Melting Pot Pendants, and a Give-away!

I am the proud owner of …  a Ranger Melt Pot.  Ohh I love this toy so very much, but I hadn’t played with it for ages, until last week, when the urge suddenly hit me and I got all the equipment out and played around until I decided what to make.  You saw the card I made with the pretty leaf of all seasons on it, which I posted about on Monday of this week, and I promised to post about the other things I’d been busy as a bee making, and here I am, sharing as promised.

The photograph at the head of this post doesn’t show all the pendants I made, so I’ve taken a selection of photos, some grouped, and some single ones, so that you can get an idea of colours and sizes, and also how you can hang these pendants.

I really love the Ranger Melt Pot, however, I found out on Monday (From Beverly of More Ink Please blog) that Ranger no longer make the Melt Pot.  Something to do with the amount of quantity they require their customers to order – and it’s made the tool too expensive for lots of stores to carry.  So rather than relax the rules,  (and lower the price a little) Ranger, it appears, decided that they would no longer make it.  So I’m sorry if I get your creative juices flowing for a Melt Pot, when they’re no longer available.  However … you might be able to still buy one if you have a search around.

Right … now the bad news is over, let’s have a bit of fun shall we?  I realised the other day that we haven’t done a GIVE-AWAY in ages!  So how about we make this post a Give-away, and the winner can choose whichever pendant they would like to have, and I’ll package and post it out to who-ever wins.

All you have to do is ... in the comment section of this post, if you wish to be entered for the Give-Away, just say the word GIVE-AWAY at either the start or the end of your comment.  (Putting it at the start or end of the comment makes it easy for me to find when I’m searching and adding up how many people would like to be entered – so that I can enter that number into the Random Number Selector so that it can choose the winner).   You can, if you want, simply say just ‘GIVE-AWAY’.

I’ll leave the Give-away open until Sunday at 6pm UK time (if you need to work out what time that is where you live,  Mr.Google is very obliging – lol).

Right … enough of me blathering on.  Let’s get cracking with these pendants.  I made them all with the help of my trusty Melt Pot, and I haven’t given them names here, but just kind of labelled them so that you can tell me (if you’re the winner) which pendant you’d like!  (Oh .. and I should say that this is open to all followers – you don’t have to only live in the UK.  I’m happy to post these over-seas).

They’re all different shapes and sizes, and I’ve tried to put them next to each other so that you can gauge the difference in sizes. However, I have remembered to include a rule so that you can actually see the size.

slightly closer up so that you can see the deepness of the blue and some of the patterns which happen as the liquid is poured.

This heart has SO much depth to it.  I added some mica gold dust to the pot and it is this which I managed to catch as if ‘floating’ on the top.  The golden swirls which you see below the surface in this shot, come from some Pearl crystals which I very gently ‘dragged’ through the liquid.

A different shot of this same large heart, so that you can get a view of how the light can change the look of the colours.

This has the colours of Emerald, Gold, Russian diopside and … a whole load of other greens which are winding through the focal ‘gem’

Against a dark background so that you can see how they look against darker colours of clothes.

Now onto the little pendants.  They may be smaller, but they pack their own punch!

The ‘Little Golden Green Triangle’ – at the bottom right of this photo (above), has what looks like gold dust sprinkles over the top of it.  Sadly the photographs just don’t show it properly, but it’s really quite beautiful to the naked eye.

I forgot to include this little green oval (above) in the photo of all the little pendants, so here it is alone.  It looks like it has golden strands threading through it.  It hasn’t.  But it really does have a lot of depth to it.

The little ovals, have two hoops – one at the top and one at the bottom.  You can use these either as a bracelet – or as a pendant, as I’ve made.  The top hoop is for hanging the pendant.  The bottom hoop can have things hung from it, such as a bead, or a little bunch of beads;  a tassel;  a pearl; or, as I’ve done here as an idea – you can hang something else from it.  On the photo above,  I placed an Angel with her own hanging hoop in line with the hoop on the pendant, so that you can see how it might look to have something there.

You don’t even have to have a chain to hang your pendant on.  How about some baby ribbon, as in the photo above?  Soft on the neck too!  The choice is yours.  I’ll supply the chain, or the ribbon (in your choice of colour), so that when you receive your pendant, it’s ready to wear straight away!

