Sara's Felt Mobile

I just completed a felt mobile for some friends who are expecting their second baby at the end of the month.  I think that they are going to name the baby Sara so hopefully it is in fact a girl and I don't have to rush to change out the huge 'S' at the last minute!

I saw some really adorable felt mobiles just searching through Google images and replicated the elephant, giraffe, and owl from similar ones online.  The hippo and turtle were creations of my own and arguably less cute.  Well...ok, maybe not the turtle, that guy is pretty darn cute.

A friend at work used the machine shop to help me drill holes into the 'S' because I wasn't too confident I could keep a hand-drill steady enough to go through the centre of the letter (where the blue rod is inserted).  I should have waited until the wood pieces were all assembled before painting them but I thought I would be *smart* and paint each piece separately to keep things clean.  Instead I ended up putting on enough coats of paint that the rods couldn't fit properly into the holes anymore!  Anyway after more trouble than was necessary, I got everything assembled and managed to deliver the gift in one piece with minimal tangling!

Lost Wax Casting: Butterfly Ring

In my model-making course last year I didn't put much focus on rings aside from the mandatory projects that were aimed at teaching us the basic measuring and filing skills.  I mostly worked on pendants and my koi cuff bracelet because they don't require the level of symmetry that rings do.  This year I need to try a few rings to improve my skills though, so here is my first project - a butterfly ring.

My vision for this ring was to have a huge butterfly wrap around my middle finger and then carve lots of details into the wing.  Well it didn't quite turn out as planned.  The ring didn't start out as long of a tube as it should have so the butterfly had to be drawn much smaller than I had initially wanted.  That left little room to carve details into the wing so I kept it relatively simple.    

It didn't take much silver to cast this ring.  In fact I was able to reuse most of the sterling that was recovered from my koi cuff bracelet.  I'm debating whether or not to solder on some silver wire for antennas as the last bit of detail but I'm not in love with the ring so I haven't been inspired yet.  To be honest I already have my next bracelet project in mind and am eager to move onto it!