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.

I'd Rather Bead than Cook

I've had a heck of time trying to do this post. Blogger has gone stupid on me and instead of normal text it keeps reverting to Html. Rage inducing stuff I have to say. Just a couple of pieces I've made over the last few days.
A large, what I think is an etched metal ribbon slide for scrapbooking that I removed from the spine of one of my art journals. I took it off because I wanted to see if my cropadile would punch holes in it (which it does) so then I added a chain and clasp.Rub n buffed some metal letters and glued them on and added several charms to the
slot at the bottom.

A gorgeous Cathy Dailey clasp.......
.....which I added to this chain. Attached some beads, mother of pearl, web jasper, and faceted cloudy quartz which has one of Cathy's silver handmade bead caps that I just love.
Some goodies arrived in the mail yesterday, things from Humble Beads and Summers Studio so I've got lots of things to play with over the next few days, along with the arrival of my new oven. I worked out the other day the oven we have at the moment is almost 40 years old. It's a gas oven and two of the hobs don't work properly, the griller hasn't worked since we moved in (22 year ago) and the oven hasn't worked for the last 10 years. I've been making do with a little bench top oven that belonged to my mum, so now that will become my craft oven.
Hello polymer clay, shrink plastic and anything else crafty that can be cooked in a little oven. I'm more excited about having a dedicated craft oven than I am about the new oven because the new oven means I have to cook! Can you tell I'm not overly thrilled about the cooking thing?

Fruit & Veg & Beads.

Sunday Chas and I went for a drive up to the Midland Farmers Markets. Bought fruit and vegies and crusty bread and free range eggs. Prices aren't much cheaper than the supermarkets but it all seems to be much fresher.

So while we were wondering down the aisles, we were almost to the end and lo and behold there was a stall with and million strands of beads just begging me to wander inside and browse. Chas's eyes just glazed over, now if it had been a stall selling soccer paraphernalia..... well I'm sure he would have been as excited as I was at such a find. So I just casually mentioned what a good idea it would be if he took all our shopping bags back to the car while I looked around, thinking this would give me time to look, shop and hide most of my purchases before he got back. Wrong......he walked in just as I was handing over the credit card......damn, I wasn't quick enough. The guy running the stall was telling me that a lot of his regular female customers tell him if they come in with their husband he has to pretend he doesn't know them. And rightly so, what happens in the bead shop stays in the bead shop.

I couple of things I've made over the last few days. These were once a Christmas garland that I pulled apart. Matt gold filagree that I stippled over black alcohol ink and then smudged with silver rub n buff.Added some earring hooks and a very quick pair of earrings were created.

This next piece is nothing like the vision I had in my head. But I like it none the less. I had bought the silver chain a while ago and it's very silver and glitzy, so to tone it down a bit I've twisted two strands of matt black chain that I've added two different beads in shades of black and grey.
I'm not sure about the flower though. It's a smokey grey mother of pearl look. I think I like it. It still needs to have a clasp added to it.
Now I'm off to re-arrange stuff in my 1 metre x 1 metre square crafting area. I'm running out of room because the beads are multiplying faster than rabbits!

Spas are Over Rated

Things have been quiet in the jewelry making department over the last few days. My head has been consumed with holiday plans for Christmas. Spending time with 3 of my sisters who are interstate and catching up with my girlfriend of 38 years (yikes! is it really 38 years Sherryn?).
But it's the big trip to Tasmania that I've wanted to do for many years. Now I had visions in my head of swanning around a swanky hotel suite, strolling around the city, lots of shopping and sight seeing and then strolling back to our swanky suite and possibly having a spa to relieve the aching muscles and then order room service. Who was I kidding?
You see we forgot to factor in the Sydney to Hobart yacht race and every hotel, motel, apartment, bed and breakfast within coo-ee of the city is booked out. So after 3 days on the internet, many emails begging for accommodation and pulling my hair out we finally found a place.
Forget about spas and room service. The only luxury this place has is tea/coffee making equipment, also it's a 10 minute drive out of the city or in our case a 20 minute 'hop on the bus Gus' ride unless we hire a car.
One redeeming feature it has though is it's very close to the Cadbury Chocolate factory. Actually thinking about that now, it's possibly not a good thing. Anyway we'll just make the best of it, I keep telling myself as long as we've got somewhere to sleep that's the main thing. Spas are overrated anyway.
So this is my very poor effort in jewelry making over the last few days.

Still on the grungeboard kick but this time no wall paper. Painted the GB then embossed the disc in the cuttlebug. Gently smeared silver rub n buff over the raised areas.

I used Folk Art black metallic paint. Sorry about the glare.
So now all the holiday plans are made I can concentrate on other stuff and that's just made me realise I better start making some Christmas presents to take with me. Guess what the sisters are getting!

Re-worked, Re-vamped, Re-jigged

This is the necklace from the post below. Pulled it all apart and glued the discs together. So now there's six instead of 12. Made a large central disc and dabbed several different colours of rub n buff over a metal washer (to give the whole piece a bit of weight) then covered it with glossy accents and glued it to the disc. Added some beads that I had bought eons ago and it's finished.
More wallpaper. This silver and black wallpaper is my most favourite piece. So much so that I conned Carmen into giving me hers as well. We've both got similar sample books and I put on such a good act about needing it for something special (I used it to cover a journal we were both making in class) that she felt sorry for me and couldn't say no. So the few small pieces I have left are precious......and no Carmen, you're not getting it back.
A mixture of purchased and op shop beads.
I could just cry when I look at these. Decided to have a go at making my own earing wires. So very carefully followed the instructions in one of the books I have and was so pleased with the result. Almost perfect and pretty easy and wow, I'm going to make heaps of these. So after blowing my own trumpet and tooting my own horn and patting myself on the back for making such perfect ear wires I thought I'd better try them on. What......why aren't they going in my ears, what's wrong. Oh for goodness sake, the wire is too thick. Sometimes I'm so silly I scare myself.
So it's back to the drawing board again. I tell ya, my drawing board is awfully full with mess-ups, mistakes and a mish-mash of projects.