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Crafty Monday #2: DIY Earrings

Amber — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 05:25:06 +0000

Following along the same lines as last week’s Crafty Monday post, I figured I would do a post on making your own earrings! The best part of making your own jewelry is knowing that the pieces you make are 100% original YOU! Not to mention it can be cheaper than buying store-bought jewelry. Making your own earrings is a cinch! Not the most flattering picture of myself (you can click to enlarge it so you can see the earrings better), but the earrings in the picture are what I’m going to blog about today They’re very simple to make and only takes about 10 ~ 15 minutes. I put $25 as the estimated cost because if you do not already own a pair of round-nose pliers and wire cutters, those can run about $8 ~ $12 from a craft or hardware store. The supplies for the earrings are very cheap, though.

Materials:
- round-nose pliers
- wire cutters
- 2 two inch head pins and 2 two inch eye pins
- 2 ear wires
- beads of your choice & 2 shaped beads (ie. pink hearts)
Cost: $25.00

You can follow along with the instructions with the image below. Each number on the image corresponds with the number in the instructions.

1. Grab a head pin and slide your shaped bead onto it. With wire cutters, cut down your wire to 1/2 inch sticking out from the bead.
2. With your round-nose pliers, bend the wire at a 90º angle. Bend the wire into a loop, but make sure you leave a gap so you can slip an eye pin on it. good example of how to do this can be found here.
3. Take an eye pin and slip some beads on it. Depending on how small or large your beads are, you’ll be able to slip 3~5 beads on the eye pin. Hook the shaped bead onto the end of the eye pin and squeeze shut with your pliers.
4. If you notice, there is no loop on one end of the eye pin. This is so you’re able to slip the beads on. You’re going to have to make your own loop on this end. Do the same procedure written in step 2 to do this. make sure you leave a small gap!
5. Slip an ear wire on the loop and close shut.
6. Repeat steps 1~5 for your second earring. Display them proudly! you’ve just made a 100% original piece of art!

Crafts and Stuff

Amber — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 14:17:34 +0000

New theme. Well, basically it’s my previous theme with a more “Spring-y” feel to it. A new look to my site has been way overdue. I still plan on changing the side navigation tabs to better match the layout, but for right now I’m pooped. I really like how it came out, though. The tulips look a bit funny, but I don’t plan on changing them so there’s no use in me complaining.

Today I researched ways to get organized, and I found a lot of very cute craft ideas. this has inspired me to do one of those weekly crafty posts..A Crafty Wednesday I just hope I stick to it. If I miss a week I guess I could make up for it by doing two crafts the next week. I plan on making the craft along with taking pictures, and leaving a link to where I spotted it. I think this is going to be fun so even though it’s Sunday, I figure I’ll start early on what I’m going to make this week. I don’t want to give it away, but it has to do with a picture frame. I promise that in no way gives away what it is! I figure you could still try to guess, though As soon as 9AM comes, I’m off to the craft store!

Since I have the Spare Time

Amber — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 12:59:51 +0000

Considering right now I don’t have a job, even though I’m frantically looking for one, I need to make use of the spare time that I have. I need to update my WordPress, first of all. Secondly, I need to design a new layout. Helllooo Amber, It’s not summer anymore! I did actually fix a few errors around my site this morning. My host switched companies and the new one used PHP5, so I had to alter a few of my includes so they would work properly. Thank God I managed to figure out what to do myself This is just a quick update, though. I’ve lost pretty much all of my visitors that used to frequent my site (Probably because of my lack of blogging, I’m assuming) but hopefully once I get back into updating more often, everyone will come back to visit me more often

Still Here, Promise!

Amber — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 15:19:13 +0000

I’m still lurking around the net as usual, just not as often as I was before. I update my Twitter pretty religiously, but when it comes to making a full blog, I’m hopeless as of right now. I think the whole conformity of only have 140 characters to write about is rotting me from the inside out when it comes to having the creativity to make a decently long blog. Nonetheless, I do want to get back in to blogging, not just for the interwebs, but also for personal logging of my life. I like looking back through my blog entries and reading about stuff, and I’m sure I can relate to a lot of people on here in that idea. I hope everyone has enjoyed looking at this summery layout throughout summer and fall, but I definitely want to put something new up by Winter. That would be weird if I just left this up the rest of the year.

