Glitter Bottles

For those of you who know me, you know I love anything sparkly.  Growing up as a child I put glitter on everything.  Book reports, school projects, you name it there was glitter on it.  So when I saw this project on Pinterest, I knew this was right up my alley.  This project is so easy to do and takes about 5 minutes.  Today I have my lovely sister, Kristen assisting with this craft.   

Items you will need:
Pledge Floor Care Finish
Bottles (you can find these at Michael's for 99 cents)
Glitter- I got this whole canister at Wal Mart for $4

Step One: Pour the Pledge Floor Care Finish into your bottle

Step 2: Swirl the Pledge around the inside of the bottle making sure you coat the entire inside
Step 3: Dump out any excess liquid

Step 4: Pour a generous amount of glitter into your bottle.  If you are using two colors of glitter, you have one of two options.  If you want the colors equally distributed, mix the colors together before you dump them into the bottle.  If you want the colors to be more swirled, dump each color of glitter into the bottle

Step 5: Slowly swirl the glitter around the inside of the bottle until the whole inside s covered.  You can add more glitter as necessary.
Step 6: Dump out excess glitter. 

Note- if you are not happy with your results, all you have to do is rinse out the inside of the bottle with water, and all of the glitter will come out.  Then you can repeat steps 1-6 again.

Voila!  You have a glitter bottle.  I have one displayed on my bookcase.  I have also seen people use these as vases (fake flowers only!)  For extra jazz, you can either buy a bottle stopper with a jeweled top or you can glue a jewel on yourself. I bought the bottle like this and really love the added sparkle of the jewel.

Beaded Necklace

So, when I was home at my parent's house, I found a beautiful yellow dress that is perfect to wear to work, on weekends, etc. (yeah tax free clothes in PA!)  With the new trends this season, I thought an electric blue necklace with green accents would be perfect to wear with the dress.  I searched high and low and could not find a necklace that I liked and was in my price range.  So, I figured why not make it?  My inspiration was this other necklace I had bought at a department store which I love and get lots of compliments on (pictured below).

 Normally, I love bling bling (clearly I am my Grammy's granddaughter), so the necklace I am going to teach you how to make will have lots more sparkle and shine.  Here goes...

Items you will need:
Small pliers
Wire Cutters- Note I would not recommend the pliers or wire cutters in this picture.  I actually had to return them.  Your best bet is buying them at Home Depot.  I bought a set for $13 that worked much better.
Chain (I used an 18 inch one)
Headpins
Jump Rings (not pictured)
Clasp
Beads of your choice (make sure the holes are small so the headpins will stay in)

Step 1: Attach clasp to the end of your chain by using a jump ring

Step 2: Put headpin through the hole of the bead

Step 3: Clasp the pliers around the headpin close to the base of the bead.  This was one of the first ones I did so I was still learning.  As I went on, I learned that the headpin bends better if you give a tiny bit of space between the pliers and the top of the bead. 

Step 4: Bend the headpin down over the top of the pliers

Step 5: Bend the straight part of the headpin around the part of the headpin close to the base of the bead to start creating your loop.

Step 6: Continue bending the headpin until you have a full circle at the base of the bead.  You may need to play with the position of the pliers during this step. Note- since I posted this I took a jewelry class and this is not exactly the correct technique...but you get the idea.

Step 7: Cut the excess wire from the headpin.  Use pliers to push edge of headpin toward the circle at the base of the bead as needed

Step 8: Take a jump ring and open it with the pliers so you can put the loop you just created with the headpin inside it

Step 9: String the jump ring through the chain of your necklace and squeeze the loop closed with your pliers
Step 10: Repeat steps 1-9 until your necklace is full of beads as desired.

• I put a larger bead in every other link and then two small beads in every other link.  
• I used various sized jump rings to affix the beads to the chain so the beads fell at different lengths.  
• I started beading the chain at about 4 inches on the left.  
• The section I beaded was about 9 inches.  You will notice that those dimensions make the beaded part of the necklace not centered.  However, different shirts and clothes call for you to wear the necklace at different lengths, so you want to leave extra chain on one side so you can adjust the length as necessary (I left 5 inches on the right)

Step 11: Add a small bead to the end of the chain without the clasp for an added pizazz

Now you have a beautiful piece of art you can wear! (And please note in the sunlight it is very sparkly- just as I had intended.  I hope I am making my grandmother proud right now).  And of course, I want to give a special shout out to my mother who is also very crafty herself and supported my creativity over the years.

For those of you who are not crafty, I am selling these necklaces on Etsy and can be found here:  http://www.etsy.com/people/PartybyNicole

About Me

During the course of my life, I would like to consider myself fairly crafty.  In college, I even went so far as to paint Van Gogh's "Starry Night" on a picture frame (it took two solid days).  We recently bought a house so I have picked up crafting again.