Faux Antique Stamped Pewter Pendant

 

I chose to make mine with round raised dots in a circle design, but feel free to do your own thing with the look of your pendant, such as raised squiggles or solid circles. After all, it’s your pendant, so get creative and as original as you want to!

 You will need:

 Scissors (short blade detail scissors are best)  

Ruler

Pencil or pen

Circle stencil or anything circular you can trace around for the size of your pendant

Glue brush (any firm bristle brush) or sponge brushes

Paint Brushes, one that’s ¾” to 1” wide, and one that’s about 1/8” wide (synthetic brushes for acrylics work best)

Brayer, rolling pin, or jar

All-purpose craft glue or white glue that turns clear when it dries

Hot glue gun (keep it on a pan or heat proof surface like a silicone mat  to protect your table (I have had this adjustable height folding table for 3 years and love it.)

Glue sticks

Paper towels

Black craft paint (matte finish)

Paint palette or white plastic container lid

Chipboard box (cereal box, cracker box type cardboard)

5 small bag clips or spring clothes pins

Aluminum Foil (regular strength, not heavy duty)

Mod Podge™ glossy sealer and finish

Glass or bowl of water (I use the bottom half of a large plastic mouthwash bottle)

Cord, ribbon, or chain to wear your necklace on

Baker’s parchment paper or freezer paper (shiny side up) to cover your work surface (if your work gets stuck to it by the glue, you will be able to gently pull it away from either of these).

Plug in your hot glue gun so it starts heating up.

Cut one side of the chipboard box off and, on the plain side, draw a vertical line about 7 inches long. Center your circle stencil, or whatever you are using to trace your circle, over the line at one end and trace around it with your pencil.  Decide how large you want your bail to be (the part your cord, ribbon, or chain will go through). I marked mine at 3/8” and then another 3/8” from the top of the circle to create the bail. I made a vertical line on each side, 3/8” from the long vertical line so that my bail would be about 3/4” wide. Place your stencil at the top of these lines, centered over the long vertical line and trace around it again. Cut it out as one piece with your detail scissors.

 

 

On the plain, unprinted side (top side) put a small drop of hot glue in the center of one circle. If you want to get your hot glue dots perfectly centered, then draw a line perpendicular to the center vertical line, forming an equal armed cross, then draw diagonal lines in an X between these for your 8 outer dots. You can also draw a smaller circle inside the larger one you cut out leaving at least 1/4” of space from the edge.  If you circle the tip around the dot of glue a couple of times this help to prevent glue strings when you pull the glue gun away. Now put dots of hot glue around the center one. I put one above and below first, then on each side and then one dot in between each of those for a total of 8 dots. Let the hot glue cool completely. If you aren’t satisfied with it the first time, just turn it around and repeat the process on the other side, as I did. You won’t need your glue gun again for the medallion.

 

Tear off a piece of aluminum foil from the roll about twice as wide as your piece and crumple it up, but don’t ball it up. Carefully open it up and flatten it out with your brayer or by rolling a jar on it, or very gently smooth it out with your hands. This will leave crinkles in it for texture.

 

Put some craft glue on the top side of the entire pendant and spread it evenly with your glue brush. Place the foil, shiny side up, on top. Starting at the center dot of hot glue, gently press it down onto the surface of the medallion, working it down between the dots, and press it down on the rest of the piece and out to the edges. Let it dry for about half an hour.

 

Lift the unfinished medallion and foil together and turn it over so that the printed side of the chipboard is facing up and use your scissors to trim off the excess foil, leaving about ½” of foil around the edges to be folded over the back side (printed side) of the piece.

 

Cut a slit in the foil from the outside inward at the top and bottom of the bail on each side being careful not to cut the chipboard. Spread a little glue over the slit foil edges, one at a time, then fold them over the chipboard smoothly. Now cut slits about every ¼” from the outside edge of the foil around the circles to the edge of the chipboard. Use a little glue on each section of the foil, one at a time to fold it over the edge of the chipboard until all of the foil is glued down to the piece. Allow it to dry about an hour.

 

 

Place a narrow paint brush handle or stick across the bail portion and bring the two circles together. Bend them back a little while holding the bail around the brush handle to make your bail round, so that the circles will come together flat. Brush glue over one of the circles to the edge, still working on the printed side and press the other circle to it. Make sure you have your edges matched up and wipe off any glue that seeps out of the edges with a barely damp paper towel, and put clips on the medallion around the edges. Do not put the clips over the raised dots. Check it again to make sure your edges are still even. Allow it to dry for at least a couple of hours. Once the glue is dry, remove the clips.

