Fimo Fairy Fun!

I figure it's time for some actual crafts on the "craft blog" (someone pointed out how many blogs I have the other day...Disturbing! For your reference, as I told John, there's three main ones that have actually been used regularly..."The nail-art one, the old one which is the weird teenage angsty one, and then there's the grown-up one with the squirrel on it...Maybe that's not that grown-up...").

First I will share what I've been doing, and then (hopefully) there will be a brief period of *gasp* AUDIENCE PARTICIPATION! (Dun-dun-duuuuuuuuuuhhhhhhhhhh).

I've been working on a few Fimo things lately, since I discovered how much better Fimo Soft is than the Fimo Classic I used a few years ago (it's actually...Soft!). I will share the rest in a later post, it's mainly tiny food items, but on Saturday night I had a few tiny bits of clay left out of the packets, and decided to try something tiny.

 Tiny toadstool! I will be making more of these as earrings.

The final finished fairy. I love it (though I wish I'd given her a "proper" face...In my excitement to cram her into the jar I forgot to fill her face in. Whoops!).

More views. As you can see I'm liking the Instagram thing these days (MrsY777).

And now for the Audience Participation:

I *might* have a chance to sell these in an actual shop. Might. Very much maybe at the moment. But I want to be prepared. So, your little bit of participation is to please comment on this post how much you would be willing to pay for the item above. The pieces inside are Fimo, the jar is glass. It takes about 45-60mins to make, and bakes for 30mins on top of that (factoring in cost of electricity?). It could be a keyring, pendant, or phone charm, but as it is (with a proper face...without keyring/cord/chain included) what would you be willing to pay? This will also help me price them up for Etsy, where I will possibly be offering your choice of outfit/hair/skin colour, so in any eventuality it will be useful, all comments welcome! You could even add a value for a pair of toadstool earrings, if you were feeling extra helpful... ;)

Project: Jingle Bell, Jingle Bell, Jingle Bell, Wreath!

I figured it had been long enough since we had a craft project on here. I have lots lined up for Christmas, but obviously I can't share any gifts on here until January. I can show my wreath, however. :)

I've had the bells in the picture below for years. In fact, I've had them since Pier's closing down sale, which coincided with the Iceland financial crisis, so you can tell how long ago that was. I never knew what to do with them, or rather, I could never think of a project good enough for them. Then the other day in one of my many Christmas magazines I spotted a beautiful jewel-colour-themed wreath, using baubles rather than bells, but it would still work!

I decided that I didn't want to spend too much on the project (the bells should have cost me £24, fortunately I got them 50% off), so I hit up Poundland for the rest of my supplies.

(Please excuse the state of my carpet in the following photographs. . . I was NOT about to hoover before I started chucking tinsel about!!).

My eyes were definiately bigger than my wreath, because I didn't end up using the small baubles or the crystals. I used: 1 wreath, 4m (2x2m packs) of tinsel, 1 roll of gold wired ribbon. 1 roll of gold elastic cord.

This is the wreath you start off with. Originally I was just going to trim the tinsel down, and glue the new tinsel over the top. I'm glad I fiddled around a little longer though, because the tinsel does come off very easily, leaving you with this:

The pattern for wrapping your tinsel is:

 

Fully wrapped!

 

Happy little pile of Christmas! :D

The strings on the bells really weren't that long, so I cut them all off, and replaced them with the elasticated cord. Using each of the 10 "full" bars on the wreath, I tied a bell into each of the three grid sections along the bar, to attach three bells in a row to each bar.

Voila!

 

It was at this point that I decided the baubles and jewels were a bit of a waste, because I just couldn't figure out where they would look right!! I did decide to add a bow on the bottom, using the wired ribbon. I folded the whole rolls' worth in half (I think it was 2m), cut into two pieces, and tied the two pieces together into a double bow.

 

Then I threaded another piece of cord through the back of the bow (actually, that is the front of the bow, I decided the back looked better than the front!!).

 

All finished and on the wall! :D My husband did make me take it down as "It's only bloody November...". Booooooooo!! But, come Dec.1st it will be back in pride of place above my fireplace.