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

Lightbox! + wine charms

YAHOOOO I finally buckled down and finished my light box! I don't know why it took me so long, it was so easy! I took it outside to play today. I used a tutorial I found at Flax and Twine.

 Not much to look at... especially sitting on top of our cobwebby grill. But it seems to do the trick!

 I grabbed some wine charms I made recently. I've had these glass beads (the large ones, not the seed beads) since high school- like, eight years at least. I'm quite pleased with how they turned out.

 I still have a lot to learn about my camera, etc. But this is a huge improvement, and a huge step in the learning process!

Here's another set I made after I ran out of the beads above :)

ANYways it is late here in CA. I had a late night at work and it is past my bedtime!

EEK

POST SCRIPT! In my haste to post this late last night I totally forgot to mention that I'm linkin' up with a couple bloghops!

The first is the Make the Scene Monday hop, from Alderberry Hill

The second I've hopped in before... the Bloglovin' hop over at Happy Kids Inc!

 Don't forget, you can find me on Bloglovin' here.

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!