Glass Tile Pendants

I went along to the craft fair last month and was determined to find a project to make with the kids that could then be given as gifts. Sounds easy? Well, I discovered to my chagrin that the craft fair mostly caters to adults. After circling the stalls once I had to make my way around a second time scouring the stalls for something I could bring home for the boys to make. In the end I came up with a glass tile pendant kit. The lady on the stall assured me that it was extremely simple, suitable for all ages and hard to make a mistake with. It ticked all the boxes, and I was sold when she told me that each kit contained enough to make 9 items. 

On arriving home I inspected the kit closely and discovered that there were a variety of beautiful papers to chose from to decorate my jewellery.

To make the pendants there are only a few steps.

1. Pick a paper that you like and is larger than the pendant you want to attach it to.

2. Cover the back of the pendant with diamond glaze and press it onto the paper then leave it to dry

Waiting for the diamond glaze to dry

 3. Once the glaze has dried, take a sharp pair of scissors or sharp knife and trim the excess paper from the pendant. It is best to do this at an angle so that there is no paper left overhanging the edge
4. Coat the paper with 2 coats of clear nail varnish or diamond glaze and leave it to dry again

the trimmed pendants waiting to have a bail attached

5. Super glue a bail to the back of the pendant (or glue to something else!)

The only part I wouldn't let the children do was use the super glue. I told them it was strong enough to glue their fingers together and only adults were allowed to use super glue safely. It was then rather mortifying when I did accidentally glue my fingers together while finishing the tiles.

Here are two of the finished tiles.

Pasta Necklaces

While trying to tidy up the house I found some interesting plastic string that I thought would make a quick and easy necklace for Imogen. What better way to procrastinate than find something fun to do with the kids. The cleaning can always be done later, but later the children might be too tired.

A quick check of the cupboard assured me that we do have pasta suitable for threading. We could just thread the penne pasta onto a string, but that would be BORING! Why not colour the pasta first and then let the kids loose with the pasta and string.

First we divided the pasta up into 4 ziplock bags and poured in a few drops of food colouring, closed the bags and shook them until all the pasta was covered.

Then we tipped the pasta on to a tray and put it in the sun to dry. 

Once the pasta was dry, we were able to make our necklaces. The necklace is adjustable to fit over the head and then be shortened to an appropriate length. What  do you think of our efforts?