Quadrille earrings and another use for a heat gun

Even though today's Quadrille class was canceled, I still wanted to make the earrings and finish the instructions.  I have done that, and all that's left to do with the instructions is proofread them and have Steve read them.  Once he says, "I think I could do that," the tutorial is finished.  (If you missed where I discuss the rest of the tutorial making process, click here).

Here are the earrings:

I think they turned out very well!

Remember I said one of the hardest parts of taking process shots was getting cat hair off of my mat?  Well, this is how it gets there:

To be honest, I did hold his tail there to take the picture, but only after he had flicked it over my beads about 5 times.  Pixel is very needy today.  He started out on top of the back of my office chair, then he climbed down me to get to the desk (scratching my neck in the process), and now he's walking all over the desk.  He has blocked my view of the screen several times (including right now), and he tried to eat my Doctor Who vampire's quarterstaff.  I want him on my lap, but he seems content to wander around and mess with things.  No, no, don't eat that Fireline.

I have one more topic for today.  You know how I like my crafting tools to have multiple uses?  (See the Doctor Who vampire's quarterstaff from yesterday and my video of using a circle cutter on wax paper for Christmas cookies from December).

Steve likes to use my heat gun (meant for melting embossing powder for scrapbooking) for non-scrapbooking purposes.  He has used it to weld pieces of a broken laundry basket together and to fix dents in my fake leather jewelry displays, and today he used it to get some wrinkles out of a new bag set I got for free with a Woman Within purchase.  The bags were very compactly folded, and when I straightened them out, there were so many wrinkles, and the bags wouldn't hold their shape well.

The material feels a bit like vinyl or plastic or something, so we didn't want to use the iron.  Steve grabbed the heat gun and got quite a number of the wrinkles out.

It was neat to see the wrinkles vanish.  It was like magic.  There is one little scorch mark at a pretty deep wrinkle.  Steve was being careful, but it was hard to see in there.  So there's your warning:  Heat guns run hotter than hair dryers.  If you do "try this at home", be very careful that you don't burn yourself or the item you're working on.

I can't wait to use my new "weekender set" for the Loose Bead Society Retreat and for the Madison Art Glass and Bead Show!.