Happy Fat Tuesday!

Me and my niece were busy making some adorable little pig cupcakes. Sweethearts and Necco Wafers along with some frosting work wonders.

- Karen

Flower Earring Holder

My niece got her ears pierced. She then quickly amassed this collection of different earrings for every occasion. I had this idea to create an flower shaped earring holder. Now this project requires some odd skills. You need to be able to put a hole in a heavy plate and you need to be able to solder. Really neither of which are that hard.

Start off by cutting petal shapes out of screen. Keep the shape somewhat simple.

 Then cut a piece of copper wire.

And for the wire around the screen.

Make sure the screen is free of any grease or dirt. Then apply a foil tape around it. This is the tape that is used to create stained glass.

 Then spot solder the wire form to the screen. This is necessary to give the screen the stiffness it needs. After this is done you can spot solder all of the petals together.

Then I took a heavy piece of wire (like a wire coat hanger) and wrapped the end with the foil tape. This will need soldered to the under side of your flower.

For some added rigidity (and you hide the ugly solder job I did) I created a coil out of the copper wire and soldered that on as well. 

Once I was done with all the spot soldering I went over the entire flower again to fill in all the gaps. I then decided to do the optional step of adding leaves.

Using some thick copper foil I had I cut out two leaf shapes. I intentionally added ribs to the top with the though of being able to hang necklaces or bracelets on them.

These were then soldered onto the rest of the flower.

Next came attaching it to a heavy plate. Mine is a homemade ceramic plate but you could use any plate. You just need to make sure it is heavy enough to hold your flower upright. I put a hole in the center and put the "stem" down through. This will just need epoxied into place.

Then everything got painted. Be careful painting the screen as if it is put on to thick the holes will fill up. After the paint dried I glued on a piece of stained glass in the center. You could use a button or something similar as well.

And after that you have a brand new earring holder. A flower is just one idea. The possibilities are really endless on different designs you could do.

 -Karen

AG Dog Toy

This one is a super simple AG dog accessory. Just take a few colors of embroidery floss. I used 12 strands about a foot long. Split them into three equal sections.

Braid.
 

Put one knot toward the middle. You could add a bead but I wanted it to be magnetic so I painted a nut black. Slide it on and not the other side.

That is all it takes to make a AG tug of war style dog toy.

-Karen

AG Dog Food Bag

To go along with the dog food bowl I needed to make a bag as well. Started with a empty dog food bag (real size of course).

Then  cut out a little section at the top. It is about 3.5"x4.5". It just so happened that there was a little dog in the corner.

Next I took the sides apart and cleaned them both. You don't want any dog food residue in there.

Then the sides went back together. Zip them shut and remove the plastic zipper. Don't loose it as you will be putting it back on. Flip them so the right sides are together.

Then using embroidery floss to stitch down the three open sides. I also reinforced this with hot glue. Probably not necessary but little kids can be very hard on things.

Flip the bag right sides out again.

Slide on the zipper. Then put a little dab of hot glue on each end of the opening. This is to keep the plastic piece from sliding off.

 You could just keep the bag empty. I decided to make it look like there was dog food in it. I used a piece of packaging foam to be the filler. Really you could use a ton of different material. Anything that is laying around.

Using the same method as the dog food bowl add seed beads and glue.

Paint them brown if necessary. Then just glue it into the bag. That is it. Now "fill" your AG dog bowl.

-Karen

AG Dog Bowls

I bought my niece a dog for her AG doll for Christmas. Actually my dog bought it for her haha. They look alike. So I have been making some accessories to go along with it. First up is dog bowls and a food bag.

To make the dog bowls I started with two empty make up containers.

Using a Dremel I cut off the top threaded portion.

Then I did a little sanding to make the top smooth.

A quick coat of spray paint made them look like real dog bowls.

But I decided to take it a little further by drawing bones and labeling each bowl. Then I clear coated to protect it.

I decided to fill the bowls with "food" and "water. For the water bowl I simply poured some left over clear epoxy into the bowl. For the food I mixed some glue, brown paint, and seed beads. I laid it in the bowl and let it dry.

That is all there is to creating some simple dog bowls. Tomorrow I will cover how to make the food bag.

- Karen