Vintage Fried Marble Necklace

I kept seeing fried/oven baked marble necklaces on pinterest and thought it looked like a fun science experiment. While at my parents for the holidays I asked to confiscate some vintage marbles that were from my grandfather's collection and with some trepidation about blowing up glass marbles and harming myself I decided to give it a whirl. I couldn't find the oven baked marble recipe I had originally found on pinterest so I google searched and found a recipe for fried marbles. I would give the person credit but I lost the site.

The basic concept is to put marbles in a pan on the stove in between medium and high for about 10min. and continually roll them around with a wooden spoon. Have a container of water with ice in it ready to go and as soon as you are done frying the marbles dump them into the ice water. You will see them crackle immediately. I left the marbles in the water for about 1 min. to cool down.

To make the necklaces I went to a craft store and purchased "bead caps", put a wire loop through the bead cap, epoxied on the bead cap to the marble and then purchased a chain from the craft store. I made 3 necklaces for $10; one for my mom, one for my sister and one for me. Now we have wearable jewelry made from my grandfather's marble collection.

**This was a really neat science project. I have many left over crackled marbles waiting to be used. They look beautiful in the sun and are fairly durable for being cracked. I experimented by putting in a plastic bag and dropping it on my paved driveway. The marble didn't break until several very hard slams to the ground and then it did shatter.

Easy Peasy Flower Cuff Bracelet Tutorial

I was meandering around Michaels Craft Store yesterday looking for a new exciting project to cheer me up when I found this metal cuff made by Bead Landing. I then had this idea to search for something to attach to it and found this pendent flower also made by Bead Landing. Using a 50% off coupon I was able to get both pieces of jewelry for $5.50. I found some multi-purpose epoxy and off I went on an experimental fun easy project. Check out the steps below!

**Two things I learned while making this project. Bend the cuff to fit first. My wrist is small and I didn't think to do this until after it was put together (which worked but was more difficult) and think about weight of pendant (the flower is awesome looking but a bit heavy so the bracelet tends to want to slide around).

Materials: Scissors, epoxy, scrap cardboard, popsicle stick or something similar, piece of fine sandpaper and your jewelry pieces.

First: Lightly sand your jewelry where you plan on adhering it together.

Put your two part epoxy on a corner of your cardboard.

Mix the epoxy.

Put plenty of epoxy on all parts of both pieces of jewelry that you will be adhering together.

Hold for 5 minutes or until dry. Hint: If you have an extra sent of hands have someone put a blow dryer over it to help it adhere faster so it will be less likely to move around while drying.

Wear and enjoy!

Handmade Sterling Silver Ring

In keeping with the intention of continuing to explore and create art, I decided to sign up and take a Sterling Silver Ring making class through a community art shop. This class was through the Memorial Art Gallery Creative Workshop;http://mag.rochester.edu/creativeworkshop/. This was my first time going to this community art center.

I've always wanted to create a ring myself out of metal; but for those people who know me my attempt to audit a graduate level jewelry and metalsmithing class turned out to be a big flop. I did complete a solder plate before dropping out (mainly because the class was completely over my head). This was a big disappointment to me because I just wanted to make a simple ring. So when I found this community class online where you make your own ring in a one day 3 hour class I signed up!

I found out that I had learned something from that graduate level class. I understood the language, general technique and wasn't afraid of the torch any longer. The actual material to make this ring was one piece of 16 gauge sterling silver wire for $5.50! The demonstration was about an hour so I made the ring in about 100 minutes from start to finish. Below is the final product. I was very pleased and really excited about the outcome. It looks and feels professional!