Fabulous Charms!

Tonight we had to make a special stop at our mailbox so that I could see if my charms were here. I've been participating in the Charm Swap Stacia Robin organized and hosted in the Art Unraveled Yahoo group. I was in Group 1 and only regret that I could not have been in BOTH groups! But I couldn't sign up for more than one because it was my very first swap!

I had to think long and hard about what I could make. I consulted websites and one blog in particular, Just Simply Charming, and decided that I loved the wrapped bottles most of all. The pencils came in a close second, and honestly I had about a zillion ideas, so it was hard to choose. When I started looking for supplies, I came across some little bottles I liked at a reasonable cost before I saw the supplies needed to make any of the other charms I was considering. I had decided to put green vintage glass glitter inside the bottle, but on a stop at one of my favorite stores, Las Vegas Art Stamps, on the way home from Vegas, I'd discovered JudiKins' Roxs in a beautiful cobalt blue and I knew they had to be inside my charm!

So I created my first charm with a tiny glass bottle (from Papier Valise in Calgary, Alberta) partially filled with blue Roxs and glued the plastic stopper into place. I pre-bent some brass head pins with round ends (I don't know the proper name for these) to go through the hole in the top of the stopper, around over the edge of the stopper, wrapped it around the indentation at the top of the bottle to make a loop, brought it back around the other way and 'smushed' (yes, Gwen, it sure can be a word!) the end in so it would not scratch the wearer. I'd printed some labels in a faded color and aged the paper before cutting them apart. I coated the back with Diamond Glaze, put it on the bottle, and covered it with more Diamond Glaze and voila!, bottles of Star Dust were born.


The first one was a victim of an insecure jump ring and the tile floor in our living room. :( So now I'll be checking those jump rings twice and adding a bit of Diamond Glaze (can you tell I like it?) for security.



I'll be blogging about other charms in future and I don't know if I need to get permission to share photos of them. (Please comment or email if you know about this!) So my lovelies, just you wait to see what I've got! hehe... and Thank You! about a million bazillion times to the fabulous, talented, generous artists in the swap. Thank you also to Barbara for making the booklet of instructions and photos. A trillion thanks to Stacia who made this all seem so do-able and for masterminding and hosting the swap. You rock!!!