I’ve been to numerous interviews the past few weeks, and actually scored a job. I was hired at Bath & body Works. Unfortunately, they did not explain to me that I could constantly be a call-in. I was scheduled for 4 days out of the week and was told not to come each one. I asked them about it and that is when they actually explained it to me. Jerks. I dropped that job as quickly as I could, even though I was very excited to start working there. I had an interview at Barnes & Noble, and have tried numerous times to get back with the hiring manager, but she is always on vacation / busy / not in. I asked someone to leave a message from me for her to call me back but apparently she just doesn’t want to, or she didn’t receive the message in the first place. Either way, I’ve been calling back every day asking for her with no avail. hopefully today this will change. also, a store called Fashion Bug is very interested in hiring me. I haven’t heard anything back yet, but supposedly the manager is out until Friday, so hopefully then I will find something out. Andy already has two jobs. He works for UPS and Target. He never gets a job before me! I’ve always been the one to get work before him, but that’s changed. I really would like to go back to Starbucks, but of course, none of them are hiring. i think the one I used to work is hiring at the moment, but I refuse to go back there for numerous reasons. I guess I’ll just back to suck it up and go back if I can’t find any work, though.

Taking the Time to Evaluate Life

Amber — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 17:31:27 +0000

I’ve tried to think of a time in my life when I have taken a minute to just stop, think, and evaluate how my life is at that moment in time, and I honestly can’t find anything. I’ve thought about it plenty of times, but I’ve never actually studied it. I believe it is pretty crucial in everyone’s lives to just take a few seconds to realize exactly how their life has been in the past, how it is now, and what they would like to do to make it that much better in the future. I’m sure there are a lot of people who follow that routine religiously, day by day, and there are others who are like me, who have never experienced it. Sometimes I kind of wish I wasn’t the latter. I usually try to live my life in the present, but for some reason I am always sucked back into the past. I severely let the past take hold of me and completely rip me apart. I let it prevent me from expanding certain parts of my life, and it greatly holds me back. I want to try and change how my life is. I want to be able to look at my past and actually realize that there’s no possible what that I can change it, and go on living my life without it affecting me. Well, for some reason I’m having an extremely difficult time doing so.

To make things worse, Andy is moving away. He is moving to Idaho to live with his sister because he can’t stand living with my family. They are extremely rude and uncaring toward him, and I can’t even fathom where they have any reasoning to do so. He is wonderful and he doesn’t deserve to be treated that way. That’s the only reason why I agreed to letting him go..I know living with me while I’m living with my mother is an unhealthy environment for him to be in. We have talked about moving out numerous times, but have never had the motivation to do so. Well, it has jumped right out at me and slapped me in the face. After he moved away I’m most likely going to try and get a job at Starbucks again, and of course he’s going to try and get a stable job up in Idaho. Once we can afford to move out, he will move back to Texas to live with me. Having him by me every day of my life and then him just up and leaving is going to be a major change for me. I’m going to miss him so much, but I think in a way it will help our relationship grow stronger. We will stay in contact every day either through the phone or internet, I guess whichever is more convenient for the both of us. I guess I’ll just have to wait and see how things go for the next couple of months. At least with him being gone, I’ll have more time to reflect and work on my own life.

Insert Clever Title Here

Amber — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 11:05:51 +0000

I was trying to come up with a good title for this blog, but I am completely blank right now. I think I need a little imagination boost.. Since my last post, I haven’t done much at all. School starts back up on August 25th and I am still not planning on taking classes this semester. Why? I need a break from school that’s longer than a 3 month Summer vacation. I still have not been able to find a stable job. I applied at PetSmart PetHotel a week ago and haven’t heard back from them yet, so they’re either not hiring or just taking applications. Either way, I’m still going to call tomorrow and see what’s up. I desperately need a job, and so does Andy. I’m 19 years old and he is 21 and we’re living with my Mother. now, I’m not saying we’re in a terrible spot because my mom’s house is pretty laid back, but I do need to get out on my own feet and I also want a bit more privacy. The funny thing is, one minute my mom discusses the fact that it’s time for us to get out of the house, but then she drags us back in by telling us “you’ll never be able to support yourselves in the real world!” Honestly, nothing is going to happen if that attitude is thrown around. Nothing is going to happen without progress, even if that means making a few mistakes. As soon as Andy and I have a stable job, we’re saving up, at the very least, 3/4ths of each of our paychecks to go in to savings to move out. Hopefully we can accomplish saving up enough for a deposit and a few months of rent by the end of the year.

