Friday, May 13, 2011

Exercise in Frustration

When Cheryl suggested that my detective would wear sunglasses, I thought “no problem”. I knew I had about 30 pair of glasses that I had made for the children’s grab bags at the Show and Sale in my stash.

Problem! All the glasses have green frames and clear lenses and I wanted black frames and coloured lenses. So I’d have to make another pair after all…and the frustration was just starting…

EYE GLASSES:   Cut three lengths of bamboo skewer and tape together as shown. Wrap wire around the skewers as shown. Using pliers, bend the side pieces back at a right angle then curve the end as shown.








Fill the lens portion with Tacky glue and let dry for ‘glass’. You can tint the glue with a small amount of acrylic paint (blue, green or gray) for sunglasses.
So I made a new set of frames and painted them black with nail polish. So far so good…

Set them down to dry. And when I went back to put lenses in them, they had disappeared! Searched for half an hour then gave up and thought I’d try painting an existing pair. But the nail polish didn’t go evenly on the lenses so they were too dark.

Started from scratch again. Frames are okay but the nail polish is getting thick and not going on smoothly but they’re okay. Mix some Tacky glue and gray paint for the lenses. Do the lenses and I’ve used too much gray paint so the lenses don’t dry sufficiently translucent.

Well, that was a disaster. For now, he lost his sunglasses on a stake-out. LOL

Here's an easy one that seldom goes wrong.  Great for sticking in a pencil holder on a desk.

Scissors: Straighten out and flatten one end of each of two sewing hooks. Glue together and paint the handles with coloured nail polish for a pair of scissors.

Wire file basket:
Actually pleased with how this turned out but I was so anxious to make sure that a legal file folder would fit in it, it's  on the big side. Should really re-do it a bit smaller.

Picked up this modelling mesh at Dollarama in one of those "have no idea what I'll ever use it for but it looks interesting and should have a mini use so I'll buy it and hope that something comes to me" moments. After all, it's only a dollar!

It is wonderful for one of those old wire file baskets.

I made a little pattern on the computer then cut out the wire. Folded the sides up and glued the corners together (Crafters' Pick The Ultimate). When the glue was totally dry, I glued some fine silver colour wire along the cut edges, again using The Ultimate.



Then it turned out that Blogger was down last night into this morning so I couldn't even post all my frustration. (It could be worse - much worse - Grazhina posted a whole project on a complete new blog and lost the entire thing in yesterday's glitch!)

So this really is my May 12 post. VBG

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