Flat Spiral Crystal Bracelet

Summer Bday gift part 2

My friend, Summer's birthday gift started with the Crystal Flower Bracelet, but it looked too lonely in the gift box so I had to make something else for her. :) Since nothing came to mind, I went back to an old stand by. I love the RAW and flat spiral stitches. :)

I didn't like how just the pearls in the middle looked so I decided to just to turn it into a sample piece and try out alternating crystals ini the center. Then I liked the look of them together and continued until I finished the bracelet. I like the look of the ends being a little different but still symmetrical. :) What do you guys think? :)

Materials:

13mm lobster clasp 

6mm Swarovski Crystal Pearls in light blue

4mm Swarovski Crystal Pearls in cream

6mm Bicone Swarovski Crystals in aqua

8lb Fireline 

Seed bead SGB co 15-457G size15 bronze

Seed bead size 11 19A Toho blue

To finish it off, I made her a birthday card. She collects buttons so I used them to make bundles of "balloons". :) I also included a bag of buttons from my collection to add to hers. :) I tied the gift box with the rainbow string I used for the string on the button balloons as well. 

Happy Belated Birthday Summer!!! :)

Just a quick aside about my buttons. I saw this set of drawers next to a dumpster one day and decided to go rifling through the drawers. What I found was a drawer full of buttons! Score! I happily took them home, sorted, and bagged them. They really do come in handy. hehe You know you are a real crafter when...you are happy to find a big bag of buttons that someone else didn't want. hehe I have had them for years and still haven't been able to use them all. :)

For a friend's 30th Bday present

My friend's hubby wanted to do something special for his wife's 30th birthday. Since she loves scrapbooking, he decided to have all her friends make a page for a book as a present for her birthday. I think it is a very good and thoughtful idea. What a wonderful husband. :) This is a surprise, so shhh...hehe Don't worry..I made this page on 9-28-11 but I won't post this post until her birthday. :)

My addition to her scrapbook

 I have not scrapbooked for years. I don't even know where my supplies went to. A trip to Michael's remedied that. :) The thing is, the page could only be 8x8 inches. Dang, I had a hard time fitting everything I wanted to onto such a small page. I know you should leave room for writing something and dates and places but as you can tell from this blog, I am not that great of a writer so, I filled up the page mostly with pictures. :) 

For the picture on the top left corner, I took two pictures of each of us separately with our respective squirrels and flipped her's. Now it looks like we are both trying to feed the squirrels cupcakes. hehe And the top squirrel has a party favor...hehe. The bottom left picture was done by taking the color photo and print it out in sepia. Then I cut out the crown and the party favor from the color photo and glued it onto the sepia version. I raised the crown with foam dots. I had to add the streamers separately because they were cut out of the photo when it was taken New Years Eve. :) I couldn't fit in "Happy" so I just added a happy face. I hope the message gets through. :p 

Front of Birthday Card

I still had a bunch of stuff left since I bought supplies for a 12x12 inch page so, I decided to make her a birthday card. I didn't really know what to do with the front so I just added the sepia version of one of the photos from the scrapbook page. The New Years Eve photo would've been a better fit. Oh well...

Inside of the Birthday Card

I started making the card from the bottom inside panel. The paper is actually from a sheet of paper with stripes of different designs for St. Patty's day. I cut out which stripes I liked and just put them together. I decided to put this picture of the two of us to make it look kind of scrapbookish. The frame was needed to make it stand out from the background paper. Luckily the side panel had some blue that matched the my clothes. hehe I did end up writing a message for her on the bottom panel.

I had this cute picture of the birthday girl being goofy from when we went to the Mystery Spot in California. It was perfect to go along with the tower of cakes. I was going to leave the picture alone. It would of looked like she was asking if she was as tall as the cakes, but putting a candle in her hand makes it look like she is trying to be the cake, at least to me. hehe

Gift inside the card

I added a Michael's gift card to help keep her supplies stocked. hehe I was planning to put a blank frame in the center of the scrapbook page. I would put this card in the frame and then ask her to put a picture of the two of us celebrating her birthday together in the frame that the card would vacate. But I forgot that it was only an 8x8 inch page so, there was no room. I was going to the put the "Happy 30th Bday" message and my signature around the frame.

I am very jealous of home because for now, she has a room just for her scrapbooking. When I get my dream house, I will definitely have a craft room. Each wall of storage might have to be for a different type of craft. hehe

Front of Envelope

The card was too thick for the envelope so I had to make my own with the leftover paper. Isn't it cute? :) 

Back of Envelope

I added "hbd" aka happy birthday. It had to be in lowercase because I used up all the uppercase letters.

I think for now I will stick to beading. Scrapbooking and card making just takes too much out of me. hehe But at least I think I still got it. :)

Panda's Tip of the Day:

When you get that big sheet of sticker letters, I like to cut out the letters I will use, individually so that I can dry fit them on the page. It helps with placement and you know for sure that they will fit. The letter stickers are usually on clear plastic too so it really helps you visualize what it will look like. I did this for the other stickers as well, especially the big stickers. :)

Keep busy :)