The Winter Film Capital of the World, 1910s

So the Iron Craft Challenge 8 this week was to make something to represent your hometown.  I love where I'm from and when I started planning out my project I realized there were quite a few possibilities to represent my little city.  The Blue Angels started here.  We are surrounded by historic sites like the wreck of the Maple Leaf, Harriet Beecher Stowe's House not to mention multiple forts and historic sites.  And of course there are quirky things like our 7 main bridges and being the home of the Elvis hit, Heartbreak Hotel.

I really loved the idea of using charms so I wouldn't have to pick just one thing.

But out of all the vintage pictures of hotels, parks & statues I ended up finding a completely different direction.

Film.

Yep, film.  The Winter Film Capital of the World to be exact.

Well in the 1910's.

So I made a charms out of Shrink Plastic with some of the images I was able to find from our techni-color past.

Honestly, I loved using the shrink plastic but it can be a little tricky.  The instructions let you know up front the images need to be lightened which can make cutting the images down tricky.  (The cut pieces below were not my lightened images but my full color 1st run.)  You can't use the images at full opacity.  As they shrink the ink gets too thick and in some cases blurry and it may not dry even after baking.

But the other issue is figuring out just how small your image can go and still be legible.  A lot of the images I found really started out too small to use for this project since they were smaller than an inch.  I ended up using stills and posters that were around 2 inches to start.

Everything turned out.  I used a bracelet that was already in my stash and removed a few of the beads already there.  I left a few since I felt like it still needed a little sparkle.

All in all I have a cool little piece of hometown history as a new bauble.  There is something really cool about that.

Share Your Love 2011

So Friday I had a crafting party for a good cause.  I got a bunch of my shady cohorts together, sugared them up...and turned them lose with scissors.

But it was for a good cause.  No, really.  Ok, there was some selfish enjoyment of having craft time.

We made Valentine's cards for Etsy's Special Delivery 2011.  They are having a Valentine's party for 18,000 senior citizens that receive Meals-On-Wheels in New York City.

How could I not get involved?  But I knew I needed to have back-up.  So I put the call out and got help from friends and family.

I have to say that besides getting a craft time again - it's always really cool to see all the creative stuff that people think up.

Fancy

Fun 

Classic

Clever

Whimsical

All of them - handmade & heartfelt.

I hated to see them go - but I did the difficult thing and mailed our beautiful babies through rain & snow to people that will hopefully give them good homes.

If you'd like to see all the cool things people sent in this year check out this link:
Etsy Share Your Love - Flickr Photostream