The Little Golden Green Triangle.

A slightly lighter blue Little Triangle.

Please note that all the measurements on the rule are in CM (and MM) as that’s what we work in here in the UK (much to my disdain. I grew up with inches and I still can only visualise in inches – but then, I’m practically older than dirt so it figures.  😀 ) … but again, if you ask Google it will give you the conversion.

 

Some of the pendants (particularly the blues) look, in the photographs, as if they have an oily finish, or like they’re wet with something.  It’s just a trick of the light.  The way the flash has hit the surface and bounced back.  None of the pendants are oily, wet, greasy or have anything on them.  It’s just the lighting hitting them in the ‘wrong’ way.  (And I’m a rubbish photographer!).

We’ll end where we began, with a small selection.  But remember that not all the pendants are shown in this photo.  But if you look down the post, you’ll see photo’s of ones which aren’t included in the photo above.

Remember … don’t forget to include the words  ‘GIVE-AWAY’  either at the start or end of your comment so that I know to include you.

If you’re reading this on the main front page of my blog and can’t see where to post a comment, then please scroll all the way up to the title of this post, and next to it, just over a little way to the right of the words, you’ll see a pale grey flag.  Click on that flag and the post will re-load on its own page, where you’ll find the comments section at the bottom of the page, below where the post ends.  😀   Late date/time for entering is this Sunday -19th March 2017, at 6pm UK time.

Thank you so much for coming to share a coffee with me.  Want a fill up of that cup?  Biscuits?

Have a truly blessed rest of your day, wherever you are, whatever you’re doing.  Be good to each other.

 

 

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I Made Flowers – In an enjoyable half an hour of playing with my cauldron!

“You made flowers?  What sort flowers?”  I hear you ask.

I did.  I actually heard you ask ‘what sort of flowers’.  (Ok, well maybe I didn’t, but you were thinking it I bet.)

I needed to make some flowers, but I wanted them to be light in weight, and not able to be flattened out by the postal system, like a paper flower would be.  So I got out my Cauldron  aka:  Ranger Melt Pot,  and decided that I’d hubble, bubble some flowers up.  I looked through the silicon moulds I have which I could use and decided upon the one in the photograph above.

But … I didn’t want to just make one line of flowers.  It felt like an extravagance to get the cauldron going if all I was going to do was make that line of flowers at the top of the mould above.  So I got a few moulds out with the thought that I could make a few bits and keep them on one side for another time.

There.  That would make it worth while!

Half an hour later the flowers were made and this is what they looked like:

Actually … there’s more than the three in that photograph above, but I wanted you to see what they look like before I’d ‘fancied’ them up a tad.  They’re pretty, and I love how the colour turned out.  I used white ultra thick crystals and mixed in some Cosmic Shimmer Crystal Colour Drops, in Azure Blue to obtain that colour – I just added a drop at a time until I felt that I’d reached the colour I had inside my head.

Although the flowers were pretty, I wanted them to have some ‘oomph’ – a bit of a noticeable punch so that they weren’t so ‘flat colour’ looking.

This is how they turned out with some Gilding Wax applied gentlywith my ringer finger. . .

The three on the right have had some Gilding wax applied, and the three on the left are exactly how they were when I turned them out of the mould.

What did I want a line of blue flowers for?  Ahh… go and check out the Handmade Cards category on this blog and you’ll see what I did with them!

Love ~

For those who believe – no explanation is necessary. For those who don’t, no explanation is possible.

A handmade card, but with a story behind the making of it.

Last weekend I had my  cauldron  Ranger Melt Pot out with the idea of making ‘something’ (I knew not what at that moment in time).  I didn’t have a plan.  I just knew I wanted to play with my Melt Pot.  Everything was on my desk, ready and waiting for me to conjure up something which I could make in my Ranger Melt Pot category here on my blog.  But what?  WHAT?

I sat back in my chair and had absolutely no ideas.  My mojo had gone out for drinks and not invited me.  

