Button And Cat Charm Earrings

    I finally made some earrings with the lever back ear wires I found at Fire Mountain when I bought my elastic cord for the elastic button bracelets.  For this project I also had to buy 24 gauge non tarnishing silver wire and I got that from an Etsy seller.  I found the cat charms on eBay a couple of years ago, they still sell them.  They come in a group of 50 and I have a bunch left even thought I've made other jewelry with them and given some away.  The cat charms are Tibetan silver and come from China.  They remind me of Laurel Burch cats without all the colors.  I found the blue and white buttons on Lots of Buttons.com.  I had the small beads and the jump rings in my small jewelry stash.

  To make the button earrings I had to have some on line help.  I used a tutorial from youtube by Potomac Bead Company to get me started.  The link is here.  The cat charms are just attached to the ear wires with gray thread.  So simple.

   These were fun to make, but they took me a couple of hours because I'm not very good at making jewelry and I had to take the button earrings apart several times before I was happy with the finish.

  I have a couple more pair of lever backs that I'm going to pair up with more buttons and I'm also in the process of making some button brooches with felt and pin backs.

No Sanding, No Staining, Just Chalk Paint

   I have this old end table that I moved into my bedroom next to the recliner.  I love the table, I bought it new in 1991, it's heavy and it has a huge drawer, but it needed to be refinished and I wasn't looking forward to doing all that sanding and staining.

   I found some tutorials on how to use chalk paint and I was sold.  I didn't have to break out the sand paper, I just needed some time, a cool color of paint, a wax, a couple of brushes and a couple of cotton rags.  I also updated the brass drawer pulls with silver rub which was a nice plus because I had never seen silver rub before and I love it.

   I did some research and I found out you can spend a lot on chalk paint.  I did not want to buy a lot of this paint because I don't have any other paint projects other than this one table.  I ended up getting an 8 oz. bottle of Folk Art chalk paint at JoAnn's for $7.99 in the color of Spanish Moss.  There was plenty of paint in that small bottle to do two coats on this end table and I still have some left.  One thing I would say is that I used a sponge brush to apply this and I think I would have done better with a bristle brush.

    The wax I bought for this project was liquid because that was all the store had, but I originally saw a paste wax in the tutorial and I think I would have liked to use the paste better.  The wax I bought was made by Folk Art and it was labeled clear wax.  The wax went on with a brush, you let it dry and then you buff it up.   I bought 8 oz. of liquid wax  for $7.99 and I have lots of wax left over.  I bought the silver rub on Amazon and a small tube (.5 oz) was $6.21 with free shipping.

      This was a super fun project and for less than $25.00 I have a pretty table in my bedroom.

Yard Art Complete.

Okay, so I sanded the bowling ball and then I filled the finger holes with some of the adhesive that I used to glue the glass gems on.  I had read that one person filled the finger holes with cement but I think the caulk is fine.  I let the caulk dry for 36 hours and then I leveled the caulked holes.

On Saturday, I painted the bowling ball silver.  It's hard to spray paint in the wind.  hehehe
I let it dry for overnight.

On Sunday I glued on all the glass gems covering every bit I could.  I was surprised how long this process took because I had to let each section dry for about an hour before I could move the ball and do a new section.  I worked on this from 11:30 a.m. until 4:30 p.m.

This is the finished piece of yard art in my gazing ball holder.

This one is done and that ugly bowling ball looks pretty in the garden now.