Happy Little Rain Cloud

While poking around in Pintrest, I found this ADORABLE necklace:

Isn't it wonderful? I knew I wanted one but I didn't have the means to buy one and it's sold overseas so I decided to try my hand at reproducing it. Here's the result. 

I decided not to tier the drops like the original but I might change it up next time I make one. I LOVE how it looks and it was fairly easy to make. Here's what you need. 

1. Strong multipurpose glue. I used 7800 All purpose Adhesive. 

2. A necklace bar with three hanging loops. I got mine from Michael's. They were part of a pack for making three strand necklaces. 

3. Three silver bails.

4. Three blue drops. The original used faceted crystal but I couldn't find any so these were part of a multipack of blue beads. I think they still look lovely.

5. Fine chain. 

6. Needle and white thread. 

7. One cotton ball.

8. Six small jump rings and one large one. (Not pictured)

First, attach the bails to your three droplets. 

Next, cut your chain into three lengths. I went with two the same length and one longer one for the middle but you can tier them however you like. 

Next, use three small jumprings to attach your chains to your bar pendant.

Then, using the other three jumprings, attach your droplets to the ends of the chains. 

I'm so sorry for the blurriness of this photo but hopefully you get the idea here. Just take your cotton ball and unravel it or stretch it out. 

Now lay a thin line of your glue along the bar and press your cotton onto it. Repeat on the other side. Now this doesn't look much like a cloud at this point so lets add a little shaping to it. 

Take your needle and thread, knot one end, and then begin weaving in and out of the cotton, shaping the poof to your liking as you go. The end result should have a puffy shape like this:

And that's it! Now go forth and wear your lovely raincloud even on the sunniest of days! 

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Treasure Chest necklace

If you hadn't noticed from my last post, I have a weakness for tiny things. I'm the kind of person that runs squealing into a Sanrio store because I just know they'll have itty bitty staplers, tape rolls, pencils, ect that I can coo over. I also have a strange love of secrets and surprises. I've always loved treasure hunts and hidden spots. Some day my home will be filled with secret nooks and crannys where I'll hide cute things just so I can utterly forget they're there and surprise myself later. 

Yes. I know that's weird. Moving along. 

With my love of little hidden treasures, it was no wonder my heart swooned when I found this tiny chest pendant. 

I knew I had to have it so I snapped it up and string together this fast necklace with spacer beads and little gold and silver ammonites. I wanted to create an undersea treasure feel and the tiny sea critter charms just did the trick for me. 

No treasure chest would be complete without a trove inside it though.

I filled the chest with a little nugget of gold, some dice to honor the gambling pirates who lost this chest, and a few silver stars because...well, stars are treasure to me. ^__^ 

It's simple but pretty and I love it dearly. 

Thanks for looking!

Embrace Your Inner Child

Now I know I'm not alone out there in my love of polymer clay, anyone who's searched through blogland can find a billion examples of cute things made with the stuff, but I just can't seem to help myself when it comes to making tiny versions of things with it. 

Whenever I sit down to craft with grand ideas of making something truly impressive with clay, I usually find myself a good hour or so later holding some itty bitty version of a cake and squealing in delight over it. It's a weakness, I know. But look at them!! How can you not like tiny meringue pies?!

Each one is about the size of a quarter. I wind up putting them on phone charms, necklaces, bracelets, you name it. It doesn't stop with pie though. Oh no, this tiny food sickness extends to other foods too. 

Strawberries also wind up with the tiny treatment. I sculpt each one by hand and then, after baking, I lovingly paint them all. They look so happy! 

Cinnabons are not immune either. I had some fun with liquid sculpy here to make the runny syrup look. The bottoms of them reveal that they are all swirled like real cinnamon buns. 

My favorites though are the stars.

I know, I know. You're asking why these are so special. They're cute and all but not as nice as the cinnamon buns, right? But stars have always meant something to me and these hold a secret that I delight in every time I turn out the lights. 

Thanks for visiting!



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House Wars: The Realtor Strikes Back

Sundays have become a whirlwind for me with all this househunting going on. It seems to be the only day that we can go look so I have to squeeze in tours between various meetings for The Random Act. This Sunday was, hopefully, the last one I have to do that. 

