A Bit of Trumpet Blowing

News just in........Kelly from Beadativity has posted an interview about moi on her blog. I'm participating in a jewelry swap that Kelly has organised and my partner is the lovely Dawn. So Kelly has kindly decided to interview each of us and find out a little more about our jewlery making journeys. Head on over and take a peak.
Also if you love entering give aways, Andrew has a doozy going on at his blog. Lots of amazing goodies to be won.

Number Two

This one is not quite finished, I still have to add a toggle clasp to it. Gunmetal grey chain and connectors with white porcelain beads.

Gorgeous blue ceramic bird and butterfly pendant by Summers Studio.
Natural cats eye beads with PMC bead caps hand made by moi!
Sold

And I added a tiny butterfly charm to the large pendant. I'm rather liking this one, I think it's the stark contrast between the dark chain and the light blue bird and pendant. It really pops.

When I do my post for the third piece I made over the weekend it will be my 200th post. Should I have a giveaway? Would you be interested? Will I do it? Will you leave a comment? Hope so!

A Long Time Between Drinks

I've kind of gotten out of the habit of making jewelry since I've been playing with polymer clay, so I thought I'd better remedy that. I'm still in the very early stages of experimenting with the clay, plenty of duds with just a few pieces that I'm happy with. One of which is the little copper charm on the end of this necklace (bottom picture).

Copper chain with some filigree connectors.
Natural cats eye beads with tiny copper spacer beads.
I have a couple more necklaces that I've made over the weekend so I'll post those over the next few days.

Learning Curve

Here's a few things I've been making over the last few days. A big learning curve especially when you're only source of information is from books and whatever you can glean from the net. I'm one those people who needs lessons from a flesh and blood teacher, I like to observe someone in the act of creating and chatting about the process.
Anyway these pieces below were an experiment in making connectors, a bit larger than I wanted and also I haven't cleaned them up yet. I'm hoping to antique them with paint or rub and buff or maybe even some walnut ink.

These are my attempts at faux cermaics. Cut out the clay, textured it, baked it then painted them with a mixture of Translucent Liquid Clay and alcohol inks and re-baked them. I'm using Premo clay and it's quite stiff and I'm having a devil of time getting a deep enough impression when texturing them, I'm quite possibly doing something wrong. Also the TLC is a very thick honey like consistency and not so easy to apply.
The black and white ones are just white PC that I've stamped with black archival ink and then baked. I'm more in my comfort zone with stamping and these have possibilities I think.
So after my experiment with the TLS I wondered if I could get a similar effect just using diluted paint. These a some copper bezels that have been sitting in my drawer for quite some time waiting for me to think of some way of using them. So I just used translucent clay and squished it into the bezels, textured them with a stamp and baked. After they'd cooled down I diluted Burnt Sienna paint with some water and sloshed it on them and wiped if off so the recessed areas are darker. I really like these.
So it's back to the drawing board for me. The weekend looms with all sorts of creative possibilities (in between the laundry, cooking, cleaning etc.). Have a good one!

Raku Boo-Boo?

When starting a new endeavor it's always helpful if you start at the bottom and work your way up. You have to crawl before you can walk I try and tell myself, but clearly I don't listen to myself (I'm a bit boring anyway) so whilst playing with polymer clay and reading books and trawling the net, there are so many tempting techniques to try that I thought I'd give the faux raku technique a bit of a burl. Raku is a fairly involved form of pottery requiring kilns and different ways of getting a lovely metallic sheen on it.
Not bad for a first go really......really? I made the mistake of starting off with white clay, well I already had these pieces made and baked so I thought why not, what have I got to lose, only some clay and a bit of time. Black clay would have worked so much better plus it would have been a bit quicker because I wouldn't have had to put so many coats of Micaceous Iron Oxide on them, but anyway I'll know for next time.

So after several coats of MIO and waiting in between for them to dry, could have used my heat gun to speed the process up but I'm in the living room and it's noisy and the world cup is on and I think I would have gotten nasty looks from DH.
Then using Golden's Iridescent Bronze I lightly stippled over them with a stencil brush.
Then using my finger I lightly dabbed Jo Sonja's Iridescent paints in turquoise for some and blue for the others.
Not too shabby for a first attempt, the round shapes are quite organic (read wonky) but I think that adds to their hand made charm.
So now I've tried this technique I'm off.......to Infinity and Beyond.......to try some other things. Who said you have to start at the bottom!!!!!

One That's Finished

Remember these? My polymer clay attempts. Well I made a necklace using one of the half moon pieces.

The impression I made with the stamp came out fairly faint after baking.
But with the addition of some black rub n buff to highlight the embossing it looks pretty good really. I'm pretty chuffed with the way it turned out.
And with the addition of some grey quartz, chandelier crystals, striped shell beads, dark grey natural cat's eye, some glass pearls and web jasper, all joined together with gunmetal grey wire and clasp it looks respectable I think.
So now with a gazillion ideas tumbling around in my head you know you'll see more, the good and the bad, the successes and failures......you're welcome.