DIY Christmas gift: Fashionable little bug brooch

    Who says that you need a lot of money for a creative Christmas gift? In the next few days I will share a few easy, yet unique and thoughtful gifts you can make with easy to find supplies and a little work.

 

This little guy is easy to make and makes a great quirky (yet fashionable) gift for both adults and kids. It is really simple to make a basic bug brooch, but I added a few extra details to add some flare and that something special that separates DIY and DIWhy.

Supplies that you will need:

-black felt for the body and white felt for the wings

-white glitter for wings and 4 flat beads for eyes (small buttons will work too)

-scissors

-pliers (optional)

-four pieces of wire with flat or ball ending for the legs

-needle and black thread

-white tulle or mesh for underwings

-glue and small brush 

- classic brooch/ pin clasp 

The easiest way to make sure body and wings look good is to draw them on a piece of paper, cut them out and use the paper as a stencil.

This step is optional, but I think it adds some dimension to the whole project: use needle and black thread to make a simple cross pattern on the body. I do not recommend using sewing machine, unless you are a wizard with it, since mine ate the felt right up, so I had to start over a few times. It took me only 6 minutes to stitch by hand.

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Apply the glue all over wings and cover them with glitter (I used brush for extra precision). When it is completely dry, cover glitter with thin layer of glue to fix it, that way you will make sure that glitter doesn't end up all over the clothes - we all know how glitter likes to do that.

Cut mesh or tulle in the shape of the wings and position them approx. 1/4 from the top of the body. Fix them with glue and immediately add another layer to fix white glittery wings. For extra flare, make sure some mesh/tulle will peak under the glittery wings.

Bend the wire with your fingers or pliers and position it so that  front legs peek under wings and back legs follow shape of the body.

Sew through the bugs "head" above wings to attach flat beads on each side and make sure to make a bigger knot, so the beads don't fall off. These flat beads are really easy to find in any craft store and any color would look good for the eyes. I opted out for basic black and translucent rainbow to make eyes pop a bit, but gold or green would also look good. Tip: use acrylic color or permanent marker to paint the beads if you can't find the color or finish you like.

Cut a small rectangular piece of felt and sew/glue brooch clasp on it and use glue to cover the wire ends on the bottom side of the brooch, that way it won't pull threads from the clothes.

Optional mini additional step: Use black waterproof marker to paint the wire black. It doesn't transfer on clothes and makes this little guy even more handsome.

All done!

Fighting creative block: stress and lack of productivity due to coronavirus pandemic

    Fear and anxiety about the current COVID-19 pandemic and what could happen is really overwhelming and causes strong emotions with all of us. Worry about our own health and the health of our loved ones, together with necessary public health actions, such as social distancing, make a lot of people feel isolated and lonely, and make all sort of changes in our daily life.

For me, most prominent thing was having real difficulty sleeping and concentrating. I am very lucky that I could switch to doing my day job from home, so financially I was fine for the moment, but I could not help but worry about how long that would be possible. At first I thought that the new circumstances and working from home exhaust me so much that I could not concentrate on anything else, like reading a book, or watching a film, or creating something - basically all the things that used to make me happier. After a while I realized that the only thing I did in my free time is staring at the ceiling or obsessively reading news. I had a complete creative block. I felt like a slacker, like I could not complete any task that is not immediately necessary to be completed and, since my Etsy shop was doing really awful, I had no motivation to make anything new, or even finish some stuff I started working on and was really excited about them at first. Since there was a complete lock down and nothing to do away from home, I felt really crappy about not having or achieving any of my previously set goals.

At one moment I came across this great video from TedEd, explaining what chronic stress I was experiencing was actually doing to my brain:

 

It made me realize that I have to start introducing some changes to my daily life in hope that slowly my rapidly deteriorating mental status would get better. I set one simple goal: to manage my time better in order to start doing things that make me happy again.

First thing was taking a break from reading, watching and listening to news stories all the time. I was already informed enough on what to do if I experience any of the symptoms of the disease, I was taking all the measures necessary to avoid being infected and all of my loved ones were informed and taking as many precautions as they could, so there was nothing more I could do.

At some point I started drinking insane amounts of coffee in hope it would "make me" do something productive, so I gave caffeine a break, switched to herbal tea for a week in hope to jump start my brain in order for it to start reacting to stimulants normally. I started exercising a bit (literally a bit, like 5 minutes a day) and taking little pauses to breathe when I feel overwhelmed. 

I created a list of daily priorities: eat, finish the job for the day, eat, rest, clean around the house and start slowly sorting things out in my creative life. 

I gave myself credit where it's due. I became aware of my limitations, so I had more clues as to what direction to head in: before I attempt to strive for anything, I am confronted with a reality check - can I really accomplish that in the near future, or do I have a bunch of tiny steps in between? Do I really even want this?

