Jewels on Crystal

 
You never know when you'll stumble across something that gives you a crafty idea.  I took my car for service yesterday and had to wait a while for everything to be finished.  The dealership is just down the road from a shopping plaza and it was a nice day so I took a walk and ended up at the Pier 1 Imports store.

Just inside the store there was a cart full of clearance items.  I had intended to just browse around and enjoy the colors and holiday decorations but then I noticed these glass tumblers.

The mouth of the glass seemed rather narrow for drinking but the quilted pattern of the design had spots that would be perfect to highlight with gems.  I thought that they would make very pretty votive or tealight holders and I bought all of the remaining glasses on the cart (remember, they were drastically marked down).

I counted the number of spots where the pattern intersected and made a flat place to add a gem.  There were nine repeats around the glass.  Since I had the gems out for another project, I sorted through to find the colors and sizes that would work.

I used mini glue dots to attach the gems to the tumbler.  It  worked best for me to put the gem on the glue dot while it was still on the roll and then pick up the gem and place it on the glass.

I used a darker green on the bottom row...

...red on the second row...

...and a lighter green on the top row.

Then I added slightly smaller gold gems to complete the pattern on the in-between rows.

Here is the fully sparkled tumbler.   I put a piece of black cardstock behind the tumbler to help show the pattern of the glass with contrast.  Then I set about trying to take photos of the tumbler with a light inside and I found out that the combination of crystal and candlelight is tricky to photograph. 

Here is my first shot using a battery operated tealight with the tumbler sitting in my usual photo taking set up for cards.

I decided that a real candle might be prettier so I brought the tumbler upstairs and tried taking photos in various spots in the living and dining rooms.

With the flash, the gems and details show up better but the candlelight effect is lost.

I think that these will make nice little gifts.  I have lots of different colors of gems that I can use.  The glue dots are holding the gems very firmly now but I am not sure if they will withstand anything but hand washing.  Of course, if any gems fall off it will be simple enough to stick them on again!

The gems are just inexpensive faceted plastic discs of color with a mirror back.  I got a large bag of assorted colors and sizes a few years ago and have found them useful for several projects lately.  I'll see if I can track down more specific details but you can probably find these in a large craft store.  They may be in a section with more general craft supplies.  If you usually stay in the papercrafting rows - explore a little!

I forgot to take a photo (I'll add it tomorrow) but today's addition to the box is a small bag of assorted gems (there may not be any blue ones since I am using nearly all of them on another project!).

in the box so far...

1.  2 sheets of the sticky paper I used for the glittered ornament card
2.  A new set of the same Inkadinkado Autumn Leaves stamps I used on the card
3.  An 18 inch piece of the brown leaf ribbon - enough for a few cards.
 4.  A small bag of plastic gems.

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A little diversion from paper crafting today.  This weekend I'll be working to finish up a big project that I can tell you about next week.  There may be papier mache involved...

I hope you have a great weekend!

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