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This Little Shop of Mine

I sold one of my owl wrap necklaces today! I’m so excited! I wore one to work and my coworker mentioned that his wife would love it because she is obsessed with owls. I told him that I make and sell them, and he asked me the price and literally took the piece I was wearing right off my neck! I’m really proud of the necklace and I’m completely thrilled that someone else liked it and thought it would make a great gift.

See More designs at Etsy.com/shop/etacarina

What's this? A New Post?

I really am the worst person in the world to try and keep up with a blog. I tend to get lost in the 'making things' and forget about the 'photographing' and 'posting' part of all of this!

In any case, I recently made two pieces that I'm really happy with. I love customizing pieces that can be used every day. I created these two compacts with resin and a few jewelry components that I had in my supply closet. I loved how both came out! They are both currently in my Etsy Shop.

The first design had a pretty heavy Steampunk influence. I love clockwork gears and the look of metal. I love the weight behind this compact. I bought a big lot of watch parts on ebay a couple of summers ago, and this watch plate was one of my favorite pieces. I really love the patterns etched into the piece, and I think the shape is so cute. It almost looks like paisley! I balanced the piece out with a few gears and a teal Swarovski Elements bead that kind of lost it's shape under the resin. I used my favorite resin, Envirotex Easy Cast, to seal everything in place. I love that it makes a beautiful crystal clear finish. 

For the second compact, I used a nautical design. I am completely in love with everything nautical. I used a pendant that used to belong to a broken necklace and removed the bail. The whole thing felt a little empty, so of course I had to spice it up a bit with some embellishments!  I started by taking some watercolor paper and painting it blue, then used a 1 1/4 inch hole punch to create the blue background. I sealed the paper with some Mod Podge. I love how it looks like clouds floating in the background. I then used a bit of rhinestone chain and some thin curb chain to complete the design. Once again I set everything in place using Envirotex EasyCast resin. This 'bezel' is pretty shallow, so the resin was the perfect way to make sure all of the pieces were secured in place.

So this was just a quick update to show you what I've been working on! Hopefully I'll be able to get my butt in gear and post more updates soon! 

What have you been working on? Got any resin tips or tricks to share? Leave them in the comments! I'd love to hear them!

DIY Charm Bracelet

I love the look of Juicy Couture’s mixed charm bracelets, but I just cant bring myself to pay 80.00 for the. So, I made my own!

For this bracelet,  I chose three varying sizes of chain and a contrasting piece of leather, but you could use ribbon, embroidery thread, or even a strip of fabric if you’d prefer for your bracelet to be vegan friendly.

Basically I just threaded the smaller chains through the larger one, anchoring them at the end with a tiny jump-ring finding. 

Then I braided the leather around the smaller chains. This took a little trial and error, trying to figure out how I wanted the leather to weave through the other chains. I wanted the bracelet to look a little more polished, so I kept the weave pretty consistent, but you could make it random to give it a little more edge. 

To finish it off, I connected a finding to each end. I didn’t actually have findings in the same tone as the chains, so I used small silver fasteners, then threaded the leather over the top of them so they would be hidden when I tied the bow.

I left mine at this, but you could add on your own charms to make it a bit more personal!

DIY Turquoise Pendant

(This is another tutorial I posted on my old  Tumblr. I figured I'd move the handful of posts from there to here, just to give the page a few items while I work on new projects.)

Okay, so, there is very little in this world that I love more than turquoise. But it’s pretty expensive, so I decided to try making my own.

This is so ridiculously easy, and you can try it with different colors to make something really special and unique.

1) You’ll need two different colors of clay. This doesn’t require very much clay, so if you have anything left over from another project, this would be a great way to use up extras.

2) Roll the blue clay into a ball, and roll the black clay into a thin tube. 

3) Break off little pieces of the black clay, and press it around the ball. Vary the directions that you place the black onto the blue clay. This will create interesting variations in the finished product and it will look more natural. 

4) Roll, mash, stretch and fold the clay. Keep doing this until you achieve the amount of variegation that you like.

5) Try not to let the colors blend together. You don’t want a uniform color.  You just want the them blended enough so that it looks like there are black streaks throughout the blue clay.

