Play Date!

What happens when a crafty friend comes over to play? Naturally you CREATE! My friend Joann (Ashani to you Fiskateers) came over last night. Now one of the things I have wanted to do this year was learn to make some jewelry, I've done a few pieces, but I wanted to really learn the craft of jewelry making. Enter in Joann, this chick even takes (and teaches) classes in silversmithing and does some FABULOUS work.

She had to come over to pick up her tools she left at the Scrapbook Expo (she was one of my fabulous volunteers this past weekend.) I made dinner so she brought over some jump rings and said "we are going to go crazy but we are going to make chain mail earrings!" She was right it was a bit tedious, but once we popped a movie in and got a rhythm going we were able to plug along.

Not wanting Joann to be the only one to bring a project to the night. I showed her this page from Hobby Lobby where they featured recycled projects she happened to bring her stuff in a Hobby Lobby bag so we started cutting and went to town making some earrings!

The project directions called for wooden disks we used chipboard (since well it's a bit plentiful around here :) and I don't know if the wood would have effected our outcome at all. I will say it was a bit tricky to get the bag to melt like you wanted. Trial and error showed holding it down with a toothpick (metal tweezers got to hot and the piece melted to the tweezers) and short strokes over the surface with the heat gun gave you a bit of control over how it melted. The first pair I made was the blue, the colors REALLY melted together on that pair. I then had to make some orange ones to match some of my many Fiskateer outfits, that's when we discovered the shorter stroke technique over the bag as you can see the images on the bags are much easier to distinguish. (I still need to add jump rings and fishhooks to the 2nd pair)

All and all tons of fun. She didn't leave till way to late (and she had to get up to work in the morning!) But both of us had a blast and I loved learning something new!