The Mystery Thing Revealed! Winners! And Flower Dome Tutorial.

Hi!  Way back on Tuesday, I posted a Mystery Thing guessing game, in which I asked people to name that dome:

Well, it was not my intention to make you guys wait so long to see the answer, but on the spur of the moment I was whisked away on a camping trip to Joshua Tree National Park, and spent the week communing with desert tortoises, giant hares and tiny vanilla lizards impersonating twigs.

I made up the name Vanilla Lizard.  Nobody take it, I am thinking of starting a band.


I am happy to report, a couple of clever readers guessed this Mystery Thing, so we have a winner!  It is Monica, the first one to guess:

Plastic rattle party favors from the dollar store!  Congrats and a half, Monica!  We also have two random winners, chosen by random.org's lucky integer spitter.  It spit out numbers 10 and 27, so congrats to MissKoolAid and Daffy's Dream.  I will email all of you soon. 

Of course, I am the real winner in this game.  Because you weirdos, er, people, have me in whoops every time.  I hereby introduce a brand new feature:

Mich's Best (Wrong!) Guesses Honor Roll

Annie: Barbie's salad bowl

Periwinkle Dzyns: pasties for a cosmic cow

Betsy: rock candy crystal from Ming Dynasty molds

Saraccino: lollipop safety storage

Allison: half a teeny tiny hamster exercise ball

Michele: particle accelerator buttons, because if you were accelerating particles all day, wouldn't you like some lovely buttons to press?

Just Jaymie: ta-ta covers

Sarah: party yarmulkes for a Ken doll

Anji: fairy jello molds

Pete: a gamer's 100-sided die cover (Pete gets style points for including a jpeg!)

Chrysty: My Little Pony contact lenses
Sunny: a wicked uncomfortable diaphragm

HEEEhahaha!  Brilliance!

Now on to a tutorial.

Place your rattle in a plastic bag, unless you truly want the rattly bits scattered ALL over your floor.  Whack the edge lightly with a hammer.  The pieces will pop apart like magic!  Now you have a pink dome and a crystal dome with which to play.

Heat a metal poker and melt two holes in the dome, top and bottom.  Insert an eyepin (a wire with a loop on one end), and feed in some beads to fill the space.  Turn another little loop with the extra wire that pokes out the other side.  Like so:

Attach any tassel or dangly thing to the bottom loop, and a jump ring to the top loop.  String onto a chain, ribbon or neckwire.  Done!  Cute, right?

For an opaque pink version, I made two holes at the top, one at the bottom.  And used a single piece of wire for the top loops.

And there you have it!  Another Mystery solved - another cool jewel born of the dollar store.

Thanks for playing, lovely blog readers!  And wait'll you see what else I'm going to make with these domes.