Day 23- Party All Night, Project All Day

3/23/14

Okay, I didn't really party all night. I project-ed all night too. Some friends of mine collect corks and I grabbed a few that I was saving for them for today's project.

I started by slicing the corks with an x-acto knife into thin slices about 2-3 mm wide. They were pretty tough to cut through but once I got the hang of it it wasn't too hard.

I took each slice of cork and painted a round semi circle off the side with silver leaf. Following drying, I glued silver glass beads around the edge of the silver leaf. I had to use tweezers to keep them in place as I applied them, and after I realized it may have been easier to keep them in a nice little line had I strung them with thread, glued them, and then clipped the thread or pulled it out after drying. Live and learn.

I sewed up a camel colored leather pouch with a metal zipper at the top, top-stitched with a decorative silver thread. After the bag was made I applied the decorated cork slices. (I learned my lesson in a big way from the Nail Clutch, which I constructed after sewing all the nails. I realized the next morning after sleeping off all that crazy hand sewing that I should have most definitely applied the nails after sewing. Well, I knew that ahead of time of course, but I figured out how to do it. Practice makes roll-your-eyes-the-next-day perfect.)

After applying all the corks I added a short chain to the zipper to make a pull. I'd like to try something like this again with cork as the base material instead of leather. 

Pouch: Leather, Recycled Cork, Silver Leaf, Glass Beads, Chain

I really love that you can still see the printing on the side of the cork.

Love the texture of the finished piece. I think painting the cork could have been taken further because the cork accepts paint very well. On the other hand, it takes away from the beauty of the original material so there's something to be said for leaving it unpainted. Either drilling with a large bit into the center to make a variation in the surface, or cutting some pieces to fit in between the corks to make it look tiled could be neat. 

xo,
Arielle

Day 22- The Roving Necklace

3/22/14

Tonight's project was simple and very different in its style from many others I've done recently. I played around with some large glass beads to make some really interesting components, but everything I tried to make with them became extremely heavy and so nothing really worked. But I still love them. Hopefully I'll be able to use them on something one day.

The blue glass beads, wrapped with laceweight alpaca yarn and embellished with a vintage crystal.

I started my final piece with some alpaca roving, carefully braiding it. Roving is carded unspun fiber, so it's very delicate and pulls apart easily. I braided two black pieces and a white piece to give a stark pattern to the braid.

I tied up the ends of the braid with a mustard yellow yarn and wrapped almost 2 inches on each side. I really love the yellow tone here, but a metallic thread would have been interesting as well.

Next I crocheted a circle from both the mustard colored yarn and a felted off white yarn. I stitched in an amber colored bead to the top and sewed them all together. The necklace opens with a hook and eye underneath the circles.

Necklace: Alpaca Roving, Wool Yarn, Acrylic Yarn, Plastic Bead
(Strangely resembling a citrus fruit...)

I love the look of the braided roving and have plenty more so this might go into another piece. It would be really beautiful sewn in rows or woven into fabric. Braiding something metallic in with the roving would add a little bit of sparkle as well.

xo,
Arielle