Finally- the Perfect Recipe!

You may or may not know that I am too...um, let's say, "frugal," to buy deco sauce. I make my own instead. When making sauces for drizzling on my charms, I mix glue and food coloring. It's pretty effective and very very price-friendly. However, more often then not, I need to make chocolate sauce. Sounds simple, right? Well, it is, except brown is a really difficult color to concoct. Add too much of one color and you might end up with a muddy  green or orange or purple. Here's a video on how to make the perfect color brown (chocolate- courtesy of Carie Shott and her awesomeness). There will be cases when you follow the recipe, and the mixture ends up green. All you have to do is shake it some more to make the brown. You may double/triple/half the recipe as you wish. Please enjoy!

Plus, exciting news- I recently opened up a Pintrest and Youtube account. You're welcome to check them out!

http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCOXPLUdSL9HmSIbbyWTS5VA
http://pinterest.com/kimlychee/boards/

Bye everyone!

My Charm Essentials...Video and Extra Stuff

I know I already made a post on my ultimate craft kit or something, but this time, it's in video format and has my complete list of everything I use! Check it out, and please enjoy Please take a minute to subscribe and comment for more fun videos! Thanks so much everyone.

Bye! Oh wait! I forgot that I occasionally use hot glue and my Silhouette Portrait! (:

Super Charms Kit

Hello everyone! I've taken a long time to write this post because, I wanted to make my cold porcelain first (white bag near center). Cold porcelain is made from 1 cup cornstarch, 1 cup white glue, 1 tsp. vinegar, and 1 tsp. petroleum jelly (the thing you use to moisturize). Once everything is mixed up (it will be lumpy), pop it into the microwave 6-7 times for 15 seconds each. Once you've finished, lay the solution over a surface with lotion all over it to prevent sticking). Knead for a bit. Then, roll out a small ball. If when flattened, and it has cracks, add more glue and knead. Repeat until you have a lump of cold porcelain that you can use to make charms and stuff. Refrigerate over night. Store in lotioned, airtight bag at room temperature afterwards.

Here are a few discoveries I've found about cold porcelain:

• My mixture is very nonsticky, so every separate piece that I make, I have to glue together.
• Other people say that when you color cold porcelain (not that much of a pain in the butt, since most f the time I have to mix colors in my air-dry clay anyways), use eye shadow/ chalk/paint/markers. I've found that the best results lay within food coloring! Of course, you can only get the colors that you can mix from regular food coloring colors (rd, yellow, blue, green), however, the color provides darker coverage than the other choices faster. 
• To color cold porcelain with chalk pastels, rub the piece you want colored over the chalk stick! To give pieces shading, go about as you normally would with a soft brush.
• When making jewelry beads, I love using the Folk Art Extreme Glitter Gold and Silver paints from Plaid. I wait for the cold porcelain to dry (about a day) before painting it. I choose this paint because the color with glitter is crazy sparkly and pretty- just like any piece of jewelry you would find!
• I have a black felt tip marker to draw faces on my kawaii charms.
• The white glue is for attaching pieces.
• The clear glue is for making special charms (tutorial on itsratherpretty.blogspot.com to be anticipated).
• The Mod Podge is for sealing in glitter on my charms.,
• The metal icing tips are for dessert charms (I have tips 18,16,5, and 3- circles and stars)

I've made a key lime pie, european bead bases, and the first ghost in my collection of ghosts. I think cold porcelain is great fro making ghosts because of its translucent color!

I Love Kits!

Whenever I get partcularrly obsessed with a crafting opic, I absolutely have to make a kit for all of its essentials! Here's my list of eerything you need in your charm making kit!

1. Crayola Model Magic Clay- much less expensive than polymer clays, but acts exactly like them. Also, cheaper than Martha Stewart's version. You should keep in mind to keep these things in airtight containers, because thy are pretty sensitive to the air. However, on the plus side, if a piece of clay is still spongy but too firm, water it down to soften it. (Colors will come out!)
2. Craft knife-about 2$ at most hardware and craft stores. This tool provides for clean and easy trimming of excess clay.
3. Staples-Ok, if you want to buy eyerings for each of your charms, try curling staples first. I got a pack of 1000 free with a mii stapler at the 99c store! You can curl the staples with a chopstick, leaving a bit of stick to stick into the charm of course!
4. Hot glue- as I've mentioned in the previous charm post, hotglue can be used to make great plastic-like charms and pieces!
5. Elmer's Clear Glue- I always use this as aa varnish for my charms, plus, if the coat is thick enough, I can even make it have a plastic coat effect, dries much clearer than hotglue, but can be applied half as thickly at one time.
6. Screwdrivers and Flathead-Minis- these tools will help will a lot of the deeper texxtures that you might want to make.
7. Toothbrush-helps with make a piece of clay look like the inside of a cake.
8. Food Dye and Elmer's School Glue- even though Elmers claims its school glue dries clear, it doesn't. Luckily, we can use it's solid color to our advantage. By mixing different food colorings in, you can make your own deco sauce!
9. Non-stick Craft mat- saves all of your surfaces from the troubles of working with glues, colorings, and staining clay.
10. Make-up brush- brush used to apply tints and shades to clay for more realistic affects.
11. Colored Powders- you can use chalk pastels or anyother sticky colored powder. I use the colors of blush and eyeshadows that I never use.
12. Pipes- to pipe out ribbons of "cream" from the clay. Use with different pipe tops.

