Turtles! - Personal Craft Swap with rottenlittleboys

Made a new pair of falls for a personal craft swap. My partner is in tribal bellydancing and requested some of our pistachio hair falls. She likes turtles and fish so that is the theme I went for.



From the top loop to the end of the tassels, these falls are about 28" long. I added a black hair elastic to the loop to put around a pony tail.

I have to say I'm not fond of photographing these long falls. It's difficult to get the whole length in the pics. So, let me chop them up for you. :)



I had planned to decorate the falls with some fish charms, wooden beads and silver bells. But, while I was stringing the shells on the top section of the falls I got this great idea to also make some little turtles out of the pistachio shells. I used some shells that I dyed with Berry Blue Kool-aid for the turtle backs. The Kool-aid made a nice bright turquoise blue (and smell great). Then, I went back over it with a dark turquoise and black fine Sharpie marker to draw some shell pattern and covered them with clear gloss spray paint to make them shiny. The turquoise color contrasts nicely with the burgundy beads.



The falls are strung with brown and black acrylic yarns. The wooden beads were taken from some secondhand cranberry Christmas garlands. They're a realty pretty burgundy color. The feathers were leftovers from a bunch I tore apart for the little felt pirate hat I posted about a while back. I put the feathers and the fish charms on clasps so that they are removable. That way she can wear them in other ways.

I really like how these turned out. Might just be my fave pair, yet. I've been making all kinds of colors of shells, but I seem to prefer the look of stringing the natural ones and using the dyed shells as accents. I've got a few more pairs partially finished. But, I'm going to be taking a break from them to paint some witch boots. If all goes as planned I should have some boots posted by the end of the month.

And, now on to what I receive in return:



My swap partner, littlerottenboys, sent me a really nice 12" locker hooked turtle rug that mom and I plan to enlarge to use in our yurt for camping. You can check out the personal/private swap gallery for more info and to see larger images of the rug.