Do a little catch up...

I spent the day out in the shop punching out primers from bullet casings to make jewelry, namely earrings.  A lot of people were asking for earrings as opposed to pendants and I really had to real way to utilize a decent earring.  I had made some attempts, but wasn't really happy with the overall result.  It turns out, a .22 has a very thin and easily punched out primer-capsule situation, most likely due to not being a re-loadable type of bullet.  Anyway, a little metal punch and a whack with a hammer made for a very nice, centered hole.  I was able to make some pretty neat specimens last night.

These are .22 shorts and are an 1800's friendly round that I picked up at the cowboy range.  Most specifically, these were laying all over the floor of the church after Fire in the Hills.  The flowers are fire polished Czech glass with antiqued brass filigree.

I experimented with some other sizes since my hubby bought me some small drill bits as a treat the other night.  I often break these, so a set of drill bits is better than a dozen roses to me any day of the week.  

So anyway, 30 carbines.  The lighting in my room is really crappy, but you get the idea of them anyway.  A .30 carbine was introduced in the 40's, so unlike most of my bullet casings, it's not a Victorian-era round.  I have a lovely assortment of firearm enthusiast friends that keep me supplied in odd casings. 

Here again, larger Czech fire-polished glass flowers with aged copper filigree findings. 

And lastly, another pair of .22 shorts.  Mottled, creamy green and brown Czech flowers with antiqued brass and a rhinestone roundel. 

So, that was last night's project.  I also have been working on a few dollhouse miniatures for my sister who recently acquired a very large display dollhouse with a pretty limited supply of minis to go inside.  I had some Sculpy and Fimo, so decided to try my hand at miniature making.  She had a garden plot on her Pineterest, so I went about trying to make veggies.

I'm getting the hang of it.  they are really tiny, so its a little harder than I had anticipated it to be.

Things I have learned in the process is, keep your heat gun on hand.  When you do a section or layer, hit it with your heat gun and "bake" your piece (Be careful, you can burn them and yourself.  I had the bits I was working on stabbed onto a pin that I had mounted on the end of a chopstick).  That way, when you put on the next layer, you can fiddle with all the little details without messing up your prior layer. With these tiny guys, you really don't need to bake it if you just use your heat gun.  Also, have some pastel chalks on hand.  that way you can add color layers to your items before heating them up.  This is how I got my carrots "dirty"  the carrot top is a tiny piece of moss that I had harvested and dried from the roof of my garage.  One little hunk of moss with make millions of carrot tops.  I may do a picture tutorial on my UniqueEuphoria blog to better explain my method.  Really though, this is fun and really does not cost a lot to get into.  The most expensive part is the actual clay, and you use so little making such tiny things, you really get your money's worth out of it.  All the other goodies can be found at the hardware store or in your house.  The texture of the leaves on the cauliflower was a little seashell and the leaves of the corn was textured using an old toothbrush.  It helps to Google images of the thing you are making, so you have a reference to color and texture and you can refer to the screen as you work.

So these are my little projects.  Outside of that, I did make the trip down to Menominee Falls this last month and had a nice time.  My friends that were supposed to joint me stood me up, so I was alone most of the time, but I did meet up with an old friend from high school whom I haven't seen since graduation and that was really nice.   On my way down there, I got a call from the recruiter of a company I have been pining to work for since I quit Nuance.  I undertook my interview while trucking down I-94, but it was so worth it.  I was not at all happy with the other job at Entrada.  This company is much, much better and while I'm still a trainee, the whole experience is better overall.  Hopefully big corporate Nuance won't buy this place up and destroy it like it did with Transcend.

I haven't been able to really stock up on wilds due to all the running and job hunting.  This winter is pretty much a bust for canned goods.  I have some daylily in the freezer and I have grapes to pick yet and apples, but overall I just haven't had my heart in it. Deer hunting will be soon and I will be canning venison, but it seems I need to invest in a new dehydrator, since my old one decided to go berserk and melt the 2 bottom shelves while drying moss the other day.  I'm just glad I had unplugged the unit before going to bed that night, otherwise there may very well have been a fire.  It was when I was unloading it the next morning that I saw all the melted plastic.  Weird.  This is the second appliance that has malfunctioned in the last 3 months.  The first being my iron.  If it wasn't for the smell of burning electrical, I could have very well had a fire.  I'm wondering if its the appliances or if the electrical is wonky in this house.  The iron was really old, so I really didn't think too much about it, but the dehydrator was only a year old and only used a handful of times for herbs.  So weird...