We set out yesterday with a list of four more houses. We'd originally had 6 but one was bought before we could look at it and the other one just didn't answer the phone to schedule the walk around. Oh well. 

The day turned into a grand adventure in hidden surprises. The first place we went to? Very beautiful right from the start. Huge, sitting on a hill and overlooking a park. I was in love. Then I walked around the side of the house and saw this:

"It's just a broken window," I can hear you say. True and I thought that myself. Maybe some rambunctious kid threw a rock and, hey, accidents happen. Then I walked to the back of the house. 

Yeah, both of the bottom ones are busted out too, not to mention the builders didn't even bother to finish shingling the roof. Not a good sign. I didn't take photos of the inside. I think it was because I was in shock. We walked in and I was impressed at first by how large and lovely it was. Then I got to the kitchen. There is no kitchen. It's gone. Thieves are so prevalent in this area that they stole the cabinets.

No, I'm not making that up. The cabinets were gone. The appliances were gone. THE BATHROOM SINKS WERE GONE. I couldn't believe it. We went back and looked at the door again and found signs that it had been kicked in repeatedly and the current owners actually bolted metal plates onto it just to prevent that from happening again. Yeah, we moved on. 

Next on the list was another house in a bad neighborhood and every window had bars on them:

This never bodes well. The neighbor was a drug dealer or a hoarder, not sure which, but no one who owns 17 coolers all stacked on their back porch, 6 cars (only two of which appeared to run), large angry looking dogs, and tons of random trash strewn about their yard could possibly be up to any good. Or at the very least, I doubted they'd be thrilled when I showed up with cookies. >__> 

We went to the next home and found a place that was honestly on our list of potential houses. It was oddly laid out but the front was lovely enough and there was a nice sized back yard. The kitchen was just gorgeous as was the dining room but all the other rooms were lackluster. They were tiny and cramped, the bathrooms were itty bitty, and I don't really need the random half bath tucked into what used to be a closet in the middle of the hallway. Still, those things could be fixed. 

Then we got to the basement. Everything looked great right up till we opened one of the doors down there and found this. 

That's water....the door you see there...that doesn't lead outside. If it led outside I could at least tell myself that maybe it was just rain. Alas, no. This speaks to a much larger problem. 

It wasn't in just one place either. Most of the floor was like this. I swear I saw the Loch Ness Monster in there. We decided that between the water and the too small rooms, there was no reason to pay more for this place and then have to work even harder to make it livable when we had another option that was already great for us. 

The last house on the list was, well, perfect in so many ways. It was staged wonderfully. It was bright and homey. The only issue there was that it was too expensive and too small. For all that it was gorgeous, I just couldn't swing paying too much for something already decked out when I could pay much less for something I could decorate myself and make it look just how I wanted. 

All that said, we returned back to the home we'd fallen for last time and it still didn't fail to enchant. It's not too big, not too small, and has great potential for redesign without breaking the bank or US. 

This is the home we've decided on. Isn't the kitchen lovely?? I'm already planning out some things on this. I want to restain the cabinets, repaint, put up a tile backsplash, ect. 

This is the livingroom. It's right off the kitchen. I love the hardwood floors and there's plenty of light. 

Some of you might recognize this. That's right, it's the bathroom I'd fallen for. The jacuzzi tub and all! YAY! It's right off the master bedroom and is just too pretty. The master bedroom itself is lovely with lots of windows, sunlight, and hardwood floors. It even has a trey ceiling! 

The room on the left is the master bath and this is inside the master bedroom. This is even larger than it looks as I was only standing halfway into the bedroom. 

This is the backyard. It's AWESOME. That tree is a huge magnolia so it's going to be so pretty in the spring. I want to do terraced gardens in the back and we're going to replace the rickety chainlink fence with a white privacy fence. The one you see in the background is the neighbor's, not ours. Listen to me, I'm already talking like I own this. Heh. 

This is the back. I'm already dreaming up things to do. We're going to build out a carport to the left side. I want to tear up all that bland concrete (yay for jackhammers!) and put down patterned brick walkways instead. The whole house is going to get repainted into something a little less bland, I think. I want bright (not purple, mind you) and welcoming. :) 

Tonight we're putting in our initial offer. Wish me luck!