The AE Theme Challenge this month is Repurpose chosen by Lesley. Great subject, and I wish I had more time to work on it. The day job kind of takes away my creative energy at times, and this month is no exception! However I did manage to do a few things!
The first thing I thought of for the theme was something I had been thinking about for a long time. I remembered I had this magazine that repurposed those desiccant containers you get in pill bottles into beaded beads. I set out to find that magazine in my stash.
I'm glad I found it, because it was actually driving me nuts as to where it was. Here are some photos of me in the process of making some of these beads.
So the first one I made, I liked ok. But noticed on the end that you could see the white container through the ends. So I got a sharpie out for the next one, and colored the ends so they didn't look so white.
Then I made a few more of these beads, and quite honestly, I was done with it. If I get back to them, I'll try some different shapes and sizes of beads. Here are the ones I made.
The next subject was wire. I get all kinds of wire scraps from my boyfriend when we work on electrical projects. I can't throw it out so I keep it. I have given some away, and finally got to work annealing the wire that I already had stripped.
I learned how to anneal it in the kiln from Maria Richmond, and it's a quick and easy way to anneal your thick copper wire. I decided to make some charm holders, but you could also use them as bead frames. Here's the first one. The steps included shaping the wire, antiquing in liver of sulpher, buffing, and finally tumbling for strength. Which is ironic because I ran it in the kiln to make it softer and now I need it to be strong again!
I made two, and then I was pretty much done with that as well. I need way more practice on adding thinner wire to a frame.
Finally, I did what I enjoy doing with old glass bottles - making beads from them.
They go from whole bottles to shards to beads! I have so many bottles saved, waiting to be beads, I could never really get to the them all. But I hate tossing them, especially the gorgeous green and blue bottles. The Reyka bottle is a slight gray color, so I'm looking forward to doing that and seeing if the beads will stay gray or not. I also want to make a little glass bowl with the bottom of that bottle, but have to perfect my cutting skills!
My next post on Art Elements will be a little demo on how I go about making them. I know you can find tutorials out there and people do them differently, I'm just going to show you how I do it! I also make spoon rests with the bottles - beer bottles are great for that because they are a perfect size for standard serving spoons. Wine bottles make great cheese trays! I have tons if anyone is interested in purchasing any.
This is a blog hop so I hope you hop around to see what everyone else made! Thanks Lesley for the great inspriational subject.
The first thing I thought of for the theme was something I had been thinking about for a long time. I remembered I had this magazine that repurposed those desiccant containers you get in pill bottles into beaded beads. I set out to find that magazine in my stash.
Finally, I did what I enjoy doing with old glass bottles - making beads from them.
They go from whole bottles to shards to beads! I have so many bottles saved, waiting to be beads, I could never really get to the them all. But I hate tossing them, especially the gorgeous green and blue bottles. The Reyka bottle is a slight gray color, so I'm looking forward to doing that and seeing if the beads will stay gray or not. I also want to make a little glass bowl with the bottom of that bottle, but have to perfect my cutting skills!
My next post on Art Elements will be a little demo on how I go about making them. I know you can find tutorials out there and people do them differently, I'm just going to show you how I do it! I also make spoon rests with the bottles - beer bottles are great for that because they are a perfect size for standard serving spoons. Wine bottles make great cheese trays! I have tons if anyone is interested in purchasing any.
This is a blog hop so I hope you hop around to see what everyone else made! Thanks Lesley for the great inspriational subject.
Guests
AE Team
Comments
I love the beaded beads, but I have never seen one of those pill bottle things....