As for my online life, I took a break from things. I was not really participating in the Quilting Bee as much as I should have committed, including my staff duties. However I’ve tried to catch back up and everything seems okay now. I’m going to try and not let myself fall behind again. I’ve also been playing a lot of Neopets as of late.. almost on the verge of an unhealthy addiction. I’m going to try and limit my computer use to only a few hours a day or so, and my more important online duties (paying bills, eBay, Q*Bee, etc.) will come before anything else.

Recently my hormones have been out of whack and it has definitely taken a toll on my face. I went to the dermatologist yesterday and boy was it the quickest appointment I’ve ever been to. I waited in the waiting room for a total of about 15 minutes and was in a room in no time. As soon as the doctor came in, she looked at my face for a minute and prescribed me Doryx. Thank God this prescription only costs me $25, because I lost my insurance when I turned 19. Anyway, I have to take one pill every morning. Yesterday was my first dose and I’m already suffering from one of the side effects, heartburn. The only thing I can do about it is drink cold water to ease the pain because if I take any kind of antacid pills (especially ones with calcium), it contradicts the medication. Hopefully this will be my one and only side effect, though. The worst thing I saw on the list was the runs and a constant yeast infection, yech! I guess I’ll be hitting the Activia yogurt until my face clears up! I also have to use a 5.5% benzoyl peroxide wash twice a day and Differin once a night. It doesn’t seem like too hard of a regime for what it’s worth. I need to get a new planner so I can write stuff down to remind me of things like this..but for now my wall calendar is going to make do.

Cross your fingers (and toes) for me that all this medicine will work!

Like Sucks, Especially On Bad Hair Days

Amber — Mon, 25 May 2009 17:27:24 +0000

My poor straightener broke today It was a nice one too. It’s actually not that popular of a brand in the US, because it’s from Europe. It’s a regular Corioliss straightener, so now since it’s broken I’m going to try and find a better one. I’m thinking since it’s over 4 years old that by now they’re HAD to come out with better ones. I have my fingers crossed hoping it won’t be too expensive. So, since my straightener is dead now, I have to venture out to the mall to try and find a better one. Honestly today does not feel like a shopping day, but I don’t want to go another day with bad hair. It makes me feel crappy! So I’m bringing my friend Rachel along with me since Andy is working on the roof today.

The WordPress integration is going great. I’m 3/4ths of the way done! Not only that but I’m trying to give my pages a face-lift while I’m transferring them to WordPress. I’ve completely redone the goodies page along with any pages linked from that to be more user-friendly!
There’s going to be a new hostee moving in. Her name is Amanda from Not Quite Petite. She posted on the The Q*Bee about WordPress problems and I offered to host her since it would be a lot easier to work with a hosted site than 110mb. Sure enough she got back with me and now she’s going to be one of my hostees, so welcome to Hello-Love Amanda! I’m glad to be hosting you

WordPress Integration

Amber — Fri, 15 May 2009 20:27:13 +0000

I’m currently trying to integrate WordPress into my website more effectively, including creating my pages within WordPress. hopefully this all goes smoothly!

I’m Back, I’m Back!

Amber — Wed, 13 May 2009 14:15:29 +0000

After a (much needed) break from the interwebs I am finally back. I have been so busy these past couple of months with school and trying to find a job and whatnot that I have had hardly any time to get online, so that meant no updates to my site. Now that I’m out of school for the summer and not working I’m going to try to live life to the fullest, and with that comes wanting to keep my website up to date. I’m going to try and at least blog once a week at the least. I know that’s not a huge commitment but I don’t really know what’s going to happen over the next few months and i might end up becoming busy again so there aren’t any promises! I do want to get back into the sync of blogging often though. Oh yeah, and now that I’m going to be home a lot now (hopefully) I’m going to have a little section created on my site for something special I’ll reveal what it is as soon as I get done with it! Hint: It has something to do with things that I love doing Not only have I been slacking off on my website but on The Q*Bee as well. I haven’t been doing any of my duties lately. Most importantly I need to catch up on trading patches. I don’t want to end up being warned for not trading these past couple months I promise I’ll start trading more often

