We are open!

My shop is now up and running! I hope you enjoy and shop!

http://christinecreates.bigcartel.com

Wire Wrapping

I have been able to make some amazing bracelets out of wire wrapping, in fact this year for Christmas I will be making all of my gifts for my family and my boyfriends family.

I am making 6 bracelets. I have been using polymer clay a little over a year now and have make some amazing beads in the past. So I decided to make the beads out of polymer clay. The wire is 18 gauge and the beads are made from polymer clay. Celtic bread is the type of weave that I did. 

The beads are made from polymer clay.

What to find in my shop...

The type of items I like to craft are...

1) Bracelets -  I'm getting into and learning all different types and styles of bracelets such as Polymer clay, Memory wire, Charm bracelets and more.

2) Necklaces - I like to make simple and elegant types of necklaces such as crowns encrusted with swarovski crystals. Besides just having crowns there will be many other unique necklace's to choose from.  

3) Rings - To me rings are pretty basic. I do however like to put a spin on my rings. They will have a rock and roll/Goth/punk feel to them.  I like working with spikes, studs & rhinestone just to name a few. 

4) Handmade Drawstring bags - These will be made from spooky and scary material.

5) Polymer clay pens - I have loved making these polymer clay pens in the past of my family and they all loved them. I will be posting up many of these amazing pens! I like the pens to be unique and so there will be many different styles and colors to choose from! 

6) Brooches - I like a good brooch. So I will be making some in polymer clay of course. 

7) Hair Accessories - I love hair accessories! If you need a little something to stand out I will have a lot to choose from! Some of them will be simple while others big and bold! 

I am now looking at all that I will have to offer and I feel like its a great start to a small shop. 

In the future I will be making other items along with all these awesome items I just mentioned. 

I hope you all have a great day/night and as always stay scary!! 

Steam Punk/Rock and Roll head Accessories

I just finished making a Steam Punk/Rock and Roll barrette for everyday wear out of just a few things... Its crafting time! 

I used this barrette to make a mold out of foil ( because I didn't want to bake this barrette in the clay oven) and it looks like this... 

This is the foil mold so that when I place the clay on top of the barrette to get the shape of it I will be able to bake it on this guide in the clay baking oven.

Here is the clay I used. I used both black and silver colors for my barrette.
I take a small peace of the clay about an inch or two then form it on to the naked barrette. I make sure that the clay is NOT hanging over the sides. If it is then just take your clay tool or knife (be careful when using a knife) and cut the access off.

Then remove the clay that you just molded to the barrette and place it on the foil mold you made from the actual barrette and bake it.   Follow the baking instructions on your clay package.

Here is the mold I used to make the little spikes for the barrette. Use what ever color of clay you want to make your favorite color of spikes!  

I got this mold on etsy. Make four of these spikes for the barrette.

E6000 to make sure it all stays in place. 

Here are the black spikes I made with the mold and then baked them off. 

Take the silver clay you just baked and glue it on to the barrette and then wait for that to dry about 3 hours then take your spikes and glue them on. Make sure you wait 3-4 hours to wear this. 

Finally here is the finished product! I love my new handmade Steam Punk/ Rock and Roll inspired barrette accessory!  

I hope you enjoyed this new project! 

Have a great day and stay scary! 

 

Gothic community

Ever since I saw my first horror movie I was absolutely hooked. I remember it like it was yesterday.

I was eight years old (yes a little young to be watching) and I couldn't believe that my big sister was letting me see A Nightmare on Elm Street. I loved it. I also never had nightmares from the horror movies I saw when I was younger. 

Now that I am in my 30's and is still a very big fan of all horror movies (Zombie movies specifically) I can say it had a lot to do with shaping my mind and how I not only see the world but how I see fashion. 

In my teens I have gotten in to Gothic clothing and jewelry. I still in my 30's have some of the old jewelry that I used to wear as a teen. I absolutely love the style and how romantic it can be. It can be extremely big and some what out there in style or it could be very minimal yet still have that goth feel to it. 

I have been wearing and seeing it all over the place. I loved it. I thought it was the most amazing jewelry in the world. Not everyone agreed with me on that. I thought I was the only one who loved it and would wear it. 

Until high school. As soon as I got in to high school I noticed that a chunk of kids were into that same fashion as myself. It felt great to be around people who loved the same style. 

The reason for the story is so that you know where I'm coming from and why I love making Gothic style jewelry. I understand that not a lot of people like to buy or even look at Gothic items, but I know one day there will be enough of us out there that people will start to accept us. 

I now know its not a phase and I will always and forever love who I am and what I do.
As always thank you for reading and ill have more post to come soon!

