When the Queen Came to Town and the Duke Put His Foot In It……Again

The Queen has come and gone and the great Aussie barbeque she and the Duke attended on the Swan River was a huge success by all accounts. I didn’t go because the thought of battling the crowds was too much to contemplate.

Prince Phillip is renowned for making gaffs and here’s a couple of pearlers.

On meeting a young man with cerebral palsy in a wheel chair he asked him “how many people have you killed in that.”…….oh dear!

And when told  a group of students were the head boy and girl of their  respective schools he said “it’s obvious they didn’t choose the attractive ones then”…….ouch!

Here’s some pretties for you to look at. Love this yarn holder.

What a great idea, it’s from red hot pottery.

Get out your old Tshirts and make this.

You can find instructions on Ninth and Bird blog.

I might make one of these and put it in my new studio, did I tell you I have a studio now?……I did?……just checking.

This is from everydaymomideas and you can find the instructions on her blog.

Hopefully something amazing will emerge from my studio this week. The millions of ideas I had when I was tucked into the small corner of the family room that I was dying to try once I had more room have now deserted me.

Technorati Tags: yarn holder,tshirt scarf,paper leaf tree

The Reason I’ve Been AWOL………

…….is this…..whoohoo!

Also another reason I’ve been absent is because I’ve started a new on line store with madeit.com an Australian online handmade craft site. So I’ve been busy finding my way around it and uploading photos. I’m still called Back Pocket Designs www.madeit.com.au/backpocketdesigns like my Artfire store but I have taken a couple of items from there and put them into madeit. I’m probably going to downgrade my Artfire store to a basic seller instead of pro. I’m just finding all the changes they have been making (and I know they’re for the best) a little hard to deal with. I’m one of those baby boomers who don’t like change, especially any changes to do with computing. Pathetic I know, and don’t get me started on all the Facebook changes…..sheesh, I couldn’t even work it properly before the changes, now I’m completely bamboozled and flummoxed.

So any way, that’s what’s been happening in my small world of late. I love, love, love, my new studio. It’s great to be able to work on something and just walk away and leave it all there until the next day and not have to pack it all away. That was so annoying and would often stop me from trying new things and exploring my clay and generally being creative.

These are a couple of pieces I’ve listed in madeit. This one made the “New Finds” page on my first day and had over 90 views, so that’s encouraging.

Edited to note: This necklace sold about 10 minutes ago. My first sale on Made It.

Wish me luck on my new venture.

Technorati Tags: polymer clay,polymer clay pendandt,made it.com,online craft store,studio

Humour Me

 

I’ve had a little play with my iPad and I’ve taken a video. It’s all very amateurish and Steven Spielberg has nothing to worry about, but it’s really just a test video to see what I could do and to teach myself to upload it. And also where not to put my fingers and to remember to take off the smart cover before I start recording. Couldn’t work out why all I seemed to be recording was an orange square, then I realised I still had the cover on and it was in front of the camera lens. Duh!

 

 

 

A Bit of a Test

 

 

So the photos I took of these necklaces weren’t terribly good (because I’m a lazy sod and couldn’t be bothered setting up my light studio). Then the idea of a video came to mind so I thought why not try filming with my iPad. Maybe I could showcase them a little better in a video.

Someone needs to invent a tripod for the iPad (perhaps someone already has, who knows). It’s a bit awkward trying to hold it with one hand whilst doing something with the other.  And all the controls just aren’t in the right place, especially the stop start button.

 

And how come when you hear your voice it’s nothing like the sound you hear in your head?

 

Technorati Tags: video,ipad,polymer clay pendants

Another New Shape

Well here’s a different shaped pendant with a completely different look to my ‘boomerang’ pendants.

When I bought the Viva Decor cream paints (I promise there will be a post about them soon) I also bought some Pardo clay. Not quite sure about Pardo just yet, I need to play with it a bit more. I found  some of the colours a little soft, so I don’t know what it would be like for making canes. I never make canes, too time consuming and tricky for me. So this pendant is Pardo ‘Ivory', it was almost the opposite of the other colours I bought, it  took a long time to condition as it was quite chalky and I ended up adding some Premo translucent to it so it would come together a bit better. But I have to say I really love this colour.

I textured the clay then once it was cooked and cooled and I sanded the back and the edges, I smudged ‘Graphite’ Decor Viva paint over the raised areas.

Same shape only larger and I used green Premo for this one.

Same deal with the paints except I used ‘Old Silver’ which isn’t really silver, but a very pale, milky, gold. That’s about the only way I can describe the colour.

Now I did make up one of the boomerang pendants. Pretty plain and simple and I’m unsure about it.

I think I’ll add more to it at some stage.  I did make some tube beads with the same pattern when I made this.

So maybe one or too will make their way into the necklace along with whatever else I can add to give some spark.

Technorati Tags: polymer clay,polymer clay pendants,pardo clay,tube beads

Trying For Organic

I had two identical cookie cutters so I decided to re-shape one of them into a more organic shape. Well it didn’t quite work the way I hoped. The shape ended up looking like a boomerang, not that there is anything wrong with that, but it just wasn’t the shape I was going for.

I textured these and after they were cooked I smudged them with Viva Decor cream paints. Love this stuff and will do a post on them in the near future.

For these I extruded strips of multi coloured clay and then flattened them in the pasta machine laid the strips over a base clay then cut the shapes out. Not quite sure what I will do with these, I guess something will come to me.

And here’s an experiment in fancy bail making.

So that’s what I did over the weekend. How about you?

Technorati Tags: polymer clay,polymer clay pendants,extruder,boomerang,bails,texture