 

 

Put a little black paint out on your palette, about the size of a penny. You can put more out as you need it, but you won’t be using a lot. Put a very small amount of paint on your brush and start dabbing it over the medallion on the side with the dots. Don’t forget to do the bail and sides, too. Let it set for about 15 seconds, then dab off paint with a paper towel and gently polish it off of the raised dots, but leaving some in the creases of the foil and flat areas. Repeat this process until you’re happy with the look. Let it dry for about 15 minutes, then turn it over and paint the back side and dab some of the paint off. Use the small brush to paint inside the bail. Let the paint dry and repeat for the edges of the medallion. Allow the paint to cure for about an hour.

 

Now you can brush a coat of Mod Podge™ over each side, the edges and inside the bail, allowing it to dry for an hour on each section and in between the coats. Only do one side at a time. You’ll know it’s dry when it turns from white to clear and no longer feels tacky to the touch. Wash your brush after each application or it will be ruined. I use one of my acrylic paint brushes for this, but some people prefer to use disposable sponge brushes for the Mod Podge™. If you have any bubbles in the  Mod Podge™ use a toothpick or straight pin to pop them. Apply 3 thin coats, rather than one thick coat or it may take days to dry fully under the surface. Mod Podge™ will keep the paint from rubbing off on your clothes or skin and protect your pendant from general wear and tear. It can be wiped with a barely damp soft cloth if you ever need to clean it.

 

Allow the Mod Podge™ to cure overnight.

Now just run your cord, ribbon, or chain through the bail and start showing off your beautiful new pendant!

Bonus: Make matching earrings by cutting out 4 smaller circles, glue two together with craft glue, printed sides together, and repeat for the other two. Follow the instructions above for making your hot glue gun dots, and applying the foil to the front of each. After applying the foil to the dotted side of each earring, trim it around the circles leaving enough foil to cover the backs completely. Cut slits every ¼” and use craft glue to stick them down across the back. The foil sections should overlap a little. Smooth them down as flat as possible with your finger.
Allow them to dry for about an hour. Use a hole puncher that makes very small holes or a push pin (working over a piece of thick cardboard to protect your table from getting a hole poked in it) and make a hole big enough for a jump ring to go through, placing it about 1/16” from the top of the circle. Apply the paint as before. Use a toothpick to get paint into each side of the hole. After the paint cures, apply the Mod Podge™, using the toothpick to push it into the holes and to make sure the holes stay open. Remove the toothpick. After the Mod Podge™ cures overnight, put a jump ring through the hole and add another jump ring through above the first one (otherwise your earring will face sideways). Put them on your earring hooks. (Use two pairs of pliers or tweezers to open the jump ring and the ring on the bottom of earring hooks, then close them up after putting them together.) If you know how to make “rosary” links out of craft wire, you can use your jewelry pliers to make these to hang your earrings from the hooks, like I did.

Now you have a fashionable matched pendant and earring set to wear!

 

 



 

Life Hack – Bag Spout

 

Tired of your rice and beans spilling out of the bag when the twist tie comes loose? Try this creative up-cycling solution:

 You will need:

A clean juice bottle and its cap (wide spout)

A rubber band

A bread bag, clean and dry ( I used a clear bag for these pictures so you can see it better)

Utility knife or craft knife

Scissors

Rice, dried beans, etc.

 

Cut the neck off of the juice bottle, leaving about 1 inch of the shoulder where the bottle starts to flare out. Trim the edge evenly with your scissors.

Twist the top of the bag and push it through the neck of the bottle, then untwist it.

 

Spread the bag in the neck evenly and fold it down over the neck of the bottleneck.

Screw the cap on the on the mouth of the bottle neck.

Put the rubber band around the neck of the bottle, doubling it or tripling it around the neck to make it tight.

And there you have it – an easy pour bag spout that won’t slip off your bag of rice or beans!

 

 

Patriotic Wreath for $5!

 

Okay, so I've been soooooo busy lately that I couldn't get my wreath made until a couple of days before July 4th. Like most obsessive I already had most of what I needed to do this project, so I ran out to my local dollar store and picked up some floral stems and ribbons for $5 and got to work.

