PURPLE!!

Purple is my daughter’s favourite colour (and my second favourite) so I tend to gravitate towards making a lot of things with purple materials.  Of course, then, I tend not to be able to keep them because my daughter claims them for her own. 😉

Recently I have been experimenting with Heidi Borchers’ painting technique the mimics the look of copper enamelling.  I wanted some earrings to go with the bracelets I’ve been making and this seemed an ideal technique for making some.

The first bracelet is one I made, also using a technique of Heidi’s, from plastic water bottles.  I dyed fabric using a Koolaid dyeing procedure, tore it into strips that I then tied together and wrapped around the bracelet blank.  Full details are in a previous post here:

http://cynchronicity.wordpress.com/2010/03/07/water-bottle-bracelets-a-la-heidi-borchers/

The second is one that I made for the Inspired at Home Pajama Party Live April friendship bracelet challenge/swap.  This one is made by folding the ribbon back and forth in a zigzag motion.  I folded the ribbon so that there were three folds and then ran a needle and thread through it to hold it in place.  I strung a bead on and then repeated the zigzagging of the ribbon.  Continue alternating folds of ribbon and beads until you have the bracelet length you desire.

So now on to the earrings.  I simply used little pieces of index cards.  They had things written on them but I no longer needed them so rather than send them to the recycling bin, I decide to cut them up and use them for this project.

For the technique I used Aleene’s Quick Dry Tacky Glue, four colours of basic acrylic craft paint, a piece of waxed paper, a paper towel, and some toothpicks.  I won’t describe the step by steps here because I think you’ll get the idea much better simply by watching Heidi herself demonstrate it on camera on Cool2Craft.

I will say that it took me a couple of tries to really get the hang of applying and blending the paint/glue mixture to get the actual look of copper enamelling but even with that, all of my attempts turned out beautifully.

Also, I couldn’t find my hat pins when I was working on this so I used only toothpicks and I think the finer tip of the pin would have been easier to use.  I still need to add the wire earring hooks to these and I want to finish them off with a sealant as well.