I realized that when everything else crumbles around me, I'll get strength from my ability to ground myself in a crazy world that can self destruct from the smallest spark and I cannot do anything else about it.

After a week I started noticing how every next day differed ever so slightly from the previous.

Slowly over a few weeks I was managing my time better and started having all sort of creative ideas. It does sound really simple and logical, but so many people talk themselves out of it - whatever you crave, use it to get moving. When you feel like you have no motivation, think about the goal, not about why you started, because you are probably in a completely different situation now. Think about what you are doing and that you are doing it for yourself. And then simply do it. It will be easier some days and harder the others, but never lose sight of what you want.

Stop wasting time doing things that don't make you happy, only less bored.

Motivation comes from within. I can tell you what to do, but I cannot want it for you. Like anything else in your life, once you train your motivation it will be much easier for you to find it again on days when you really feel empty.

Fellowship of the Ring necklace

So, to conclude this story, I used all of my new LOTR figurine beads to make one of a kind necklace.

The beads are strung on a stainless steel wire and separated with tiny white porcelain beads, so each character can stand out a bit. The delicate chain is also made from stainless steel, which I always prefer to silver, since it is much more resilient and easier to maintain than silver, but looks equally good.

I was very happy and proud that the necklace was sold a few days after it was listed in my Etsy shop, so I had extra motivation to proceed to make another one with, which will probably turn out even better having in mind how things are going so far. Stay tuned...

Tiny polymer clay doll beads - The Fellowship of the Ring

Being an overachiever that I am lead me to further explore how much I can torture myself (precisely my eyes and lower back) by making tiny doll beads. One of my all time favorite books is Lord of the Rings, so, naturally, as soon as I figured out some basic steps to do and avoid (Part I and Part II) I sat down and attempted to make The Fellowship of the Ring.
The first and the most complicated one to make was Gandalf the Grey. Since he is the tallest one in the Fellowship I had to make sure that he is at least an inch tall, so the other characters (especially hobbits) could be made in an appropriate ratio. Gandalf alone took me about 3 hours to complete. It could have saved me a good half an hour if I did not try to make the Wizards staff from polymer clay, but used what was right in front of me - a toothpick and some sanding paper. The only polymer clay detail on the staff (which I am very proud of) is the top, which I made from glow-in-the-dark FIMO that has been lying in my craft box for quite some time, since I never figured out a good use for it. While Gandalf figurine was drying, I made four hobbit figurines about half an inch tall. The most complicated of the bunch was Frodo, because I wanted to include a tiny round 18k gold connector bead as the One ring, so I had to be extra careful to secure it and paint around it. After an additional hour of painting and 24 hours of drying, I had my first two members!

Rest of the hobbits were a bit easier to make and soon I had the whole Shire gang done. While the rest of the Fellowship was in the oven I had to make teeny tiny pan and po-tay-toes for Sam :)

The next pair - Legolas and Gimli, were probably the most fun to make, and by this time my hand was steady enough to manage to paint their weapons on the back. I even included some very light glitter on Gimlis axe to make it pop a bit. 

Because of the similarities in physical appearance, I painted Boromir and Aragorn in parallel, just to make sure their robes and hair color are different enough, so no one would mix them on such a small scale.

This is by far my most complicated project, but the end result even stunned me - they all looke awesome!

DIY tiny polymer clay doll beads: part II

After my first try with Snow White and seven dwarfs my next adventure included revisiting an old idea - making Little Red Riding Hood and her grandma. I had incredible luck while digging through a pile of metal charms in a craft shop a few years back to find incredible bras wolf pendants. They were sitting in a drawer for a few months, since I did not really have an idea what exactly I wanted to make with them, and then it dawned on me that they would look great as brooches. It took some time to manage soldering brooch clasp to a brass surface, but in the end it looked great, and most importantly was very firm! Since these dolls are very small (less than half an inch) the best result was achieved by making them in the style of traditional Russian (matryoshka) dolls. I will once again highlight that key to successfully represent a character via this little dolls is to include just the right amount of details and not "overwhelm" the tiny surface.  This time I used basic white FIMO to make the dolls and painted the faces with skin colored acrylic paint, to see if it would make a big difference in painting small details on the face comparing to just using skin colored base like with the Snow White. It did not make a big difference in how hard it was to achieve this amount of details, the only disadvantage was making the process about half an hour longer, since I had to wait for the surface to be completely dry before painting faces. It was also a bit more pressure, since I knew if i made a mistake, I would have to sand off a whole area where the face is and start again. Luckily, that did not happen, and I was very pleased with the end result.

This brooch is available in my Etsy store, and if you would like to own this unique little piece of art, make sure to use a special code I created (look to the right navbar!) to ensure 10% off in addition to free worldwide shipping.