6) You can hand shape the pendant if you’d like, but I used one of my resin molds to create a more perfectly rounded shape. I pressed it into the mold, making sure to completely fill the mold. I let it set for a few minutes, then popped it back out. Try not to handle it too much. You don’t want to dent the clay, or to leave fingerprints.

7) Follow the baking directions on the clay package. I used Premo! by Sculpey, which calls for small pieces to be baked at 275f for 25 minutes. This is the finished piece after it came out of the oven. 

8) You now have a really gorgeous pendant that you can use in any craft or jewelry project! You can use a bead reamer or a jeweler’s driller to drill a hole into it. I just wrapped mine with wire to form a simple necklace!

And that’s that! Super easy and very very cute.   

Clockwork Compact

This is one of my very favorite projects. I originally posted it to my Tumblr back in 2011, but I never kept up with that blog, so here it is again.

Back in October 2011 I went to see Panic! at the Disco in concert. During the show, I caught a guitar pick, and I was so excited to do something special with it. I originally wanted to drill a hole into it and turn it into a necklace, but I couldn't bear the thought of damaging it. I'm a little bit sentimental when it comes to my band memorabilia.

I looked around at my crafting supplies, and found a compact I had picked up at Hobby Lobby for pretty cheap. It had a pretty decal in it, but I thought I could make it into something a little more interesting.



So this is what I started with. I had the Hobby Lobby compact, which I used an exacto knife to pry out the decal; The Panic! guitar pick; an old pocketwatch component, which I had bought in a bulk package from ebay; and a clock face scrapbooking component from Hobby Lobby, that did not make it into the final design.

After removing the pink decal from the compact, I was left with a white paper backing that didn't look all that great. I wanted the finished look to be a little more refined, so I used black nail polish to cover the background. I only used black nail polish because I didn't have any black paint.  

After the nail polish completely dried I arranged my elements on the compact. I embellished with a few little gears that came in my bulk watch component purchase from ebay. So far, I really liked the design, but the outer area of the compact seemed a little bare. 

Like most crafters that I know, I had some spare copper chain in my supply closet. I measured out enough to fit around the circumference of the design and connected it together at the ends to create a nice clean loop of copper chain.

And this was what I settled on as the final design. I liked how the elements were balanced, and how the different colors of the metal embellishments complimented the colors of the guitar pic.

At this point, I was ready for the fun part!

Before I started this project, I had only worked with jewelry resin once before. The first resin I used left behind a slightly sticky necklace that picked up lint and fingerprints every time I tried to wear it. I had been very very careful to mix the resin properly, so I'm pretty sure it was just because the resin was very cheap. This project was very sentimental to me, so I didn't want to take any chances. I used ETI's EasyCast Clear Casting Resin. At the time I didn't know that there were multiple types of resin, and I (accidentally) chose the right one for my needs. This resin does a great job when used as a pour. It was designed to work in molds or deeper casts without clouding or making too many bubbles. It dries to a brilliant, high-shine finish.

This was the result after I had poured the resin over the elements. When you first mix and pour the resin, tiny bubbles will rise to the surface. You can either pop the bubbles with a very thin needle, or you can be adventurous, and wave the flame of a lighter very very quickly over the top of the resin. It will instantly pop all of the bubbles for you.

Then comes the hard part... the waiting. I covered the compact with a bowl and let it sit for about three days. I wanted to make sure the resin was fully cured. Trust me, it took a lot of willpower not to touch it in those first few days.



And this is my finished product! A perfectly preserved memento that serves a higher function! I've shown this off at other concerts, and every time I do, I always get a ton of compliments on how beautiful it is. Honestly (and humbly) I have to agree. And that's that! It was a very easy project, and I hope it inspires you to try using resin as well!

First Post

Hello and welcome to my new blog! My name is Mary and I am obsessed with pop culture, movies and making things! I am a newlywed to a wonderful man named Sean who inspires me every day. We are the loving parents to two amazing doggies named Roscoe and Petey. I have never met a craft idea that I didn't like, and one of my favorite things to do is to deconstruct items and remake them as wearable art. I borrowed my blog name from an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, where she called herself destruct-o girl. Yes, I am a great big nerd.