Craft Day with Chelsea

Chelsea and I finally had our long-awaited craft circle yesterday!  Crafting is normally a solitary activity - usually it's just you and your cats at home, thinking to yourself, "I wonder if my friends will think this potted plant cozy is the coolest?" and "Does Ryan Gosling really like girls who craft, or are all those 'Hey Girl' memes totally made up?"  Etc.

But I do have a few crafty friends, and sometimes it's fun to get together and make something beautiful with each other.

The most epic craft event of my life was going to my BFF, Aimee's, beach house to create all of the decorations for my wedding.  This weekend became known as "Crafty Sweatshop/Sweaty Craftshop," because it was around 100 degrees in that beach house, but we managed to make EVERYTHING for my wedding in 2 days.  All of the table settings, flower vases, candle holders, and decor were crafted by hand by just the two of us.

We cut pages out of love stories and made them into lace-edged table runners.  We covered mason jars in burlap and hand-painted buttons.  We frosted and spray-painted jam jars for candle holders.  We cut endless pennants out of scrapbook paper.  We filled tiny chiffon bags with Hershey kisses.

We stenciled and cut till our fingers were sore.

But seriously, we cut out THOUSANDS of pennants, and then strung those triangles onto twine to hang up all over the venue.  It took an unbelievably long amount of time.

Aimee never faltered, never said "maybe we should just buy a pennant banner," or "I never want to see you again."  Because Aimee knows, as a fellow crafter, that the point of making something yourself is that you remember the love each time you see it.  And when I walked into my decorated wedding venue, I knew that each item inside was created and filled with love, by hand, by me and a wonderful bridesmaid.  What could be more magical?

The same can be said for making jewelry.  Yes, you could buy a professionally made item, which will look quite perfect and be worn forever.  But you could also make some jewelry with a dear friend, and then think of each other each time you wear it.  Isn't that nice?

This was also a little Pinterest experiment!  Both of us had pinned several handmade jewelry items, and wanted to actually make something off our endless craft boards.  We selected these two to start:

(for the first one, I was unable to find the original source!  It linked to a simple wordpress photo, so if any of you know where this came from that would be great.  The second is from yesmissy.com.  A link to my Pinterest is on the right side of this blog!) 

I found a place called  Fusion Beads in Wallingford where I will now proceed to spend $1,000,000.  Long tables covered in glittering beads and baubles of all shapes and sizes, walls covered in strings of pearls and spools of silky ribbon, and the nicest, most helpful staff you could ever hope to meet.  I spent too much money.

But with the right supplies, we started our craft day!

Wait, that doesn't look right...

Oh there we go, that's better.

It may have been the extra large mimosas, but it took me a few tries to get the chain bracelet right.  Chelsea was a craft superstar, and helped me figure it out.  She also showed me how to macrame-knot for the other bracelet - apparently I missed a huge part of adolescence by not learning how to make hemp necklaces!  

About 4 hours and 3 mimosas later, we had this:

But even better:

How cute is that??  I would consider this a Pinterest success!

Round 2 next week?