Mantid #1: Origins

Creating

On Sunday, Blaze got up early again - But not because she thought it was a school day. She was excited about the fact that she collected enough cans to make her claw design come to life.

"Papa," Blaze asked after she ate breakfast, "Is it alright if I borrow some tools to make pendants to sell on Etsy?"

"Sure," He replied.

"Thanks!" She beamed as she ran upstairs to get her metal stamping set, tubes of JB Weld and E-6000 and a bag of rhinestones and other jewelry-making supplies.

Then she flew back downstairs, and out the door to the garage, where all the metal was stored. Once she was inside, she pulled out three full boxes of aluminum cans, sheet metal, fasteners, and wire. Blaze picked up a scrap piece of sheet metal and two pop cans, and started to cut the tops and bottoms off of the cans to make them flat. Blaze put the two flat sheets of metal on the sheet, then she flipped one over and squeezed a drop of JB Weld on each corner, then flipped it over, and pressed it back on. Then she grabbed two alligator clips, and clamped the pieces together. She kept doing this until she covered the whole sheet. Then she repeated the process again with another piece of sheet metal. Once she was done with that one, she put the two pieces aside to let the adhesive cure overnight.

Then to prove she wasn't lying completely, she used the scraps from the cans to make some heart-shaped pendants. Blaze cut hearts out of the metal, and then put them on top of each other to cut them to each other's size. After that, she coated the one underneath with E-6000, and pressed them together, silver sides out. Then she stamped a semicolon onto it, and glued a blue rhinestone in the upper dot. After that, she found a pointed stamp, and poked a hole through the top left side of the heart shape. Then she put an opened jumpring through the hole, closed it, slipped a piece of ribbon through it, and tied the ribbon off. Blaze quickly made 15 more like it. Then she made two that looked like penguins with rhinestones for eyes.

Blaze waited for 10 more minutes for the glue to dry. Then she hid the start of her pincers in the bin of scrap metal, gathered the necklaces, and exited the garage. She shut the door behind her and jogged up the steps to her house, and let herself in.

"How'd it go?" Her grandfather asked.

Blaze walked toward him, holding out her handiwork, "Good."

He put his hand behind one of the penguins and tilted it towards him, "Wow, this is really nice!"

"Thanks," She replied.

He moved onto one of the hearts with the engraved words of 'Just breathe.' He chuckled, "These are really cool. They should sell well in your Et-See shop - Is that how you say it?"

"Yep."

"Yeah, people will like these a lot," He continued, "Everyone likes recycled stuff. It saves that planet."

"I hope so," Blaze said modestly.

"They do," He encouraged.

Blaze smiled as she walked away and upstairs to her room to list the necklaces on her Etsy shop, GlowGreen Jewelry.