Swarovski crystal bracelet versus highly faceted bead bracelet

The backgrounds in the pics aren't great, but the sparkle from these great bracelets will nearly blind you when you step out on a sunny day! I love how they catch the light and the prisms they throw when the sun passes through them!

Plastastic Pets!

Like every other owner on the planet, I think my pets are the cutest! So I took a picture of my pocket puppy, traced it on shrink plastic, colored it in, and now I can wear her image everywhere I go!

For whatever reason, the blogspot editor refuses to add this pic the right way.

Shrink plastic hummingbird pendant

It's just a shrink art kind of summer! In reliving the Shrinky Dink fun of childhood, my daughter and I have been creating all sorts of pendants and charms!

To the left is my 11-year-old daughter's sea horse that she traced from an image on the web and colored in with bright Prang color pencils.





Here is a free-hand drawing. It turned out a little darker than I wanted, so I'll probably redo it.

Medusa's head is a fun pendant, but I will likley replace the cheap black cord with a more colorful stringing of beads.

My son saw this Mortal Kombat dragon and wanted a pendant of silver and red. I think if I did it again, I would make the dragon black with silver highlighting.

Shrink plastic necklace with fire-polished Czech glass

The necklace uses wire wrapping as well as crimped stringing wire to combine shrink plastic flowers with Czech glass. Again, it's a very time-consuming project, but it has a little bit of vintage flair and made a great gift for my Mom's birthday!

Before sticking them in the oven, the flowers were about 2 1/4 inches across. Here are the flowers before shrinking:

Afterward, they were about 1". Notice the comparison with the quarter in each picture. Also, notice that the flowers become a little darker and more concentrated in color.

Plastic Necklace of mini Hello Kitty Charms

Who doesn't love Hello Kitty? I constructed this necklace by tracing over Hello Kitty images and coloring them in. Then I used a thin-gauge wire to wire-wrap the charms about 1" apart. It was very time-consuming, but what a fun result! I wear this with a lot of casual clothes and plan to make a matching bracelet, too!