Ah well, I said to myself,  you’ve got the thing out now, so just mess around, and who knows, something might come from playing and making a mess.  I stamped out an image of some Angel Wings, embossed and then distressed them using denim ink and lavender ink.  Cut them out and then shaped them to given them some depth and ‘apparent’ movement.  I printed out some words onto some lightweight card – thinking that I’d put the wings in the Melt Pot and mount them  onto the card.  But .. I decided that I’d do it the other way round.  So I cut out the words into a big ’round’ –  using my EK circle cutter, – and then distressed around the edges of that circle with the same inks I’d used on the wings.

Turned on the melt pot and once my crystals had melted I began to move the large circle around in the molten liquid.  I advise CAUTION when using a melt pot – keep tools in each hand so that you’re not tempted to touch anything.   I use a pair of long-handled craft tweezers in one hand and a bamboo skewer in the other.  It doesn’t stop the urge to touch – but it makes you touch in a safe way, with the tools rather than your fingers.

Once I’d coated the front of the circle, I removed it from the liquid and just let it drip for a moment, then laid it flat to let it ‘set’ and go cold.  Unfortunately – the lightweight card was too lightweight and it curled all around the edges and curved in places.  It wasn’t what I wanted.  I cleaned up and left the coated surface on one side.

Then a couple of days ago I looked at it again and told myself to try using it and see what I’d come up with.  So here’s what I did:

Originally I chose a white 6×6″ card but changed my mind and used a 6×6 craft card instead; and some white feathers.  I placed the wings on the circle where I felt they looked best, but the circle still seemed like it was missing something.  So I chose a tiny glass bottle with a cork stopper, and put the tiniest of white feathers inside it, along with a teeny pinch of iridescent glitter, just to draw the eye to the feather, as I knew it would stick to the feather and the inside of the glass jar.  It looked really lovely – so I glued the jar to the disc, and fixed the wings in place.

I felt that the wings looked a little flat, so I used some Anita’s Gloss and carefully coated the wings then put everything to one side while I worked on the card.

Using brown and a shimmering gold (not mirror) card, I cut out circles so that I could mat and layer the wings/words/glass jar onto them.

I chose some blue ribbon in a shade which echoed the blues of the distressing around the edges of the wings and the disc, and using some permanent tape, I fixed the ribbon running it over the back and front of the card, exactly at the ‘half way’ mark.

I fixed the first layer of the cards onto the front of the card.

… then matted and layered the other discs in place, sometimes tucking a white Angel Feather into the layers.  Once the wings were dry and the glued bottle was fixed in place, I fixed some feathers onto the top layer then applied the disc topper which I’d made on top, adding just one smaller feather tucked under the outter edge of the wings.

Three close-ups of the teeny tiny white Angel Feather in the bottle.  It was really hard to capture the feather – so I chose the best three photos of a large bunch of rubbish ones that I took.

Of course – there HAD to be a surprise inside the card …  (you knew that, didn’t you! lol)

On the front page of the insert is a psalm from the bible, which speaks of Angels:  I stamped it onto some white paper, and distressed it a little, then fixed it to the craft paper insert

In case you can’t read it, it says:  He Shall Give His Angels Charge Over Thee, To Keep Thee In All Thy Ways.  (Psalm 91:11).

Then on the inside, middle of the insert . . . .

. . .  a pair of white feathered Angel Wings, and a stamped image of a feather, drifting freely.

Once finished, I really like this lovely card – which began with a disenchantment with the way the topper turned out, but I’m really glad that I made it into a card.  It looks a little flat in the photo’s, but to the naked eye it has a depth and a wonderful warmth and gentleness about it.  And to be quite honest – if someone sent me this card I’d be chuffed to bits.  Seriously chuffed to bits!

I hope you like the card too.

So anyway  …  enough of me and my crafting.  What have you been making or doing?  Leave me a message with a link to your blog and I’ll come and take a look and leave you a message too.

• You can leave messages on any post or article on my blog by  . . . 
• scrolling up to the title of that article which you want to comment on and …
• looking for the little grey speech bubble to the right of the title. (Hover your cursor over the title of a post then move it to the right and the speech bubble will turn from pale grey to a deep red colour.
• Click on that speech bubble and the comments for that article or post will open up for you to read (if there are any) and, if you’d like to,  make a comment.

Wishing you a totally fabulous weekend.  May your Angels surround you and protect you from any harm.