Now, here comes the big news. In my last post back in March I mentioned wanting to buy a kitty to help me get over Tango’s death. Well, I finally was able to convince my mom to let me have one! He’s a 3 month old long hair black tabby. He’s so adorable! Andy and I named him Maximus, after the main character in the movie Gladiator. He is so much fun, except when he won’t settle down when I’m busy. He always wants to be in my or Andy’s lap, or running around with Baxter, one of my mom’s cats. I still need to get him his kitten shots. I haven’t been able to afford his shots he was supposed to get over the past couple of months, but now I have enough money to get him the basics and get him fixed as well. He is going to be such a beautiful kitty when he grows up He also does that weird chirping thing that a lot of kitties do. it’s so adorable!if you’re interested in what that is exactly, search for cat chirping on YouTube. You’ll love it! Recently Andy and I have constantly been on eBay. I’ve started selling stuff on there on my name Ambrosity. Right now I have 5 things listed that are ending today, so hopefully I’m going to make a decent profit off of them :). Andy has been buying stuff like crazy. He’s purchased lots of Gameboy Advance games to play on his Gamecube, mainly Mario games. They’re a lot of fun too so I’m glad he bought them. I purchased 24 nail art pens from Hong Kong for only $18 with shipping. That is such a great deal considering nail art pens are $6+ at Wal-Mart and most other places that sell beauty supplies. I have so much more stuff to sell on eBay though, much of what I can’t wait to get rid of either. It would be cool if I could make a business off of selling my stuff, but i’ll eventually run out of things to sell, so I don’t think that will be happening very soon. Oh, how does the new layout look? I figured since it’s practically Summer now, I would put up a nice summery look for my site. I drew everything myself I haven’t had the chance to test it in multiple resolutions other than 1440 x 900 and I’m also a little iffy on the CSS, so opinions will be greatly appreciated!

Happy Valentine’s Day!

Amber — Sat, 14 Feb 2009 22:47:37 +0000

Well, happy February the 14th guys. If you’ve visited my site over the past week, you probably noticed a lot of errors in my layout. Well, it’s all fixed now My code was an absolute mess, and wasn’t validated all to hell. But that’s enough about that. I also implemented Gravatars in the comments (finally) and fixed my block-quotes as you can see in my previous post. I’m still iffy on the CSS because I’ve basically had the same coding for my past 5-6 layouts. I might be tweaking that just a bit over this weekend. It all just depends. I’ll also probably update some pages that need an update really bad. But anyway, I hope everyone likes the new look!

I’ve received valentines from people on The Q*Bee. We decided to swap addresses and have one secret valentine to send to anonymously. I have four so far along with my secret valentine who I figured out almost immediately :). They are from Miranda of Silly Little Panda, Heather of At0mica, a special valentine from my secret valentine, Diane of CCDiane, Ashley of Rainbow-Stuff, and Christine of Crumped Paper! The picture to the left is so you can see them all I listed them above from left to right, top row first (Click on the image to make them larger).

They are all so cute! Here’s a little sneak peek of the Valentines that I’ve sent everyone.

I’ve been reading a lot everywhere that many people don’t have plans for today / tonight. Luckily, I do. Andy has something special planned for us this evening and I’m excited to find out what it is. I still haven’t bought his present, though. I have to head out today to do that and maybe I’ll find some good sales I really don’t know what to get him, though. He doesn’t want candy or anything stuffed. I’ll probably end up making him something or trying to find something unique. I’ll just have to see when I go shopping. I started Weight Watchers on Tuesday. Not just because I want to lose weight, but I also need to start eating healthier and exercising. I’ve let myself make some unhealthy choices over the past couple of years and it’s starting to catch up with me if you know what I mean. So this is my first week on the diet and it’s been going pretty good. My next weigh-in is on this upcoming Tuesday and I’m excited to see how I’ve done. If I’ve lost 5 pounds, that would be great, but even if I only lost 1, that’s great as well. we’ll just have to see It’s getting kind of late in the day and I need to go get Andy’s gift before all the stores run out. Toodles!