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For this project you will need:

 

3 to 5 floral bush stems with red, white and blue carnations or the flowers or your choice. It's better to have more than enough on hand, than not enough.

 

Red , white and blue ribbon bow(s). My 2-pack was already made in 2 bows with twist ties, but if you know how to make bows, you can use ribbon to make your own

 

Pencil

 

18" ruler

 

Foamboard , thick cardboard or Styrofoam wreath form 

 

Utility knife or craft knife (get extra blades here)

 

Thick cardboard or cutting mat to protect your table while cutting out the foamboard wreath base 

 

Cardboard or newspaper to cover your table while painting

 

Red acrylic craft paint

 

1" wide paint brush

 

Hot glue gun and glue sticks 

 

Heat proof metal pan on a heatproof mat to rest your glue gun on

 

Monofilament beading cord

 

Over-the-door wreath hanger (much better than putting nail holes in your door)

 

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First, pull all the flowers and leaves off of the stems (save these for a future project). If your flowers and leaves don't slide off, like mine did, use wire cutters or heavy shears to cut them off close to the base of the flower, keeping about 1/4" of stem at the base of the flower.

 

I also took apart the 2 small bows and combined them into one larger bow for mine.

 

 

 

 

Lay out your flowers and bow. Try a few different arrangements until you get them the way you want them to look in the wreath. Measure across the circle of flowers to get the width of the center of the circle. Add 1" to this measurement for the outside edge of the foamboard wreath base and subtract 1" for the inside edge.

 

Mine measured about 12".

 

 

Measure from the edge of your foamboard to the inner circle measurement and the outer circle measurement, using your pencil to make marks at each point. Move down a few inches and do it again. Now repeat these steps, measuring and marking from the other edge of the foamboard. Use your ruler to draw lines connecting the lines to form the outer and inner squares. Then draw an "X", from the 4 corners. This helps when drawing the circle.

I don't have a large compass or bowl this big, so I drew it freehand, using the corner markings as a reference. As you can see, my circles are not perfect, but they're good enough since the wreath will be covered by flowers and no one will see the foamboard base underneath.

 

 

Cut out your square with your utility or Exacto knife, holding  the ruler firmly on the foamboard and following the edge. Watch your fingers! These knives are really sharp.

 

 

Carefully cut along the lines you drew for your circles, and pop out the wreath form you've made. Save the corners, inner circle, and sides of the foamboard. These come in handy for other projects.

 

Now paint the background red (blue or white, your choice). Remember to paint the inner and outer edges, too. It seals the raw edges to help weather proof them. (I didn't paint the back of mine because I don't want paint rubbing off on my door.)

 

I hot glued my bow on the wreath form first, but you may prefer to do it last. If you've ever made a wreath before, you probably already have a preference for the order that you do it in. Then hold the first carnation where you want it to be and press down just hard enough to make a light depression in the foamboard with the short plastic base of the flower. Then use the tip of your knife to make a hole in the foamboard on that mark, but not cutting all the way through.

 

Put hot glue on the plastic base of the blossom and stick it into the hole, holding it place for a few seconds until the glue cools.

Repeat these steps until the flowers fill the wreath. After gluing on my flowers, I tucked in some leaves just to see how it looked, but decided against using them in this project. As you can see I also changed my arrangement of the flowers from being bunched tightly, to a single file line before gluing them.

 

Tie the monofilament line to the wreath on both sides of a flower from the back to make a hanger where you want the top of the wreath to be and its all done! Now you have a beautiful July 4th wreath for your door or anywhere you want to hang it.

 

 

And hear it is! I hope you have as much fun making yours as I did making mine!

 

 

 

 

Things To Save For Future Craft Projects

Plastic Bottles and Caps of all sizes and shapes

Toilet Paper Tubes (empty)

Paper Towel Tubes (empty)

Newspaper and Free Ads (printed on news rag paper)

Used, Empty Stick-Type Ball Point Pens

Scrap Colored Paper

Gift Wrap and Ribbons (open your presents carefully)

Cereal Boxes, Other Clean Food Boxes made with thin cardboard

Card Stock (print can be painted over)

Cardboard Boxes and Pieces of Cardboard (of all types and thicknesses)

Empty Tissue Boxes

Empty Cardboard Tape Roll Circles (from masking tape, duck tape, transparent tape)

Plastic Containers and Lids ( good for more than leftovers)

