My Recycled Play Doh Necklace!

Happy New Year everyone!!  It's been a little while since I've posted, as I've been sucked into the whirling vortex that is the holidays around my house.  Luckily we took our home off the market just in time for Thanksgiving (after 7 months of trying to sell).  However, things were pretty busy between Thanksgiving travel, hosting family for Christmas, and then my son's 3rd birthday!  (Check out this post on my ID Mommy blog if you're looking for ideas for your own DIY choo-choo train birthday party!)

Anyway, now that I'm "back," I wanted to share one of the homemade Christmas gifts I gave this year that was done in the spirit of recycling.   

This really was an experiment with something that I'm sure nobody would think to recycle, but it came out pretty sweet. If you have little kids who love Play-Doh like I do, you may recognize the little colored bits in this pendant as being those tiny pieces of dried up Play-Doh that get stuck in the perforated plastic heads of those barber shop guys.

Yup, I was just nutty enough to see an art project in these little dried up Play-Doh scraps.  I filled a silicone mini muffin pan with a little resin, poured in the Play-Doh bits, poured in some more resin, and out popped this cool, shiny disc.  I bent a loop with some jewelry wire, glued it to the back, attached a cord, and gave one to my sister.  Oh, and I have one in my jewelry box now too.  It's definitely a conversation piece!

 Here's a shot of the back.  I made a little loop with copper wire, and then made a pretty swirl out of one end, giving me a surface to glue it to the back with some strong epoxy.

 I like to make little tags for my homemade gifts, to give them that "brand new" feeling you get when you buy something from a store.  This one wasn't fancy as I just did hand lettering, but you can easily make a little hang tag by folding a piece of paper, cutting the bottom two corners at an angle, running a strip of glue across the top and punching a hole.  You know, in case you wanted to hang it on a store rack or something.  ;-)

 I really just put this tag on so I could note what the heck this thing was made out of!  But, I also really like making more "professional" looking tags on the computer too.  I think next year I'll make little price tags that say "$1,000.00" or "priceless" or something like that.  ;-)

Bet 'ya didn't think you could turn crumbs of dried up Play-Doh into beautiful jewelry now, did you?!