Handmade Holidays & Giveaways! Part 1: Wine Charms

Welcome to the first installment of Handmade Holidays & Giveaways!!!


Last year, I posted a series of holiday tutorials... this year, I'll be posting tutorials, AND featuring a giveaway of that item!

All you have to do to enter, is to comment on the tutorial and you're entered to win. Each tutorial will let you know how long you've got to enter. Want another chance to win? Simply post a link to the giveaway on your blog or on twitter and leave a second comment with a link to it.

If you don't win the giveaway, you'll either be able to create the project yourself, or in many cases, I'll be making extra's and offering them for sale... any questions? Let me know...

Here is my first Handmade Holiday project, Crystal Wine Charms. These make the perfect holiday hostess gift. They are small to store, easy to carry and even if your hostess already has a set, you can bet she'll love additional ones, especially during holiday entertaining.

Plus, they are a great way to start working towards jewelry if you haven't ventured there yet.

Materials:

• 6 Wire Hoops with Eye Loops
• 6 6mm crystals each a different color
• 12 3mm crystals each, 2 of each in the same or complimenting colors as the 6mm crystals
• 6 head pins 
• 12 3mm silver beads
• 12 other beads, I picked simple white crystal tubes
• Wire cutters
• Chain nose pliers
• Round nose pliers
• Tin favor tin (to hold them in.) 

Here is a picture of all the materials go into making a single charm:

Step 1 - Thread the 6mm crystal on the head pin.

Step 2 - Bend the headpin at a 90° angle just above the top of the crystal using your chain nose pliers.

Step 3 - Cut the tail of the headpin so that you've goat a tail that is about 1/3 of an inch.

Step 4 - Grasp the tip of the tail on the headpin with your round nose pliers and roll the pilers back towards the bend.

Step 5 - String the beads onto the hoop.

Step 6 - Grasp the tip of the loop (the non eye end) and bend the end up 90°.

And there you go. Repeat though each of the other colors and you've got a set of wine charms!

So there you go! Comment below to enter to win a set of the wine charms. Or visit my little online craft show and check out these plus 2 other versions I've got left over after my craft show.

You've got 'till Midnight 6 pm eastern time on Friday, November 19th to enter to win the Crystal Wine Charms! 

Thank you!

Thanks so much to all the wonderful people at the CUMC Craft Show, I had so much fun getting to meet so many people.

Here are a few pictures of my table for those who missed it.

I'll have more tutorials for the product in the coming weeks and I'll be going through my inventory to see what I want to list for sale online.

Again, thanks so much! I'm already thinking of ideas for next year.

Napkin Coasters

I've got coasters all over my house right now, more than 100 of them... even covering surfaces in Jim's man pit. Poor guy. They'll be packed up Friday night for the craft show, hopefully they'll sell and not be coming back. I'm pretty sure, I might not be let back in the house if they are coming with me. 

Multi Strand Jewelry

I've gotten really carried away with some of the Jewelry I've been working on. I never in a million years thought I'd be making jewelry, let alone getting ready to sell it at a craft show. 

Here are a few of the pieces and close ups of them that I'll be selling this weekend - tutorials for this will be posted in the coming weeks. 

 

 

I've developed these necklaces so they can be worn 4 different ways, including as a bracelet. They are totally my favorite.

Earring Display

One of the things I've really been struggling with was how to display the earrings I've made for my craft show... I've got almost 100 pairs and I really wanted to show them hanging. I've found lots of earring displays, but most couldn't display a lot and almost all were really expensive. And that is the one thing I've tried to not do, spend more money setting up for the craft show, than I'm going to make at the craft show.

With less than a week to go to the show, I've been beginning to panic, I had one solution, but they were going to be laying down...

Then today at Walgreens of all places, I found these spiral trees:

The perfect way to display earrings at a holiday craft show!!!

Finally, something I can cross off my list!

It's Show Time, or almost anyway

I've gone and done something completely crazy - I signed up to have a booth in a Holiday Craft Show. I actually signed up months ago, and this Saturday, the 13th is the show!!! I didn't want to mention it before incase something went wrong. Like, oh, I don't know... I chicken out.

I go between having moments of wondering what on earth I was thinking, and being so excited I can't stand it. But I've been pretty consistently terrified.

Some of the things I'm selling, you've seen before.

• Tile Coasters
• Wire Wrapped Jewelry
• Bookmarks

And a few of the things have yet to be feature here, but don't worry, they will be.

• Mutli-strand Jewelry
• Wire Star Ornements (I did share my experiment for those here, but not the final)

Over the past few months, I've been in major research mode trying to learn as much as I can about being a first time exhibitor in a craft show and next week, after I've actually done it myself I look forward to sharing here.

Throughout the week I'm going to feature what's going to be at the show and just a few tips. 

Analog Bookmarks

When you think of "Bookmarks"... you think of the digital bookmarks you make with your browser not the kind you slip in a book to save your spot. 

I loved bookmarks when I was growing up, I don't know why. But I've realized I haven't seen them lately. So I made a batch.

So far, I've used them as gift tags for presents, used them in magazines and cookbooks. 

Here is what you need to make your own:

• Scrapbook paper
• Scissors
• Glue stick
• Laminating supplies - you can make this easy, with any number of things like laminating papers or contact paper. I had use for a laminator so using a 40% off coupon I picked one up at AC Moore. 

Step 1 - Cut strips of scrapbook paper to roughly 1 inch wide by 5 inches long... though the first ones I made were 1.5 inches wide. 

Step 2 - Using a glue, attach the strip to a piece of coordinating paper.

Step 3 - Cut around the backing paper so that you have a uniform board around.

Step 4 - Laminate the bookmarks.

Trim them and then you're good to go.

And to use them as a gift tag, just grab a dry erase marker.

The lamination creates the perfect dry erase surface. Once the gift is given, the message can be erased and the gift tag becomes their bookmark.

Gift tags, stocking stuffers, teacher gifts, party favors... or maybe next year, they can be handed out instead of candy on Halloween.