Holey Shell Necklace!

When you walk along most beaches, you'll find some shells have a hole in them where either the critter burrowed out, or maybe something burrowed in. I'm no shell expert, but after some research, I've found that most shells around here that have holes in them are called Atlantic Coquina, or "Angel Wing" shells, which I've heard them called sometimes. When I was out a few weeks ago, I found a beautiful striped shell with a hole that I believe is a Cockle shell. It's this shell I'm going to use in my project.

Cockle Shell I found with hole at the top

For the necklace, I'm going to use waxed cotton cord. I like this stuff because it comes in lots of colors and is very durable, even surfing every day with it on.

Waxed cotton cord in several colors

For this, I used a sand color and an ocean color. Decide how long you want your necklace to be, and cut lengths more that you need, for extra to finish off. I doubled up one color to make a loop on one end and added a third color for a simple braid and joined them with a double overhand knot:

Double overhand knot to start off, with a loop

Next, I just braided the length of my necklace- I'm making a choker, so I just braided a little over 16 inches or so for me.

Finished braiding

Next, I'm going to finish off the braid by tying a few overhand knots on top of each other to form a toggle end I can slip through the loop on the other end to close:

End of braid

Next, I used a jump ring to prepare to attach the shell to the braid:

Open jump ring passing through the shell hole

Next, I'll take the jump ring- still open- and find the center of my braid length. I will pass the jump ring through two of the braid strands. This will keep the shell centered on the necklace, and prevent it from migrating around your neck. Close the jump ring with jewelry pliers, or small pliers.

Jump ring going through two strands, not yet closed

Trim off the excess ends of the braid and put a dot of E6000 glue on each end knot and let dry. Here's the finished necklace:

Front

Back closure

Easy to make in any color combination if you can braid and do an overhand knot.
So, hunt for a holey shell, but pick up a beer can or two while you're out there. If you're wanting to make a necklace pendant from a beer can, though, I think you'll need to jump over to Flava Flav's "Funky Fresh" Craft Site for a how-to (did you know wall clocks make great necklaces???).

Making Patches from Surf Event T-Shirt Art

T-shirts from events are always fun to collect. I've got a closet full of them, and have worn many out to the point where they're ripped, stained, or nearly disintegrated by washing. Because I love the memories attached to these shirts, or the really good artwork painted on them, I get sentimental and keep them out of wearing rotation before the image is gone and put them in a storage pile in my closet. Just like a lot of people, I always imagined making a handmade, beautiful, keepsake quilt from these shirts.
Problem is, I HATE quilting.
Secondly, really, it's a pain to keep the whole shirt around when it's unwearable anyway. When it comes down to it, I just want the image on the back or the front- I don't want to have to worry about cutting each t-shirt image out to a certain dimension to make a quilt square so it matches the others. Takes too long, and with knits, it's hard to get a consistent dimension on the cut anyway to make all of the squares match up. So I decided that I'd make patches out of these images that I can put wherever I want, whenever. I don't have to wait to have a whole quilt's worth of surf event art images.
For an example, I got out a shirt I got in an award goody bag at a paddleboard race at Ponce Inlet, Florida back in 2007. I have a Bark 14' paddleboard, and I think the logo is unique and pretty cool. The t-shirt, however, has seen better days, and is pretty out of shape.

My paddleboard t-shirt

Now, as you can see, the shirt was printed on a plain white knit tee with black ink. For those of you who know me, know I can't leave well enough alone, so I'd thought I'd doodle on the image with some fabric markers that permanently mark on fabric and will not fade in the wash. So, be careful with these so you don't mark up stuff you don't want to. For this image, I added some color and the Event Name and Year since it wasn't on this goody bag prize.

Fabric Markers

All ruined.

Next, I rough cut the back of the shirt around the logo, leaving a lot of slop around the image for errors. I kept the rest of the t-shirt cloth as a rag for other woodworking crafts and cleaning, which is better than using papertowels.
I love this stuff called Steam A Seam 2, that you can pick up at any fabric store. I don't know of another company that makes it, but it's essentially a double sided material that allows you to adhere one piece of fabric onto another without sewing, like making a patch. These sheets come in 8 1/2 by 11" sheets, so you may need to butt more than one sheet against each other on the backside of the image to make your patch.
These sheets are double sided stick, which means they have backing on the front and back of the sheet. Take your t-shirt image, flip it UPSIDE DOWN (we are putting the adhesive on the back) and peel of only ONE side of the Steam A Seam sheet and press the sticky side to the back of the knit piece. It will stay in place temporarily:

Getting ready to put the sheet on the back of the Bark image

I had to use a whole sheet plus a little piece to cover the entire backside of the image. I set my iron to high and steam, and pressed the sheet (which still has backing) on the knit cloth. DON'T rub the iron back and forth- you need to press with the iron, lift the iron up, and press in a different spot. Make sure you don't stay on a spot too long, but make sure you get the edges ironed well. Let the piece cool off fully.