Empty Round Salt Containers

Empty, Clean Bread Bags

Plastic Shopping Bags (grocery bag type)

Beads From Broken Necklaces or Old Beaded Jewelry You Don't Mind Sacrificing for Craft Decorating

Old Post Earrings  With Jewel or Decorative Type Front for Flower Centers (something you tired of or lost one)

Decorative Buttons From Clothes Too Old and Beat Up To Give To Charity (or find them at thrift stores, cheap)

Any Shiny, Sparkly Do Dads You Come Across (large, small, all)

Old White T-shirts (for container gardening-you'll see how we use them later to make watering plants easier - a plastic bottle craft)

Old T-shirts of any color (a few layers of rectangles or squares sewn together to make good hot pads to go under a hot glue tray to protect your table)

Empty Pill Bottles (remove and tear up the labels before throwing them away)

Baby Food Containers with Lids (clean well and dry)

Heavy Duty Envelopes (manila envelopes are great) For Saving Colored Paper Scraps

Sturdy Boxes with Lids from office supplies (the type that plastic sheet protectors come in)

Shoe Boxes

Sturdy Gift Boxes with Lids

Thread Spools (including the plastic thread cone cores from Serger Thread - great base for Christmas Tree crafts)

Old Paint Brushes (clean ones) - they make good glue brushes

Old Baking Sheets (great tray for hot glue guns and other things we're going to do)

Old Cutting Mats From your Kitchen (scratches okay - great for heavy duty stencils, just clean them up well with detergent and a little bleach to kill any germs on them)

Small Sticks and Twigs From your Yard

Pinecones

Acorns

Walnut Shell Halves

Styrofoam Egg Cartons

Cardboard Egg Cartons

Broken Egg Shells (remove the membrane inside)

Whole Egg Shells (use a straight pin to make a 1/8" hole in each end of an egg and blow the egg out for scrambled eggs, being careful to break shell pieces outward, run hot water through the egg shell to clean the inside or soak in soapy water, then place in an empty cardboard egg carton to dry and store)

Plastic Cookie Package Inserts (clean and dry)

Any Old Frames You Have or Can Pick Up at Thrift Stores

Rubber Bands, Paper Clips, Bread Bag Clips, Twist Ties

Coffee Cans

Pictures of Flowers, Food, Print with Interesting or Colorful Type, etc., from Glossy Magazine Pages (great for decoupage)

Anything that gives you a great idea for crafty, creative up-cycling, instead of trashing!

Drying Your Own Corn Husks and Silk For Corn Husk Angels

 “Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand.”  Albert Einstein



 

 

I'll be making some Corn Husk Angel Ornaments later, so instead of buying corn husks at the grocery store I decided to save and dry my own husks and corn silk (for the Angel hair) to use later. I thought I'd share how to go about it so you can save yours too for this project. I'll be adding the Angel Ornaments later in a separate blog. Please be patient as I create my first blog. I'm learning as I go!

First buy some fresh corn on the cob, then tear off the thickest and toughest outside husks and discard or set aside for compost, if you're lucky enough to have an organic garden. I live in an apartment so I haven't got a garden (yet). Now cut off any discolored silk with a sharp knife on your cutting mat or cutting board. Or use a pair good kitchen scissors.

 

 

Now pull off the next tough layer of husks and discard. Gently and carefully pull off the thinner layers of husks and the silk, putting them in separate piles on your cutting mat or cutting board.

 

 



 

Cut off the tough core ends of the husks and try to lay out the silk so that the strands are all going in the same direction. Put the husks and silk in separate boxes on paper towels.

 

 

Turn the husks once a day, moving the bottom ones to the top and mixing them up for even drying. This picture was taken after less than one day of drying and even though the humidity is a little high right now they are already starting to dry nicely. Don't worry about the curling.  We'll take care of that later when we're ready to make the Angel Ornaments.

 

After the husks and silk are completely dry, just store in a plastic zip bag and save for crafting later. If your husks and silk are not completely dry, they may mold in the plastic bag, so when you think they are completely dry, give them a couple more days or put in the oven on baking sheets on baker's parchment and dry with your oven on it's lowest possible setting, with the oven door propped open a little to allow steam to escape. After about 3 hours, take them out, cool completely, and then bag them up to craft with later.

 

And of coarse you can always buy dried corn husks for your corn husk crafts, if you don't want to dry your own or just want a lot of them faster!

 

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