Shark Tooth Pendants

 Again, a continuation of the shark tooth crafts. When you have a lot of baby teeth, it is often easy just to feel as if throwing them away is the easiest thing to do. However, with a little work, they can look quite cool, when added to pendants like this.

 The trick to these beauties is polymer clay. The two most  popular brands are Sculpey and Fimo, though there are generic brands as well. I got a 1 lb box of white Sculpey clay from WalMart for $5. Though it can get expensive, it doesn't need to be.

 This pendant I didn't take many pictures of. It was supposed to be something of a fish hook- shaped thing, with shark teeth jutting out the back.

To do this, I rolled a ball, flattened it with a bit jutting out in a roughly 'd' shape, then used a knife and a pencil to cut out the angled parts. Then, I pressed the shark teeth into the back end, and rubbed some extra clay over their bases.

 I started this one, again, with a ball of clay which I flattened to about 1/8" tall.

I then used a pencil to bore a hole through it, to put a jump ring through later.

Then, I just pushed in shark teeth where I wanted them. I chose to put s bunch of smaller teeth around the edges, with two medium teeth in a roughly heart shape in the middle.









At this point, the magic of polymer clay happens: you bake it, and it hardens. So, I stuck these pendants in the oven. The directions on the box say to put them in at 270 or 300 for 15 for every 1/4" of thickness. Given that both of these were about 1/4" tall, I only needed about 7 minutes. I baked them for 10, and I got this pseudo-burnt browning on the outsides. Be careful that you don't actually burn them. When they were finished, I attached a jump ring to the round one, and wrapped the hook one in gold wire with a hook on top.

Shark Tooth Wrap Bracelet

 I really like how this turned out. I recently came by a windfall of shark teeth thanks to one of my best friends, and so I needed to come up with a craft to make with them. There are surprisingly few ideas of shark tooth crafts besides necklaces. Luckily, I found a rather nice inspiration on Pinterest of this bracelet, except that it was decorated with beads rather than shark teeth.

I started out with about 4 feet of baling twine. Though a strange choice, baling twine is actually really nice. I also had some jewelry wire and shark teeth. Also, I ended up using a pen.

 The post that I drew inspiration from originally called for two pieces of pipe, which I don't have. To improvise, I decided to make gold springs by wrapping my wire around the inside of a pen

One of the nice things about this bracelet is that you don't have to worry about how long of a string  you've got, and also that you can use pretty much any kind of string you want. For this step, measure the length of your wrist, then fold the excess back and forth. Make sure you've got at least two inches of slack at each end, then thread the two spring/pipes randomly onto the bracelet.

 Now grab it like so

 Wrap the ends in wire, like so, to keep it in place.

 Next, wrap wire into jump rings around each end

 Then wrap the ends with that extra string that you left off earlier.

 Attach a clasp to the jump rings (or make on, as I did)

 Essentially, a clasp is just a ring and a fancy S-shaped bit. That's about as detailed as I can get, but there we go. If it works, it works.

 Now for the fun part: attaching shark teeth  (or beads, if you don't have teeth on hand) If you're using beads, attach each one to an eye pin, then attach it to the bracelet.
 Otherwise, wrap each tooth with wire, then attach it. This process takes a lot less wire than you might initially think- just experiment a bit, but each tooth for me generally only took one wire on each side of the main part, as pictured. A quick google search should elaborate more clearly what I mean.

 The trick to this is to make it look random, and to attach each tooth (or bead) to at least 3 or 4 strings.

And there we have it! Your very own shark tooth wrap bracelet!

Cradit Card Earphone Holder

One of the worst things about ear phones/ear buds is that they constantly get tangled, and are hard to keep organized, so I developed this little beauty to help with that.

 Really the only things you need are a credit card (I would suggest an unused rewards card rather than an actual credit card, to avoid accidentally making it easier to steal your information), the earphones you want to use, a pencil and scisors.

 Start by making a shape like this on your card on both sides, and cutting it out.

 By cutting out one side and then the other, you can make it symmetrical, but that's only an aesthetics thing, not practicality.

 Next up is to make a slot for the end of your cord to go through. This shouldn't be too large, just barely enough to fit the cord through.

 It should fit through like this.

 Next, cut holes for the earbuds themselves to fit into. Shapes like this work pretty well, as they tend to keep them from falling out.

Wrap it up, putting in the cord end last, and voila! Ready to go.

Pearl and Satin Bracelet

To start out, I'd like to apologize for not updating recently. Life has caught up with me, between finals week, graduation and my sister getting married, I've had quite a bit to do this last moth, and I just haven't made time for this like I should have, especially considering that I have, in fact, done a few projects that I fully intended to blog about but didn't.

Now into the craft!

 I made a while bunch of these bracelets for my sister's wedding, but they look super cute with any number of outfits.

 Materials needed: Satin ribbon in you color of choice, 3/8" wide for best results. I accidentally got the wrong size at first, so make sure you get the right ones. 10mm pearl beads, color of you choice. You need about 20 of these, maybe a bit more or less depending on your wrist size. You also need clear elastic cord/thread/string stuff, a rather large needle that you can thread said elastic through, clear fingernail polish, scissors and a lighter.

 To start with, know that satin ribbon has two sides: a shiny one and a dull one. Make sure that you're working with the shiny side up, towards your pearls. You will like the result better that way, I promise.

 To start with, thread your needle with a piece of normal thread, leaving a loop.

 Thread your elastic string through the thread loop, then pull (rather hard), so that the elastic is threaded through your needle.

 Now, you burn the end of your satin ribbon. This will anti-fray it, and will make your end product more professional-looking, and less likely to fall apart.

 This is what a burnt end should look like- you don't really burn it, just melt it a bit.

 

 Starting at the very end, thread a pearl bead through the ribbon.

 to start with, getting the ribbon to do what you want may be a struggle, as the bead will try to escape, but you can do it. Fold the ribbon over so that as much as you want is poking over top, fold it in half, and get through it with the needle.

 Then you start the easy part: layering on beads and ribbon folds.

 Depending on how long your needle is, you can probably fit up to three of these beads on there, then you'll want to pull one off to make room for the next.

 Keep on going until you reach 20 or so, then start checking after every bead to size it properly. Don't worry about tightening the ribbon or beads until after you finish, and don't cut your cord or ribbon beforehand- work straight off the spool.

 The finished-beading-but-not-finished bracelet is shown. At this point, I have tightened it, cut off excess ribbon and burned the other end, and cut the elastic so that at least an inch is poking out on each side, preferably two.

 Next, you tie it off as tightly as your bracelet will allow. Don't worry about slack- that's why you sized it earlier on your own wrist.

To finish, allow a dab of clear fingernail polish to dry on your knot to prevent it coming undone, and you're done!