27 Aug

Season 12 Finale!

Posted under SYTYC
By Missy

How was your weekend everyone? I spent some time last week with some of my favorite people in the world at a girls camp in New Hampshire. One night while we did skits in the ampatheater on the lake shore the sunset was especially beautiful. I wish my phone had been able to capture it a little better.

But anyway, the seasons of SYTYC always go by so fast don’t they? I can’t believe we’ve already been through the 9 weeks of the challenge and we’re down to the final two!

This week the challenge isn’t anonymous. I figure you have already figured out who is who by now so there isn’t much point in not telling you anymore

Like always the poll is in the sidebar and will be open until Thursday night. Make sure you vote early and let others know they need to head on over, too!

Craft #1 - Helix Jewelry Display by ChiWei @ One Dog Woof

I’ll be attending my first craft show this fall and I wanted to make sure I had a unique way to display my trinkets beyond just laying them out on a table. In order to create height and interest, I created a Helix Jewelry Display using a table leg and some dowels. The best part is, if I add a coat of food-safe Shellac on top, I can also use this as a rack to dry some homemade pasta. Yay for multi-taskers!

As I walked through the hardware store looking for dowels, I came upon the table leg and banister section of the store, where I found a lonely 21″ table leg all by itself, with a big yellow clearance tag on it for $1. One dollar! I knew it was destined to become part of my craft project! The table leg became the center post for the display. The arms are cut from 1/2″ oak dowels, and I bought a 8″ circular base from Michaels.

I marked the table leg to drill holes in a spiral helix pattern as a nod to my inner scientific geek. I was lucky that the table leg was already 6 sided, so I did not need to measure angles as I went around; I only needed to measure the vertical distance between each arm. Then I drilled 7/16″ holes, shoved in the arm dowels, glued them in place, and sanded the whole thing lightly. That was followed by a coat of primer then two coats of gloss spray paint.

I plan on adding lazy susan hardware to the bottom so that the entire thing can rotate on its center axis. I think this display will attract attention at my craft booth, show off my jewelry at home, and when I make pasta, will enable me to not clutter up my entire kitchen with drying noodles! What do you think?

Craft #2 – Arts & Crafts Style Mirror by Erin @ Erin’s Creative Energy

This entire competition experience has been amazing! I cannot believe I
am here in the finale getting to show off one of the my biggest projects ever! I present to you, my Arts & Crafts Style Mirror.

This idea rattled around in my mind ever since my first stained glass class. Maybe earlier than that. I always wanted to see stained glass combined with a mirror. I even have a faux stained glass mirror that I took from my mom’s house when I left for college. It was very tiny, but I think that’s the seeds of my inspiration.

The thing that blows my mind the most: I did this in four days. Seriously, FOUR DAYS!!! I can thank my husband for all the advice, answering of questions, and finding videos for me to reference. I also need to thank my children for allowing me the time to accomplish parts of this while they were awake.

This entire project started with a contractor’s grade mirror picked up off the side of the road. I have a friend to thank for telling me about that! You know who you are: “Thank you!” I broke the mirror (partially) on my first cut. Fortunately, I adjusted and ended up needing to make it a few inches smaller than originally planned, which actually worked out better in the long run.

I then designed, cut, ground, foiled, and soldered the individual glass pieces; finally caulking the stained glass to the top off the mirror.

I also designed, cut, half-lapped (first time ever), routed, glued, sanded, stained, SANDED, sealed, SANDED, and waxed the frame. There was A LOT of sanding involved. By far the most tedious task.

The piece is hanging in my front entry way and makes quite a statement. It will go great once we put up our new door. Our new door has a quarter panel stained glass window in the top with the same color of glass, not quite the same style as the mirror, but enough continuity to look wonderful together. At least that’s the picture in my mind.