Shrinky dink earrings

Do you know what I love? Earrings! Especially making them. Well, buying them is fun too.. but not as much fun. And more costly.
When I make earrings, or jewellery in general, i use mainly beads, but also old shampoo bottles, buttons, string, wire... really anything small and light enough to hang from an earlobe (isn't lobe a gross word somehow?).

Shrinky dinks are also fun (or as me and my sister call them, shrinkles krimpie, since we got ours from Holland and the label said that. Also, it sounds funnier).
For anyone who hasn't heard of this amazing shrinking plastic: it's amazing!

They sell them in Finland too, at least in Sinelli, but I think they're a bit overpriced there. They go by the name of ''kutistemuovi''!
Before they sold it here we got our dad to buy some in Holland and send it over, they're not the ''original'' shrinky dinks, but work just as well I'm sure. I use mainly the clear plastic, because it's easy to trace on from a picture underneath and I think the end result is prettier than with the white plastic.

They start out as A4 sized pieces of plastic, and you can draw on them, cut them out, stick them in the oven for about 4 minutes at 165 C, and they thicken and shrink to be used as, well, anything really. I usually make earrings, charms (for bracelets, necklaces, rings, key rings, wine glass markers...) and magnets out of them.

One of the first things I made was a pair of shrinky dink sweets earrings

They started off as scribbles on a piece of paper:

You then place the plastic on top and copy what you want on to that, cut them out, punch in holes etc, and bake. They shrink by about a third and become a few millimeters thick. Then you can make whateeever you want with your new creations, hurraaahh! (It's a good idea to coat them with some clear varnish first, on the drawn side)

Here's a batch I made earlier!

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One of my candlestick-plate cupcake holders made it here too. As you can see, they're very handy for hanging earrings, and you can keep bracelets and rings on the plate! And they're very easy to make. I bought the plate and candlestick from my local Kierrätyskeskus, washed them, dried them, and glued them together with some strong glue.

Cheap, easy, cute and fun!

The things on my walls (Part 2)

Oh my, back so soon? Yes, since I should be writing school things instead... ah, the beauty that is procrastination.

Here's some more walls! Last post on walls, I promise. For now, at least...

A collection of frames is a classic way of filling up those white expanses of wall. The gold ones in the picture below are actually made out of paper, I cut out the middle bit of some cards that had a frame on them, then just taped the photos to the backs and bluetacked (can't get enough of bluetack, it seems...) them to the wall.

They make it easy to change the photos (though I haven't changed them since I put them up, maybe I should, for the sake of variety..) and also they're more 2D than 3D so they don't fall off and break, which is important cos they're pretty low on the wall in the entrance hall.

Below are two pieces done by my incredibly talented cousin, Minna. Love her and love her work!

The one below with the tree is something I would take with me if my house was on fire, it's incredibly dear to me.

My other favourite artiste is my dear sister, who I shall feature later on! 

Here's a pretty octobear that she made for me:

I love trees. That's why there's a huge one on one of my walls. It's too big to fit into one photo, so here's two. Sorry, they're a bit crap... I'll try to get a better shot once I've *krhm* cleaned the entrance hall.

I'd love to cover some more wall space with a mural or something, but I'm guessing that i'd get bored of a.) painting it and b.) looking at it. So maybe not such a good idea for me personally.

And to finish off this glorious post: some random things on my walls

Ok byebye!

The things on my walls (Part 1)

Oops, it's been a while! I blame my intensive uni course on analytical analysis and modeling, it was... fun.

But now we shall take a look at some things on my walls! *waaahhhh, the crowd goes wild*

I think I have a phobia of bare walls, unless they're in some big space where they add to the feeling of space, or somewhere like a toilet, where i guess it's ok to have a bare wall.. though I would like to have some artwork in my toilet, now that I think about it...

In my apartment i have a total of 17 walls (not counting the balcony, that's still a work in progress after 2 years of living here... krhm...). Of those 17 walls, 2 are huge windows, 3 are covered by built-ins (bedroom closets and kitchen cabinets), 4 are in the bathroom so they don't count, and the rest? The other 8 are covered in stuff, the things on my walls!

I will now share some of those things with you.

Here is my elephant wall. The elephants are cut out of postcards I've gotten over the years. I debated with myself about what animal would be the star, other ideas were horse, bird and i-forget-what.
I finally chose the elephant, because a herd of elephants (or do they have some fancy name for themselves? Like how groups of crows are called murders, etc.?) looks pretty fabulous, and elephants never forget (which ties in nicely with the postcards i've received, from people who have remembered me, and also with the when-walking-out-the-door-don't-forget-the-keys thing).

Here's something i made just to fill up the wall with something for my housewarming party. I ended up liking it so much that it's been there ever since. Also, I'm probably too lazy to take down the 63 squares of paper/cardboard (mostly cut out from the Carhartt magazine Rugged (R.I.P), those free postcards they have at movie theaters in Holland and club advertisements) that are individually bluetacked to my wall.

Below are bits of my kitchen walls. My kitchen walls are one of the (many) black holes of my apartment, where stuff just randomly accumulates into something that could probably look better, but oh well.

(you should see my fridge door...)

The shelves are dutch fruit crates from the 60's and 70's and I've used old glass jars as picture frames. The recipe book was a handmade gift from my sister. The teacups are part of an ever growing collection that I've scavenged from the local Kierrätyskeskus (a recycling center, one of my favourite places).

I own about 50 pairs of earrings, some of which I've made myself (will make a post about those at some point), and they have various homes around my house. 

Most of them live on my retro tennis racquets (also from Kierrätyskeskus!) 

The rest of my earrings live on a diy cup cake stand (made out of an old candlestick and a plate) and this clay-twig-thing that I made, and the rest are in various stages of revamping.

