More wine charms!

I'm having some nice me-time here at home. I've been bouncing around between laundry, crafting, reading, dishes, and working on the photos for this post all afternoon, ADD-style.

That light box came in handy again today.

I made these a while ago and I love them. Each button is different. But this project required making custom D-rings for most of the buttons- what a pain that was!

This set of four is Christmasy... Yes, I am aware it is june. I can't wait to use them in six months, though!

Here's another set with vintage buttons.

Tomorrow is another day without work! Hopefully I'll be as productive as I was today.

EEK

A tisket, a tasket... fake pears in a basket!

The other night I sat down to crank out some wine charms but I just wasn't feeling it. I picked up my pliers and tried, but felt so uninspired. I sat for a minute and let my mind wander, and on semi-autopilot I grabbed my size P crochet hook and some jute and started crocheting.

Maybe an hour, hour and a half later I had this little basket! I really just let my mind wander with this one, and after I had finished the base I realized I was making a basket. Which I figure is great, what with Easter coming up! I didn't have any cute easter eggs (and eggs looked a bit small in the basket) so I grabbed some fake pears I had lying around and three fit perfectly.

Have you ever been in that semi-autopilot state? I've made some terrible crochet mistakes in different projects that way... but I've also made some pretty awesome things that way, too! Brains work in mysterious ways, no?

Linking up again this week with Meg at Happy Kids Inc! Her Bloglovin Blog Hop has really grown in the past couple weeks, especially with Google discontinuing Google Reader! You can follow poppyrocket here.

Happy THursday everybody!

Quick & easy craft: Bottle cap magnets!

The other day I felt the need to finish something. I have so many interrupted projects and my stash of stuff is getting out of control. Who am kidding? It's been out of control for a while now.

I had saved several colorful bottle caps from beer and soda bottles with the idea of making magnets. I don't know why I didn't do this ages ago... it was so easy, and the accomplishment of actually finishing a project (albeit a small one) was really rewarding.

Nice and colorful! They look great on the fridge. The magnets I had on hand weren't quite thick enough to overcome the depth of the bottle caps, so I glued a couple layers of felt in under each magnet. You can see this best below with the red felt on the right. 

A hot glue gun would probably work but I don't have one (le gasp! a crafter without a glue gun?!). E-6000 did the trick! If you decide to make some and you're using a glue that requires a little time to set, like I did, MAKE SURE you don't put your bottlecaps too close together because the magnets will attract, as magnets do, and this can screw up your glue job if it's still wet.

Linking up again with Happy Kid's Inc's Bloglovin' Blog Hop again! Meg's blog hop has really grown- last week she broke fifty link-ups and this week it looks like she'll break a hundred!

You can follow me on Bloglovin' here.

Have a great weekend, everyone! Tonight is my Sunday night- I had a rare two days off in a row, but I have to go in extra early to run a birthday rental tomorrow. What fun. Maybe I'll splurge on some Starbucks... :)

Christmas crafts!

In a moment of delirious wishful thinking this morning I pulled out some old sweaters. It's still too warm to wear them, and I realized most of my sweaters have seen better days anyways. I cut up an old green one for upcycling! I made a super cute little tree ornament with some old buttons and a scrap of ribbon.

Coffee because I needed a fourth picture :)

I really wasn't up for taking "proper" pictures of it- lighting in my apartment really sucks. So unless I go visit my mom's lovely, light, super-windowed house it's kind of a pain in the butt to take a good picture of anything, especially since my photo skills are currently... under development. I snapped a few so-so pictures and pulled up Pixlr's Instagram-esque editor, Pixlr-o-matic. So much fun! I have a dumbphone, so I've never played with all the fun filters and effects Instagram and other similar apps have, and I just never got around to finding a computer-based alternative. Pixlr also offers pretty powerful photo editing tools online, for free! You can also download Pixlr-o-matic for your desktop! (I promise I wasn't payed to say any of that.)

Is it too early to prepare for Christmas? Whenever I see holiday merch in retail stores in September I get a little disgusted. I hate hearing holiday music before December 1st. But every Christmas I have all these awesome ideas and projects and I never get them all done. Every year I start earlier in hopes of accomplishing my crazy goals. Do any of you do the same thing? How early is too early?

Button crafts: wine charms

Wine charms!

I'm not really a wine drinker. I'd much prefer a good local beer. But I know plenty of wine drinkers, and I do live in a locale with several wineries. Also a good excuse to make something cute with all these buttons I've got! (Especially since I, uh, bought more last weekend.)

This was my first attempt... I think they came out pretty well! I gave them to my mother and she loved them.

I've got more sets in the works. Hello, Christmas gifts!! Look at you being made almost three months in advance.


A note on making wine charms:

With most projects I try, I usually do a little Pinterest research if I'm not straight up following a specific tutorial. But not with these! I just found the right sized coil of memory wire at a craft store, bought it on a whim, and used pliers, jump rings, and buttons/beads I had on hand to put them together. Afterwards, I did search on Pinterest and found that I don't finish off my charm rings like most other crafters seem to do, with a sort of loop-and-hook. Instead, I made a closed-off loop at each end, like so:

I found this method easy- just pull the end of the wire around with needle-nose pliers to make sort of a c-shape, and pinch shut with regular pliers. The charm goes on to the stem of a glass easily and stays on no problem!

You can purchase wire rings specifically for making wine charms on Etsy and probably most craft supply shops.

Happy crafting!