First Pancake Rule

Did you ever notice that the first pancake of the batch never comes out quite right? It's still edible... just a little burnt, or dry.  If you stick it on the bottom of the stack no one will notice, but you know it's there. Well... the same is true when crafting.

I finished my charms for the first swap I ever joined. While looking them over I was amused to stumble across the 'first pancake'. Can you pick out which one it is?

Here is a quick overview of how I made my charms. My last post showed me making paper beads from a magazine... watch the fun continue!

 The beads were coated with a water resistant sealer and stuck in a styrofoam cone to dry.

Next was to cover a small rectangle of balsa wood with vintage sheet music... seal and dry... then sand, sand, sand.

Since this is a Valentine swap I punched out teeny tiny hearts from the same paper as the beads and glued them to the back of the wooden rectangle.



Now it's time to combine the pieces. Adding pearl beads I wire wrapped the paper beads to to the wooden base. Last step... glue on the bail (shaped like a heart)... and TA DAH... my first ever charms!!

These were all new techniques for me... so a real learning experience. The most important lesson I learned was to only do a few charms at a time... that way you can tweak your technique as you go along.

This charm swap is way too much fun!! The next swap is using Origami Paper... again, not something I'm used to using in my crafts. My design is not finalized yet, but I have a bunch of ideas swimming around in my head. After that, the third swap is to use copper and green in a charm. I am so excited for this one as I already have a design idea and all of the supplies... but first I have to trudge through the Origami Paper one.

By the way... in case you were wondering... the First Pancake Rule works for children too :-)