Monday, September 8, 2014

Metal Stamping

Have you ever done metal stamping? I'll admit, I was never very intrigued by this craft. I've dabbled a tiny bit with jewelry making, but never done stamping. I made friendship bracelets like a fiend when I was a tweener, but didn't do anything else until I had my little girl. And then, she just HAD to have a cute little bracelet! Since I discovered it wasn't really scary or hard, I've made a few more bracelets, some super bangly and some super simple. And I don't think I took a picture of a single one! I've seen cute little necklaces that were stamped, with kids' names on them, but never really wanted to pay for them. I figured it must be pretty difficult, since it's stamped into metal, and you probably needed to have a tool of some sort. Little did I know...

I'm in the Young Women presidency in my ward -- the first counselor. That means I work with the 14-15 year old girls in my church, on Sundays and at Tuesday night activities -- and at certain times of the year, we do a week-long Girls Camp, an overnighter Youth Conference, and assorted parties to highlight new girls and everything they've done for Personal Progress. We do a ton of crafty sorts of things, and most of the time they really come out nice! About a month ago, we challenged all the young women (ages 12-17) to read the Book of Mormon in one month. That's no small feat -- it's 538 pages (with the introduction) of some really deep doctrinal scripture. For most people, it's a challenge just to read it in three months, and we gave our young women a third the time! So, we really wanted to reward the girls who completed the challenge. We brainstormed, and the best idea we came up with was to make a necklace that emphasized our challenge theme: I can do hard things. Our president had a metal stamp set and bunch of aluminum blanks and ball necklace chains left over from a craft we didn't get to at camp. I volunteered to try my hand at stamping the blanks... and then forgot about it until the Sunday before our activity! I wasn't able to get to it Sunday at all, because I also play for the choir and had a couple of meetings after church. Monday was Labor Day, so I went and got some jump rings and beads from the craft store, some temple charms from Deseret Book, and went to town. Thanks to youtube, my first try went pretty well!
 
After I attached the temple charm and bead, I sent over a picture to my YW pres. She loved it, so I got crazy -- by midnight, I'd made 20 full necklaces, and I was ready for a good long sleep!
 
I've returned my YW president's metal stamp set, but I think I'll get one for me -- I have five cute little names to stamp on a Mama necklace. :)

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