Ironing the double sided adhesive onto the back of the image

When you're finished, cut out the image however you want. You may want to cut it out as a square, freeform, etc. I cut mine out right around the heart logo. If I left the backing on, I could store it as a patch to put on anything whenever I was ready. I could iron it onto a pillowcase, board bag, another t-shirt, etc. I decided to put mine onto a fleece blanket I already had.
To prepare the patch, I peeled of the second backing:

Taking the backing off of the patch

I applied this to my much-washed fleece blanket, following the directions on the Steam A Seam package. I set my iron on high and steam, not dragging the iron across the patch, and I used another piece of the t-shirt as I ironed over the patch so I wouldn't scorch the image. If you make sure to iron the edges of the patch really well, you don't have to sew around the edge, but I may anyway. The patch is permanently ironed onto the blanket and can be washed. I can add patches along the way, as I feel like it, or just leave the one on it. The best thing is, I didn't have to quilt, and it took about 5 minutes to put on the blanket.
Here it is in the surf-themed guest room:

Freakin' Home and Gardens shot.

Color's scheme's off, but so what?

If you do the blanket thing, like I did, you can keep adding patches like a Surfing Boy Scout, or Girl Scout in my case. Some of you may be Surfing Eagle Scouts already...I'm still in the Brownie troop.

Surfboard Art with Beach Plastic

Recently, Surfrider had a contest for it's "Rise Above Plastics"/ One Foot at a Time campaign, so it looked like it would be fun to enter. Before I headed out for Costa Rica, I thought I'd try an entry. I collected my trash on the CCAFS/Merritt Island Refuge shorelines, which are just north of Port Canaveral. These beaches get a lot of washed in flotsam debris from other beaches, boats, and ships.
Essentially, to get started, they gave you an outline template you printed out on letter sized sheets and taped together. I chose the surfboard template:

Surfboard template

The idea was, to take the outline and creatively fill it in with beach or community trash you collect.  Here's just a sampling of what I collected- I had to collect a LOT to get a good variety.

Just a bit of the trash collected

I eventually wanted to be able to mount this "art", so I traced the Surfrider template onto a cardboard beach toy box to use as a base.

Template outlined on the scrap cardboard

The back side of the cut out piece

To begin, though, I did layout some pieces on a paper template to get an idea of what I had to work with. Some of the plastic was so brittle from being outdoors and in the water so long, it easily broke into tiny bits for a mosaic, which was good for art's sake, but bad since everything was so fragile to work with.

Laying up the general pieces for an idea

Once I had an idea of what I wanted, I used a hot glue gun to start gluing pieces down to the cardboard surfboard template. I started with the "stringers" of the surfboard, using long pieces of plastic handles, straws, etc. I used some of my pattern weights I made for sewing to hold the cardboard down.

Starting the final piece- drew the Rusty logo on the board to make into a mosaic

Pattern weights to hold cardboard down while glue dried

Additionally, I touched up the R in the Rusty logo with tiny bits of this reddish plastic, using a fishing bead I found as a perfect dot!

This part burnt my fingers a lot!

Instead of the green at the top layout, I wanted to start out with blue plastics and work into lighter greens then darker greens.

Darker blue pieces

Working down into lighter blue pieces

A lot of this work required hand breaking pieces to fit, or doing a lot of rearranging so everything would get filled in. I finally had most of the board filled in, ready for detail work:

After stressing over it, and making sure holes were filled in, things were balanced, and so forth, I tried to make myself stop working!!

The next stage was to take the piece out to the beach for it's "modeling shoot". This is the final picture I sent into Surfrider:

The Finished Entry

Keeping my fingers crossed, but it'll be fun to hang up anyway, win or lose!

Beach Cleanup Flotsam Collecting

Many, many, years ago, I did a beach cleanup with Surfider where we challenged each other to find the strangest thing on the beach during the cleanup. I think somebody found swim trunks, another found some spent fireworks, a toothbrush, etc.
Now, I know a lot of this washes in from the ocean, but after a Hurricane, big storm, or just a holiday, while doing a beach cleanup it is the opportune time to find some wild things, both natural and manmade. In fact, it's become quite the habit in our house to display things we've picked up at the beach or in the lagoon as "treasures".
Many years ago, I inherited a china cabinet that belonged to my Great Grandmother . I'm not a big fan of superfluous furniture, and we certainly don't entertain with china in a formal dinner party, people are lucky to get "Chinet". Instead of just giving this cabinet away or selling it, it's become a pretty neat shell and flotsam mini museum, complete with antique nautical devices and maps we've been given over the years.

The Mini Museum- no entry fee :)

While I've kept shells that were bought by my family a long time ago, I certainly DO NOT advocate buying shells from a tourist shop or store these days since the numbers have become so depleted. But bleached shells from the beach in a modest amount- don't collect hundreds in a day please, others like to enjoy them too!- is kind of a neat pasttime, and collecting flotsam ("trash") is even more fun! I think having a story behind each item is the fun in collecting.
I've grouped our shells we've found by type, just like in a real display, and we have sea beans, coconuts, even fishing lures that were dangling and tangled in mangrove trees!

Fishing lures, sea beans, and shells laid out on a nautical map of the Keys.

By far, the prize of the collection is something we found after Hurricane Frances that had washed up on the beach. It was a little deep diver action figure with a barnacle attached to his left knee. Just wonder how long he'd been out at sea!

Welcome back to land, Buddy!

So if you're looking to decor your beach home- or your home you wish was near the beach- do a beach cleanup sometime. You may become so into beach cleanups for the treasure hunting you'll start your own museum!