Stay Scary!! 

  

You don't need Wire.

I was looking all over the web for new ideas on how to make new products or to take an already awesome idea and make it my own. As I have said in a previous post I want to open my own shop online. Well in order to do that I need buy-able items to put in my store.
Don't get me wrong I have tons of great products to put in my shop, however if they are not buy-able products than people will not buy.

I found this awesome video that was nicely shot of a 5 strand braid wire wrapping on how to make a Celtic braid. I thought "that's too hard" and " I'll never be able to do that"
Thankfully she was an amazing teacher. I was able to learn it super fast and in my excitement and still watching this woman doing this amazing braid with wire I realized... I don't have wire to accomplish this amazing look. I don't have the little jewels she has in order to make it look like hers.
I also realized WAIT I am NOT HER.

This got me thinking... Humm what DO I have in order to accomplish this amazing new to me technique?

A few months ago my boyfriend and I went to a bead shop here where we live and see I have always been intimidated to work with wire seeing that I have always thought that it was supper hard to manipulate. Well with our visit to the shop we ended up buying seed beads for me and black elastic cording for him ( he has his own projects he works on)
The exact kind he bought is called Elasticity .039 in - 1.0 mm. 82 Feet 25 M. by Beadalon.

I decided to grab it and try it out. I did exactly how she did it on her video and even though mine came out a little smashed up and way different looking because I decided to use a different type of material than wire, I was really pleased with the out come of it!
It has that Gothic vibe I like most if not all of my jewelry to have. The seed beads I put in it are #6 SB SL Sapphire AB.

I am supper happy to now know a new to me technique that I can use on not only with wire (and I will be doing this on wire!) but on elastic as well.

We never stop learning and as a new OR old shop owner we need to always try and learn NEW techniques even if we think its scary. We can do it!
I proved to myself that I can over come a silly little fear with not having the items I thought I needed and with having different type of material made my item a lot different than the original.

Thank you! I will be making more post like this soon!
In the mean time check out my tiwtter I have have photos of the bracelet I made there!! @christin3creats
 https://twitter.com/christin3creats

Christine Creates

This blog is about my creations and how I like to create as well as what I like to create.
I have a large range but at the same time I feel like my range is not that big.

I like working with polymer clay (the oven baked kind), wire, sewing, elastic, seed beads, I like to mold by hand as well as molds, rhinestones, charms, spikes and studs, lace, and ribbon.

These are literally just a few things I like to work with when I'm making my jewelry. I hope to be working with resin in the future.

I will be opening a shop online for all of my handmade crafts very soon. My goal is to try and get that going before the end of this year (2015) Seeing that we are already in November and I have a lot of awesome projects and ideas that I'm working on at the moment I feel good about getting the shop open before the new year,

I will be going with Big Cartel as a shop because this will allow me to design it how I want my shop to be.
My inspiration for my crafts are Gothic, horror, fantasy, science fiction, punk, romance, steam punk and even playful. Yes my style is very, VERY eclectic in witch I have gathered from both childhood and into adulthood.
As I get done with the final touches in my shop I will be posting when it will be up and ready for everyone to come in and buy!

 Until my next post... Stay scary!!
 Also you can find me on Twitter at christin3creats
 https://twitter.com/christin3creats

P.S. I am by NO means a pro at writing. So please be kind with the comments.

How to make bangle bracelets...

 If you have just a few simple things in your laying around you can make bangle bracelets out of them!

1) You'll need a large plastic cup. This you can get from any fast food place you had a drink from.
I got my cup from a fast food place.
2) Scissors. Any scissors will do as long as they are able to cut threw plastic.
3) Tape. Any kind of tape will do. I so happen to have masking tape and that works just fine too.

Now what you do is simple. You snip off the tip of the plastic cup just like I did on the photo on top.
Then you tape it to however big (or small if you don't want a loose bangle) you loose you like your bangle to be. Just be aware that you need to be able to slide it off and on your wrist.

Now that you have it the size you want it you just tape it up. After you tape it is the best part (lets face it WE do NOT want to just wear a plastic lid on our wrists... RIGHT?!)

Now with this bangle guide will be great for wires, polymer clay colors, air dry clay or just anything you know that would be perfect for your new handmade bangle!

Remember this plastic lid is JUST a guide for you to use while you make your real bangle. Unless you like to wearing cut up plastic lids. =)

Stay tuned for photos on how mine turned out using the guide!
If you are more visual and would like to see a video on how I did this than just leave me a comment and I will post one up! Thank you!


P.S.  THIS IS JUST A GUIDE! Remember to take the polymer clay off the guide before baking. The lid is plastic and will melt.