Making stuff

It's Family day, and as usual, I spent much of it with my family; the dance studio family. The princess had another marathon rehearsal session in preparation for their Showcase on March 3.

When we got home, she was very (VERY) crabby. I had two choices:
A. Lose my mind.
B. Hide.

I opted for plan B. I took off to my craft crap room, closed the door, and started measuring, cutting, pinning, pressing, and sewing the shower curtain for the cottage. The sewing is always the easy part. It's everything else that you have to do before you can sew that's tedious and slow.

It probably took me 3 hours to finish this, including a pit-stop for dinner and a break for some bedtime kisses. I've hung it in my bathroom at home so you can get a feel for how it will look. When I actually get it hung in the cottage, I'll be sure to take another photo to share.  (for now, click on it for a close up.) If you're thinking about making a curtain of your own, I discovered that a typical shower curtain is 6' in length (finished dimensions) and has 12 holes for curtain rings. Widths will vary depending on the size of your shower opening.

It's a good thing we installed a light in the shower. This curtain is  weighty and the shower would be cave-like without a light!

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On an unrelated note, I've had a bee in my bonnet lately about jewellery. I was recently invited to a jewellery home party.  I've spent a lot of time perusing the company's website. (The party has been post-poned until March so I have nothing better to do). They have such nice jewellery but holy smokes some of it is pricey! Of course, I took one look at some of it and said...

"$40!? I could MAKE that!"

And, so... I did. The name of the company in question looks very similar to:

$+e||a and |)o+

if you feel like googling, but since I don't want to be sued for copyright infringement, that's all I'm going to say. Forgive me.

Here are their versions:

Bracelet 1

Bracelet 2 (these look so nice stacked together).

And here are my versions, made with supplies found at Michael's. (Forgive the franken-arm. I'm no hand model.) Their bracelets were $40 ea. Mine cost me about $5 ea.. And, I branched out and extended the theme and added a shell version. And then I made some earrings to match. Whee, I was having such fun! Who knew that bead-loom I had when I was 7 would prove to be so useful?!

Thank heavens Michael's was having a crazy sale this week: bead strands were 2/$8, and then I had a "25% off your whole purchase" coupon.

I. Cleaned. Up.

I also really liked this bracelet from their site, but try as I might, I couldn't find the wooden beads or sparkly gold round ones at the craft store. Again, this is about $35.

So I deviated a little. I found some silver round beads, then set about to find bead-friends that would complement them. I'm pretty pleased with the results, even though they bear little-to-no resemblance to the originals. I guess it just goes to show you can find inspiration almost anywhere. Each bracelet cost about $5.

And then, because I already had the elastic cord, I made a few more bracelets in this vein. Like these ones. I can't wait to wear these in summer. The beads remind me of water. How cute are the earrings?!

And these ones, again with coordinating earrings. It's hard to tell in the photo, but the beads are a  translucent fuchsia/purple colour.

And this set. I've had these beads for a couple of years now, always intending to make some jewellery out of them, but never got around to it until now. I'm not loving these earrings though. I might need to head back to the drawing board with these.

I can't tell you how good it felt to be creating something again. I definitely need productive, creative outlets or I wither.

Thanks for perusing my handicrafts!

(p.s. POTD is on hold because I've had a craptacular week, got fed up with the daily demand of lugging my camera around and uploading photos, and decided it wasn't feeling fun anymore. I'll still take pictures and upload semi-regularly, perhaps just not daily. There are only so many photos of hockey practice and dance that I can upload before you'll start to claw your eyes out.)