I bought this cute owl from the Bärenpresse stall at the christmas market in Bonn, Germany for about 3 euros. You buy them as pieces of cardboard which you then cut up and join the pieces together yourself. I bought the dragon home as well, but that ones a bit more work than my owl, so will make it when I have time to actually focus on all the cutting, bending, glueing etc.

They're lots of fun to make and awesomely old school! Speaking of which... must get back to studying! Until next time, toodles!

Whoot whoot!

Zzz...

3 little owls

Owls are pretty awesome, and papier mache is another easy medium for crafting (all you need is old newspapers, flour, water, salt and something to cook your glue with, and maybe tape, paint etc, depending on what you want to make).

The recipe i use for the glue:

I boil 2 dl of water in a pan and I mix 1 dl of flour with 1 dl of water until its lump free, and then slowly add the flour mixture to the hot water. I usually whisk at the same time so that it becomes a relatively smooth paste. I sprinkle in a teaspoon or so of salt (to stop mold) and wait for it to cool (usually my patience runs out and i use it while still quite warm...).
You can make the glue thicker or runnier by for example boiling 3 dl of water instead of 2. The important part is how you mix the flour in to get the consistency right. Sometimes my batches fail because i'm not paying attention, but its only a bit of flour and water, so it's no hassle to start again!

So with this glue you can paste the (ripped, i find, is better than cut, since then the paper edges aren't so prominent on the finished piece) newspaper bits on to whatever you want to make. The glue keeps for at least a few days in the fridge, go with your nose on this one (once it starts smelling, you need to dump in the toilet bowl and flush flush away).

For my owls i just randomly scrunched up newspaper pages into balls, used a bit of tape to shape them and started adding the strips of newspaper dipped in the glue. I let the owl dry after every layer, all in all i did about 4-5 layers: the more layers, the sturdier the surface, but waiting for the layers to dry gets pretty frustrating so i sometimes... don't really wait... but you should!

Then i painted them white so I could start to decide where to draw the features. My little owls looked quite two dimensional, so i cut out some ears and beaks from cardboard and taped them on, then papier mached everything together, so that the white base coat goes on evenly and smoothly.

I then drew the features on again to guide with the painting process, nothing was really planned so they all turned out looking different. You could make them all the same but different sizes, which was my initial plan, but my special owls are just fine too! They still need a protective varnish to make the paint more durable, need to put that on my shopping list... As you can maybe see from the photo below, the psychotic pink one suffered a fall so it's ear took a bit of a hit, have to dab a bit more paint on there...!

My mum requested some for herself, so I made her two larger owls for christmas:

Quite... hypnotic....
Note: do not place facing bed.

Ps: Here's a very funny video of a transforming owl! 

Something pretty

(thats a good song by the way, by patrick park)

Ever since i can remember recycling, reusing and many other re- starting words have been high in my i-like-this list.

My cupboards and closets are filled with ... things. Things that normal people throw away (or hopefully recycle). I'm a collector. Of things. Of many things. Of too many things.
I'm not good at throwing things away (maybe that should be another theme for this year... ''you can throw it out''-year) because i can see possibilities and new uses for just about anything.

So my first actual post shall be about this need of mine to see the good in everything. The story begins with toilet paper rolls. Everyone needs them, everyone has them, so why not do something fun with them? And perhaps more importantly, something pretty. I started not putting them in the cardboard recycling almost 2 years ago. I now had many toilet paper rolls.

Even a friend of mine brought me a big bag of rolls (there would've been two bags, but her boyfriend threw them out cos he was sick of them being in the way).

So. Now what?

I tried to look for different things to do with them. Googling only lead to many children's craft sites. I did not want to make toilet paper roll butterflies or penguins.

This was one of the best reuses that i found, but wasn't i wanted at the time. I wanted something on a bigger scale, something to decorate my apartment with. And maybe something a bit simpler to create (i'll post about a warning story for that, my kusudama lamp, which is still only halfway done... but more about that later).

I finally found inspiration on one of my favourite sites, design*sponge, and this is what i made:

I randomly glued these quarter parts of the rolls together and clumsily hung them from a random nail in my living room wall. Not very chic, but easy and fun to do! All you need are the rolls, scissors and glue. I also used some mini clothespins to keep the parts together while the glue dried (only took about 10 seconds of pressure for them to stay put).

About half a year later i decided my foyer needed spicing up, so i painted these formations white and bluetacked them to the ceiling and floor. I think this turned out pretty nice, the shadows they make at night when the lights are on are pretty amazing too.

(They do fall down from time to time, so i keep a blobule (like globule, but blobbular) of bluetack nearby for quick fixes...!)

Aah first blog entry!

After a few years of thinking about starting a blog and being told to start a blog, i've finally decided to do just that. I've always been good at getting ideas but relatively bad a fulfilling them.
It's been 2 years today since my best friend passed away, and in memory of him i thought this would be the perfect day to get something done, to start something new, and to start this years 'you can' theme! (lame, yes, but i'm hoping for effective, i've never had a theme year before, just theme parties, and they're quite fun, so we'll see how this pans out).


My language of choice is English, since its the language i think, dream and swear in, but there might be odd bits and bobs in Finnish too at times (since i live and am from Finland).


I'm not expecting many (or any..) readers, i'll start off with having this as a place where i can collect and keep track of everything i make (or want to make) and do (or want to do)! While i'm not making and doing, i am an unemployed (=poor) student (just entered the masters phase, so I do actually get studying done), so that is where the 'make do' part comes in..


Umm... well, this is getting awkward and weird now since i'm not really writing to anyone in particular, so i will post this now and try and find some photos of things i've done! and made! while making do... hmm ok maybe not everything i write and post has to tie in with the blog title.


Here goes nothing!