} Hoop

When the holes were drilled, I started making each strand of the chime. I didn’t want my strands to be even, so I didn’t bother measuring out the chain. For this step, I laid out my supplies: pliers, wire, chain, keys, crystals.

{A Smith of All Trades} Tools

I had two sizes of crystals from a leftover chandelier: Large drops and small faceted octagons. I used the large drops at the end of each chain to give them weight. For keys, I had a nice mixture to choose from. I opted to not be matchy-matchy. I spray painted a few copper, but left others natural.

To get the crystals onto the chain, I took a copper wire and looped it through the pre-drilled hole.

{A Smith of All Trades} Wire

Once the wire was in and trimmed to a good length, I started to twist it around itself, creating a loop at the other end and hooking in the chain. Once the chain was hooked onto the wire, I came back down the wire, wrapping it around itself until the wire ran out.

{A Smith of All Trades}Wire Wrap

After the anchor crystals were on, I continued this process up the chain. Crystal, key, crystal, key. I added more keys to some chains, and fewer to others.

{A Smith of All Trades} Crystal bead

Once the chains were created, I attached them to the embroidery hoop using the same method of twisting the wire. When all six chains were added, I added two chains at the top (using the existing holes) to hang the chime from.

{A Smith of All Trades} Crystals

Aren’t the crystals beautiful?!

{A Smith of All Trades} Key

And I just love the different keys that I added to the chime. They are all so unique.

{A Smith of All Trades}Wind Chime cg

The chime is so pretty, I almost don’t want to send it off to my aunt. But it will match so nicely.

{A Smith of All Trades} Wine Chime1

{A Smith of All Trades} Wind Chime

{A Smith of All Trades} Wind Chime 2

What do you think? Will you be grabbing your space embroidery hoops and old chain to make a chime? You could make on using beads instead of crystals! Anything would go 🙂

Craft Projects

How to NOT glitter shoes

Jessica Smith

I don’t often talk about projects that are total flops, but I had an oober flop of a project last night that I thought I’d share in case anyone else is thinking about trying it. I had an old pair of black pumps that are SO comfy and SO beat up, so I wanted to try my hand at glittering my shoes with Mod Podge.

IMG_2541

Well, it was bad. Really bad. I had skimmed some other tutorials on how to do this and finally was ready to part with my pumps and try it out, hoping for the best.

Turns out I followed a bad tutorial. Meh, oh well!

Here’s what I did:

I Mod Podged sections of my shoes and spread thick layers of glitter on top before shaking it off.

IMG_2543

After I had the whole shoe glittered I let it dry for a few hours.

And here’s where I went terribly wrong. Dun dun dunnnnnn.

Once my glitter was dry I wanted to secure it to the shoe so it wouldn’t fall off as I walked. SO… I put Mod Podge on top of the glitter to seal it on the shoe. DO NOT DO THIS! Haha. Please. Don’t.

Mod Podge Shoes Gone Wrong

By sealing the glitter with Mod Podge I pretty much took all of the shine and sparkle out of the glitter. Boo.

By the time it dried, my shoe was so boringly black with no sparkle at all… ugh, such a fail. It also had a terrible texture to it

To make matters worse, even though I tried to make it better, I painted the tops of my shoe, the heel and the strap gold. Ugh. Bigger mistake.

Mod Podge Shoes Gone Wrong

Ugliest. Shoe. Ever.

Thankfully, I took this project one shoe at a time and didn’t waste any glitter or Mod Podge on the other shoe. Not so thankfully, I ruined my possibly awesome shoes. Oh well!

After looking around the interwebs to try and figure out just where I went wrong, it looks like a lot of people seal their glitter shoes with a clear glaze spray. That’s what I’ll be trying next time around.

Anywho, I figured I share my mishap since there seems to be lots of glitter shoes on Pinterest. If I can save another project from going awry then that’s a good thing!