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!

Doctor Who Chibi Pillow

In a continuation from the Sherlock Chibi Pillow, here's the pillow that that was the prototype for:

For those of you who don't immediately recognize this awesome pillow of epicness, here is the reference:

 Of course, my pillow's suit is the wrong color, but this doctor often/sometimes wears a blue suit. About half the time. In any case, it looks cool, and that's the real point. For those of you who want to be more canonically accurate, go for the brown suit.

In any case, on to directions. I started this pillow out much the same as I did the other one. I used cloth of the same dimensions (~11"x11"), and set to research. Luckily, a rather awesome Etsy shop-owner saved me a lot of time and effort by giving me some awesome pictures on which to base my pillow. I made some minor tweaks, but essentially copied her, so anyone wanting one, but not wanting to spend the time to make it, head over here to buy one for yourself. On a side note, had I looked a bit harder/farther, I would have also found a good pattern base for my Sherlock pillow, but oh well. Live and learn.

 I laid out a few of my pieces of scrap cloth, and found these two almost-symmetric pieces that were rather nicely sized/shaped for a suit, so I used them.

 I pretty much just shopped those pieces off, then folded the edges over after cutting a suit shape out of them. And then, of course, came pins.

(insert gasp here)

Yes, I know that I don't use them very often, but in this context they were necessary, as the cloth for the suit was somewhat thick and rather stiff.

 This is a close-up on how I did the suit shape. I very seriously just folded it over and nocked the top like so.

 And repeat for the second side.

 I then cut out a rectangle that would fit underneath both sides completely.

 At this point, I realized that I should have done that in the first place, as I had to unpin and repin the lapels, but there we go.

 Next, I cut out a piece of red cloth for the tie.

 Again with the pinning.

 I then cut out the hair, and.. you guessed it! I pinned it in place. Pins on hair not featured, but they were there at one point.

 Then with the eyes. I liked how this looked, but it didn't seem distinctly doctor-ish yet. I fix that later.

 I then sewed everything on. Order: white rectangle (again with the unpinning...), blue rectangles, red tie, hair, eyes.

The only part I folded over to hem was the top of the blue parts, white part and tie. The lapels, hair, tie edges and eyes were all left as they were, so after a few washed, this doctor will probably turn into the raggedy doctor, but who uses a pillow as cute as this for anything that would get it dirty enough to really need to wash?
...on second thought, don't answer that...

 I then sewed it together. This pillow's hair was considerably shorter on the edges than my last one, so stuffing it was somewhat more difficult.

 It looked cute when I was done, but partially due to the aforementioned small hole, this pillow required quite a bit more beating at to get the stuffing even.

 On the upside, the smaller hole presents less opportunity for me to make an eyesore.

 Also a plus, my stitching on this one looked much neater than the last one.

Please, also take time to note that unfinished, unsurged flippy of hair. Remember what I said about not hemming.

 And tadaa! One pillow done. I thought he should look more doctor-ish, though, so I deccided to grab some inspiration from the aforementioned Etsy-shop-owner, and made some 3D glasses.

 Unlike hers, though, mine are removable, and wrap around the pillow, allowing them to seem somewhat more glasses-like. I took extra cloth from the lapels, and extra cloth from the tie, sewed them on a strip of white cloth, then notched out holes around the nose area. This one I did hem, but I realized afterwards that I should have done this first, as I almost ran out of room, and once again my colors were unhemmed.

 Example of how extremely glasses-like these 3D glasses are.

And voila! Your very own 10th Doctor Chibi pilow!