I have been buried under piles of beads and jump rings for the last couple of days.

I have found a new PASSION!

Jewelry making has always intrigued me and I have dabbled in it here and there… Back in November I took a class on crocheted necklaces…made a zillion of those and then signed up for Tresa Black’s Creative University next month… and guess what?  They do a CHARM SWAP… and guess what else?  Silly me signed up for it, buwahahaha!  I have been having so much fun making charms and baubles and bling, jiggle, bling, blings….  Wanna see?

For the charm swap we were instructed to make two types of charms, one creative (using papercrafting schtuff and ideas) and one filler type charm (using bling and jewels and other fun goodies), 15 of each for a total of 30.

Here’s my filler charm:

The filler charm was made with a variety of beads and a Swarovski crystal.

And here is my creative charm:

I created the creative charm by designing a birdie in Photoshop Elements.   I used a basic bird body template for the outside shape and then went to town creating my clipping masks and adding in textured and patterned papers and embellishments.  I printed the birdie onto white “Shrinky Dink” paper and then cut out all the bodies and front side wings, threw in the oven and let them melt!  {The original birdie art had legs, but I lopped them off because they added unnecessary bulk and distracted from the bird.}

I glued the wings and a rhinestone on and laquered these babies up with some Sally Hansen “Hard as Nails” nail polish.  The Crystal Effects and Liquid Nails altered the color of the printer ink too much.  Other than the “high” from the nail polish it wasn’t so bad. 🙂

Click on the birdie for a view of the details.

Lopping off some birdie legs and trimming out the birdies.  Shrinky Dink  paper is a pain to cut out, basically it’s plastic and if you snip too hard you snap the plastic… lost a few beaks and back wings that way. *sniff*

Here are some other charms I was working on including a pair that turned into earrings.

And then I needed a bracelet because the plain old chain I was trying to make into a bracelet just didn’t do what I wanted it to do…. but that’s a post for tomorrow because I have to go work on laundry (dang real world interrupting my crafting time) and think about dinner… 🙂

~Inky Smiles