From the Cauldron came Angel Wings of White

The Ranger Melt Pot
about to go into action!
(with a little help from Cobwebs!)

The Cauldron (aka ‘The Ranger Melt Pot’) came out to play because I had an idea for a handmade card, but wanted a pair of Angel Wings to go onto the card as an embellishment.  I’d got feathered wings, but I felt that they’d give the wrong feeling to the card, so I scouted round to find something different .. that’s when I remembered that I had a pair of silicon moulds of  Angel Wings.  I dug them out and checked them over for any damage (I hadn’t used the moulds in … ohh … I can’t even remember the last time I’d used them!),  and then got out the equipment to make the wings.  Heat mats  (biscuit coloured one and the black one you see in the photo),  Cauldron,  spatula to stir,  mica powders,  and Ultra Thick Embossing Crystals – in clear and white.  Then I set to work.

I always put more than I think I’ll need of the crystals into my melt pot as I’d hate to find that I run out of liquid before I’d filled my moulds,  so I also put on my desk a couple of other silicon moulds so that any left over liquid could be made into other adornments for other cards some other time.

Crystals were popped into my Cauldron and within minutes I was ready to pour out the magic mix.  (After I’d said a magic spell, waved my wand and flew my broom around my craft room three times with my cat perched neatly on the end, naturally).

The Silicon moulds I used for the wings were bought from America but I’m pretty sure you’d be able to now buy something like them here in the UK.  They’re roughly 3 inches in length so ideal for a card adornment.  I brushed the tiniest amount of mica powder into the silicon mould before I poured the liquid, so that the feathers on the wings would be highlighted with the faintest of colour.  (You can just about see the Mica powder in the photograph above).

At this point I get so excited about the stuff I’ve just poured that I totally forgot to take a photograph of the moulds in use – so you’ll have to imagine what those moulds look like filled up with  magic potion   I mean: Ultra Thick Embossing Crystals in their molten state.

It takes literally just a few minutes for the liquid to set – but beware it does stay a little hot/very warm for a few minutes longer, so be careful.  And this (below) is what the Angle Wings look like when I popped them from their moulds . . . .

You can see where the feathers picked up the Mica powder which I’d brushed into the empty mould before I poured in the molten liquid UTEE.  Pretty isn’t it.  You can see from this picture that you really don’t need to use very much Mica Powder at all.  If you compare the photograph of the empty moulds before I poured the UTEE into them, and then see how the set UTEE has picked up that Mica Powder really well.

I was right to get another mould or two out as I did have some extra liquid left over, so I made some flowers with the left over UTEE . . .

I’ll lightly colour up the flowers and centres with a little wax to highlight and pick out the details.  – my favourite wax is Metallic Gilding Wax from Creative Expressions – shown in the photograph above.

BUT … if you do make something with your own Melt Pot, and you have left over molten UTEE then you can simply pour it out onto your heat-resistant mat and let it set for a few minutes (and go cold), and you’ll then be able to pop that blob of set UTEE into a bag and save it till you want to make something in that colour next time.  You see … you never waste anything with the Melt Pot.  You just re-melt anything you’re not happy with or that you have left over, and make something lovely and new next time you’re playing!

Thanks for visiting, and for reading.

The Armour of God – ‘Shield of Faith’ Pendant

The Armour of God – Shield of Faith Pendant. handmade by Cobwebs at The Cobweborium Emporium https://thecobweboriumemporium.wordpress.com/

The Shield of Faith

I made this pendant for a young relative who is religious and who has always like this type of steampunk style jewellery.  She’s always been the one who stands out from the crowd, so I thought this combination of everything which speaks of her faith, combined with her love of the ‘alternative’ style of jewellery might just hit the spot.

 

tucked into the presentation box was this little book style leaflet which I put together, and which quotes the Apostle Paul’s letter to the Ephesians 6:10-18.  For those of you who may have just glazed over …  (lol) ..  if you want to understand what I’m going on about then perhaps check out Wikipedia, and in its search bar just put  ‘Armour of God’.  It will take you where you need to be in order to read. 

