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Refashioning Store-Bought Jewelry

While I don’t often buy jewelry (and why would I? I have a room full of supplies for custom awesomeness), I do go out to the stores to see what is trendy or new, and I occasionally buy pieces to take apart and refashion into better pieces.

Last weekend I was at the mall and stopped into For Love 21, my favorite accessory store. It is an offshoot of the Forever 21 brand, so that means one thing: on trend, and cheap. I found the following earrings I couldn’t resist for the low low price of $3.80.

You can see the potential, right? The base metal peacock feather is fantastic. Well made, nice etching, etc. What really irritated me about these earrings are the insanely crappy ear-hooks (only tiny people with tiny ears can wear that kind of ear wire), and the even crappier beads. Plastic! Bad colors! I shudder to think. Yuck.

Okay, so I took them all apart and refashioned them with high quality gunmetal findings and glass beads in appropriate colors for less than a dollar. So my *new* earrings still cost less than $5. And they are magnifique, yo.

So don’t discount the mall for finding supplies. You might be surprised at what you find, and how you can improve the pieces to your own standards and taste.

You can buy (and subsequently upgrade) your own pair of earrings here. I think they would also look good with pale pink, like albino peacocks.

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Stitches West 2011

This weekend was Stitches West, and as usual, my mom and I headed down there for two days of wandering around the market, buying stuff. No, we don’t bother with classes, we’re in it for Stuff Acquisition. Friday, we drove down with my aunt as well and stopped at Kinokinuya in San Jose as well (and we got caught in Friday commute traffic coming back up). Saturday it was just my mom and I and we also stopped for In-N-Out burgers.

Here’s what I got:

Oh DEAR that is a lot of yarn.

From left to right: Sanguine Gryphon Skinny Bugga! in Ruddy Daggerwing, Sanguine Gryphon Bugga! in Lubber Grasshopper, Wool Candy in Capsicum (?), Skinny Bugga! in Boxelder Beetle, Bugga! in Pink Dragonfly, Creatively Dyed Yarn Sami in Falling Springs (the picture does not do this yarn justice – it’s a deep magenta that glows in the sunlight), Miss Babs Yummy Sock yarn in Indigo Bunting, Sanguine Gryphon  Eidos in Antlia, Eidos in Hydra.

Yeah yeah, six skeins of Sanguine Gryphon, whatever. 😉

It’s a favorite, what can I say? Their booth was really great, and it was so nice to see all the yarn displayed in real life as I have only ordered the yarn from the internets before.

Incidentally, I finished my Brandywine shawl out of Skinny Bugga! and wore it on Day 1. It got a ton of compliments and there were many grabby knitter hands feeling it up, haha! As one lady said, “It’s the knitter’s handshake!” …heh.

It’s awesome.

I only did one mod and it’s not really a mod – for the main chart I did 18 repeats instead of 15, simply because I wanted to use as much of the yarn as possible. And I wound up with very little, so it worked out great.

Anyway, here’s the other stuff I got, mostly a ton of patterns!

Don’t you just LOVE that sweater on the newest Norah Gaughan collection? I sure do. I will have to figure out what I want to make it with. However there are a couple of patterns in the other Berroco booklets I got that I want to make first – they will be totally doable on the knitting machine, as will the White Lies Designs t-shirt pattern in the first pattern photo.

Tonight I cast on for the Bellingrath shawl above, though not in Stitches yarn – in Madelinetosh Sock that I got recently (Christmas-time-ish, I think). Not sure yet what I am going to do with all that gratuitous Bugga up there, but I am sure it will be awesome.

And now I can’t buy yarn for ages. (Except I totally ordered new Felici from Knitpicks today as I needed some needles. Whatevs. Shut up. I had an extra paycheck with overtime on it.)

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On a high line, on a high line

It’s been a long week. Various and assorted disasters awaited me at work (a simultaneous water leak AND gas leak in the same place! Hurrah!) and frankly I couldn’t wait for the weekend to get here, since it’s the first weekend in three, maybe four weeks that I’ve actually been home.

I’ve been futzing around with the cabochons I got online, using the Jewel-It glue, which really seems to create a good bond; I’ve tried prying off the things I’ve glued once everything has set, and I haven’t been able to move them, so that’s good! I would recommend using that glue, then. And I’ve been busy:

I’ve worn the top ring around, it’s quite nice, and I love the color. I just glued the two little white roses this morning – they will be earrings, but they need a day to set. And I haven’t decided what I will do with the large pendant with the ivory cabochon. It’s very nice, just not sure what I will incorporate with it. I’m definitely interested in keeping this going, I will just have to find more filigrees to glue stuff to. I got a few things at U Bead It last weekend (the oval containers you see in the top ring that the cab is set in).

I stopped at Michael’s sometime during the week and saw to my annoyance (heh) that they had a load of new things, including a new display showcasing turquoise, which is just my total weakness and I wound up getting some dangles – just turquoise enamel on metal parts, but there were some other nice actual rock pieces that I will snatch up when everything is on sale, as it inevitably will be. I made these earrings with some of the dangles:

These earrings are actually completely from Michael’s, so you can see what kind of cool stuff you can make from supplies purchased at big box stores. I already had the earring wires (my favorite – they are the “perfect” wires from the general findings section at Michael’s, I rarely have a problem with them falling out of my ears) the chandelier components, and the jump rings. I debated hanging something from the middle of the chandelier but liked how they looked bare more so I left it alone.

So today I don’t have much going on – I was going to go to Winco, but honestly I just want to stay home and veg, since I haven’t been able to do that in weeks. I might go make some rice and have chili beans and rice for an early lunch. That sounds really pretty delicious, actually.

Next weekend is STITCHES WEST and I am very stoked. I have been going steadily to this convention since 2005 (I missed in 2006 as I had just started working for Xerox in San Antonio – the year before I cut classes for two days and flew out for it, haha) and I’m excited for this year for no other reason than: I HAVEN’T BOUGHT YARN IN LIKE FOREVER WAITING FOR THIS DAY. Aside from a random Knit Picks order a few months ago and some sweet sweet Christmas yarn, I have been very good about holding off. In fact, I was a block away from Rumplestiltskin in Sac last weekend (at Waffle Square, enjoying a Bacon Waffle) and I didn’t go in. That’s hardcore, my peeps.

(I did, however, make Margie go to Bead Fetish downtown, hahaha.)

Anyway, so I am trying to finish my Brandywine shawl before I go – hopefully I will make good progress this weekend working on it. I need to finish it by Tuesday or Wednesday so I can block it. It’s about 2/3-3/4 done. I worked on it a lot last night while watching Fringe and Supernatural.

And with that, my rice maker is calling me…