Easter Wrap-Up

After dying the Easter eggs it seemed a waste to throw out the dye, so I searched pinterest for some ideas.  Dying yarn looked intriguing, but there were too many steps and I had no white wool yarn, so that was out.  Paper towels, on the other hand, I had.  I dipped them in the dye and squeezed out the excess, and hung them to dry.  The pretty stack:

I cut each towel into four pieces, and folded each piece three times:

I then strung them onto Fireline thread (strong and flexible), using my patented random-lookalike technique:

Next year I'm thinking of having the kids dye blown eggs, because Mr. Beadgirl is the only one who likes hardboiled eggs and there are only so many he can eat.  If we do that successfully, maybe I'll restring the dyed paper, interspersing eggs.

I also finished the cross stitch bunnies from a couple of years ago by backing them with some sweet calico and gluing them onto a ribbon:

Unfortunately, top-stitching around the ovals stretched the bias, making the edges a little ruffly.

Finally, for Easter Sunday I made the New York Time's Clementine Cake, and it was delicious, especially with the chocolate glaze. I'd show you, but apparently I forgot to take a picture.  The candied clementines, on the other hand, were not delicious -- they came out brown and burnt-tasting.  I hate it when a recipe defeats me*, so the next time I try this I will not top them with the second baking sheet and/or lower the temperature to 200 degrees and/or watch them like a hawk.

*This is apparently an Easter tradition.  Two Easters ago this lemon cake was a major fail, and last Easter (-ish, humor me) a pink lemonade cake I tried -- twice -- came out both burnt and under-cooked.**

**Actually, I now suspect that recipe was based on the evil lemon cake recipe from two years ago, which would explain the fail.

Altered Die Charm

The 2012 issue of handcrafted jewelry had a little section dedicated to pendants, earrings, and rings made from altered game pieces which fired up my imagination -- I'm thinking of a necklace with all sorts of charms and tokens.

First up was a die.  The article in question (by Candie Cooper) was for a pair of earrings made from altered dice with charms and beads.  I decided on just one die for a pendant, strung on a headpin rather than suspended between two brackets.  The first step was drilling a hole through the plastic  die, which was quite easy after I spent over two hours slowly drilling through sea glass and seashells for another project:

The next step was to color the die.  Cooper used alcohol inks to achieve a pretty, mottled effect, but I didn't have any and I wasn't inclined to buy some just for this.  Acrylic paints seemed too thick and likely to chip, so I headed to the internet, assuming there would be tons of inspiration and ideas for altered dice.  Only there wasn't any; surprising, given all the altered dominoes out there, not to mention other game piece jewelry.  Instead I found ideas on gaming boards, where people were looking to customize their D&D dice.  One woman said she had luck using Easter egg dye, and I just happened to have exactly that.  About 24 hours of sitting in pink dye resulted in this:

Now it was time to embellish each side. Rhinestones:

(A bit of extraneous crazy glue ended up dulling the sparkle of one; too bad.)

A paper flower:

A bit of dictionary page with a touch of gold solid oil paint:

(It still bothers me to cut up a book, even if it is a redundant, out-of-date dictionary.)

Gold paint on the remaining uncovered pips:

I sprayed it with fixative, and then strung it on a headpin with a few pretty beads:

As you can see, like an idiot I glued the dictionary fragment on its side.  Oh well.
My ideas for the rest of the necklace:
*An altered domino (a mini one so it doesn't overwhelm the rest)
*A scrabble tile with a metal bracket finding thingie, like the rings in the magazine
*Monopoly charms, especially the iron and thimble, from an old game set I found in the basement
*Clue charms, if I can get some
*Various arcade tokens
*metal jacks

Irises

Boy, time passes when you get out of the habit of posting. It didn't help that I had no particular project to write about.

To celebrate spring, I made some crepe paper irises from a Martha Stewart kit I picked up a few years ago (it's shameful how often that name comes up here):
The technique was fairly simple -- use the templates to cut out leaf and petal shapes from the crepe paper, form the petals (the crepe paper stretches in neat ways, making it fun to play with), and use floral tape to attach the components to florists' wire. My results don't look as iris-y as those on the cover of the kit, and the purple crepe paper is very . . . bright, but it still makes a pretty bouquet for the mantle.

I still have three light purple irises to make when I can snatch a few more minutes. Also, the kit came with way more templates than advertised, so if anyone wants the extras, just let me know.