I didn’t want to start quoting biblical passages here as this isn’t a religious blog, it’s simply a post in my Craft blog, about an item of jewellery I’ve made, but it just happens to have a religious theme to the pendant.  (But if you’re not in the least bit religious – it’s just a great Steampunk pendant!)

I have to admit that I’m fairly new to my Ranger Melting Pot  (which I’ve christened  The Cauldron).  I bought it and then sat looking at it for several weeks, terrified of it.  It seemed so ‘major’.  Such a professional looking item which required someone with way more skill than I had.  But … eventually I talked myself into getting the darn thing out on my desk and plugging it in.  From that moment I was hooked.  AND HOW!!

If you’ve never used one, then I highly recommend it.  It’s the most fascinating, amazing, awe-inspiring bit of kit and you honestly don’t have to be a brain surgeon to get it working for you in the way you want it to work.  I’ll be making a post about this machine in the ‘Products I Recommend‘ category on my blog, very soon.  So if you are interested in possibly purchasing this bit of kit then check back and I’ll put together as comprehensive post about it as I can muster and get it up and ‘live’ by the end of this current week.

But .. back to the pendant:  The necklace which it hangs from is made from a length of velvet ribbon in a rich warm green (it had a posh name for the colour, but my memory is rubbish so that name has gone by the by).  I turned this length of ribbon into the necklace you see in the photograph by the addition of some jewellery ribbon ends – which are like little clamps with teeth which grip the ends of the ribbon so that it’s held firmly.  I added some jump rings and then two lobster claw clasps.  Voila – one necklace ready and waiting for a pendant.

  The pendant:  I did a rough sketch of what I had in mind and then set about making it.  I chose the hobnailed bezel you see in the photograph and then searched through my stash for a cross which was the right shape and size to fit into that bezel.  Once I’d found it, I then wanted to make it ‘glow’ in such a way that it showed clearly through the poured liquid which was to complete the pendant.  So I used some Cosmic Shimmer glitter and flake Glue which I dabbed all over the cross, waited just a moment or two for it to get to a tacky stage and then covered the cross in a mix of silver, rose gold and yellow gold gilding flakes, so that it had a multi toned effect – but you couldn’t really see where one colour finished and the other began.

Then it was time to turn on the Melt Pot.  (hears the notes to The Twilight Zone in the background)….   Into the Cauldron Melt Pot I poured some clear Cosmic Shimmer Ultra Thick Embossing Crystals – not too much, but enough to make what I guessed was enough to fill up the bezel and then a little more, just to be on the safe side.

I added some inks – Cosmic Shimmer Melt Inks,  … don’t use any other inks in your melt pot because other inks aren’t meant for the Ranger Melting Pot and if you get the wrong inks then the whole molten liquid can explode – you have been warned, –  which, because I used CLEAR Ultra thick crystals, the inks simply coloured the clear [now] liquid in the melt pot.  The colour remained transparent but the more ink you use, the deeper the colour gets.  I then added a little pearl shimmer ultra thick crystals, which gave the liquid a look as if some sort of magic was happening somewhere in that mix.

I poured a small amount of the hot molten liquid into the triangle bezel and quick as I could, I then ‘set’ the cross into that tiny bit of liquid while it was still in its ‘un-set’ state.  I needed to do this so that the cross was held in the place where I wanted it to be, so that it didn’t float around the bezel when I poured more liquid on the top.  I gave it a moment or two to cool off and then I sprinkled some tiny specks of gold gilding flakes over the inside of the bezel and then carefully poured more of the molten liquid over the cross and carefully filled up the bezel to just the right level so that it was domed a little, but not so that it was close to over-flowing.  All I had to do then was wait.  Not long.  Just wait a little while for the whole thing to cool down – which honestly doesn’t take long at all.  Maximum ten/15 minutes for it to be totally cold.

And there you have it.  One Steampunk pendant … or pendant with a religious theme (depending upon which way you want to look at it).

There is a little more to the Cauldron  Ranger Melting Pot which you need to know if you’re going to invest in one.  Either click to ‘follow’ me (that way you’ll get an email when I post something new on here) so that you won’t miss out on the post in ‘Products I Recommend’ which will be about the Melt Pot, or remember to keep popping back and checking my blog out so that you don’t miss it.

Have a great day all  ~