That's what i have in my kit. I'll keep you posted with more of the essentials. Bye for now!

Back to Crafting!

Welcome back everyone! I've used the 2 and 1/2 month crafting break to really organze my crafting and supplies. I even got a closable notebook to plan out any projects that I want to tackle for this year! In the last hour, I took out and adjusted a few polymer clay charms that I made.

This is a close-up of the mascara brush charm that I made. Using Crayola Magic Model Clay for all the following charms... (The kit I got was 20 dollars for 16 packs of all primaries, black and white, orange, green , and purple.) First, I made the little grip, and poked a large hole through the center of it through the top (not all the way though). Next, I made the stick thing. I rolled out six smaller segments to stick onto the top of the stick to quickly emulate a brush end of a brush. The eye ring was made from a curled staple.

This next charm is a capless lipstick. I made the black holder part first. then, out of red clay, I formed a cylinder with the closest matching circumfrence as best as I could. The gold part was actually made from 2 thin rings of yellow that were later colored gld with a gold Elmer's Painters opaque paint marker (1.75$). the eye ring (plus all of the following charms) will be made from curled staples.

This green apple charm was made with green and white clay. The ratio was like 1:4. I rolled the clay mixture into a ball. Then, I used a dotting tool to poke a little hole (not completely through) on the top and the bottom. Next, I used the pointy end of a cone-shape-tipped pencil to make both apple depressions more realistic and spreaded. The stem was made from brown and white clay, with the ration being 1:5. After the charm "dried" (still very spongy texture), I used the silver Elmer's Journaling pen to make the ring around the apple. I finished the charm by poking a staple-eyelid into the side of the fruit.

For this fruit charm. I used red clay and orange and yellow clay for the fruit part. I first made the easy part- the slice. I made tthe middle part with very thin strands of red. For the peel, (I had to make several attempts) I rolled out a thin piece of red and stuck it on the slice. I trimmed the excess peel part with a knife. I later stuck an eyelid on a side.

This is the first time I make a "glass" charm. I used hot glue to make the semi-clear cup. I first made a flat dot from hot glue and made a spirally pattern up to make the cup's stem. I then made the cup part out of hot glue. I attached the cup part to the stem with a bead of hot glue after both parts dried. Then, I made a spiral-piped ice cream shape with two cinnamon sticks and a bunch of truffles!

 

And now, for my favorite one...

 

 

This was my second charm that put hotglue into consideration. h, in cas you can't tel what this is, it's a clear tube of peach lotion with a silver cap attached on the side. The first thing that I did was I made a kind of bowler hat shaped piece out of black clay. I cylindered a piece and made the top's circumfrence a bit smaller than the bottom's. I used a rounded chopstick to make the opening. When the piece dried, I colored it silver and attached it to the side of the peach lotion tube. The second thing to do is to make the peach lotion. I used orange to white to red (the ratio is 4:10:1) to form the sort of tube shape with the top like a circle and the where the end tapers to a flat point. When it dried, I made a puddle of hotglue on a nonstick craft mat. While it was still hot, I dipped the tapered end of the peach piece in and pulled upward. Pull up only until the hotglue that gets pulled up alongside hints thinning. In other words, you want to have the hot glue on the "tube" end to be the same length and similar thickness. Hold it like in this pulled position until the glue dries. When dried, use a scissor to cut off excess hotglue. For the mouth of the tube, turn off/take out the wire of the hotglue gun. This way, the gun will start to cool and squeeze out less amounts of glue at one time while still being able to squeeze it. Make a flat dot on the circle end of the tube. wait about 20 sec. to dry. Afterwards, make another slightly smaller dot on top of the origninal. Wait 10 sec. Use a flat side of the glue gun to shape the second dot into a lipstickslant shape. Let dry. Insert an eyering and hang on a jutting needle. Apply a thick coat of clear glue over the tube's surface to emulate the look of lotion inside a plastic bottle. I use Elmer's Clear glue. Let dry. If some glue drips off, you can use your fingers to "smooth" it back into place. I had to do this once!

 

Check back later for more charming updates and projects! Have a creative day, and see everyone next post!