Heartedly Handcrafted: pendant

I saw a drawing that a friend's son drew on Facebook recently and it made me think about my husband and son. How wonderful it is to have a creative family. I share my own crafts and my daughter's on here, so I think it's only fair that I share the talents of the men in my life. Please excuse a couple of the photos here and there as none of them were taken to be displayed on a blog. My son...

Scratch art from 6th grade.

A couple of drawings from Junior High.

Computer project: My son built a Working Lego Computer

He took parts from different computers that weren't running anymore and put them together to make one out of Legos. My husband and I were beside ourselves when we first saw this. Our son was always fascinated by structures and systems and would come up with some really cool stuff.

It even had the pop out areas.

And here's the last one that he built which also worked

A little about my son...

He was one of those kids that rarely ever brought home homework because he did it all before the school day was over. I found out that he also slept through classes, yet he still managed to get A's on his exams. So other than chores when he was home, he was free to build and build he did. I loved seeing the things he would come up with and I never went unimpressed.
Although he was not a fan of the outdoors, he would surprise my husband and I at times with his ideas. One day he gathered every piece of wood he could find, every block, sports equipment, tarps, things to make tunnels and rails and the next thing I knew he had turned the backyard into a miniature golf course. Not one nail was used but it worked.
My family was in the backyard having fun golfing for a little over a week and honestly we were kind of sad when it had to come down so the grass could be mowed.
My son also wanted to build a roller coaster in the back yard, but we said no to that one. So he and his friend decided to build one out of pretzels instead. So funny.

I walked into his room one day to find that he barely had room to move because of the gigantic structure he had built using K'nex. It was a ball machine (basically a roller coaster for a ball) with a working elevator, coaster tracks, cubes to bounce around in, rooms that flipped over and so forth. Although it just looks like a dizzying twister of color in the photo, the ball traveling was hypnotic and lasted a long time. It was amazing.

My Husband... My husband is very eclectic. He's had a lot of different hobbies and enjoys creating things. In recent years he decided to try out carving antler and he really enjoys it. This summer he got the chance to watch a master at work and he's excited to try the things he learned. He likes Viking ruins and Celtic type designs. This is only some of the things he has carved.
A Viking Comb To think that he had to carve out each one of the teeth is just crazy. All the teeth are one solid piece which is slipped between two handle shaped pieces. This was one of his first pieces. I have used the comb and it works.

An antler knife handle and hand sewn leather sheath.

Another leather sheath and knife handle

A needle case with locking lid. The inset stone is amethyst .

Another needle case with a lock-tight lid

An antler heart necklace for our daughter

For a friend who wanted an early period Christian type pendant

Blurry photo, but you can somewhat see the animal head

I told my husband that I liked the natural bumpy look of some of the antler and if he made me something not to smooth it away. He made me a pendant with a Celtic tree on it and a ring. I wear them when I do my persona in the Society for Creative Anachronism (SCA).

A friend of ours had a Thor's hammer for his persona that had no design on it, so my husband made it more interesting to look at.

Building Ballistae To say the least, a section of our old yard was trashed for quite a while, but we have used the ballistae for a few years now and they are a lot of fun. I was a bit shocked when my husband made the decision to make one and then after the first one he made three more. For use in the SCA we have to use bolts with a cushioned protective tip for safety reasons, but they still hurt a lot when they hit you (welt/deep bruises) and the ballistae are capable of firing just about anything. He did a great job building them. I'm thinking his next project should be a trebuchet for "Pumpkin Chunkin".

Trigger mechanisms

Testing them out. They shoot about 80 yards which is the maximum in the SCA so we don't overfire the field and hit onlookers or cars. You can see the yellow bolt flying through the air. If I remember correctly the bolts are 48" long.

The person with the black helm on is me. I wanted to share this photo, not only because of the ballista, but my husband made the armor I'm wearing to look like the armor the Chinese wore. I don't wear all that stuff anymore though. Too hot. The scaled armor has the appearance of leather, but he made it from a brown plastic olive barrel.

My husband carved a white horse on the front of each ballista to signify our medieval group.

He also built a medieval type wagon to pull our bolts around in.

What I find so incredible about my family members if that no one ever showed them how to do any of the things that they do. They just go for it, sometimes fail, always learn and I love that :) Happy Crafting! post signature

For those of you who have commented and had questions on my old blog and Facebook. This is for you.

Update: How I made my Pendants

I used a scalloped oval die to cut the shape into white Core'dinations Cardstock. Then I glued approximately four of the die-cut shapes together to make the pendant sturdy. I added small holes in the top
To color my pendants I used Tim Holtz Adirondack ink in Butterscotch, Stream and Wild Plum by just letting small droplets of ink drip from the bottle and run over the paper pendant.
I added Tim Holtz Adirondack Mixative in Silver and in Gold to the pendant in the same way I added the colored ink. It didn't turn out well and I had so much ink on my pendants, the color was turning muddy and they were taking too long to dry. I'm impatient so I pulled out the heat gun, during which I discovered the mixatives do not like heat and they began to bubble and boil. After the mixatives did their little dance, they dried solid and textured.
Intrigued, I added more ink and mixatives as I used my heat gun. The ink didn't smell very good being heated, but layer after layer I watched the little dance of silver and gold and the colored ink being moved around and trapped. The bubbling, boiling and the last little whips of trying to escape the heat is what gave my pendants the depth they have. I thought the result was fabulous.
Then I sealed the back and sides.