Black and Grey Flowers

A good friend of mine was making a new dress to wear to a wedding - so I offered to make her some new jewellery to match. It turned out just beautiful! Here it is

If you are familiar with the polymer clay work of Ayelet you will notice my inspiration! I made the grey beads and textured them with salt, they match the colour of the dress.

I'm busy working on some Christmas gift and ornament designs, I hope to be able to share some soon. I hope you are having fun whatever you are doing.

My Blue, Teal and Grey Stroppel Cane

I used the scraps from my last projects to make a Stroppel Cane, looks quite different using a limited palette.

Here's some of the things I have made with it.

Domed disc Stoppel Cane pendant

Little disc earrings

Longer pendant, think on reflection the stripes look better vertically, next time...

Domed doughnut pendant. The dangle is the bit cut from the center.

Playing about with the scaps, not quite sure about this but my husband likes it.

Me wearing the disc pendant, it has a little too much white to really go with this top but it's not bad.

I have collected together everyone's images of their Stroppel Cane things on a pinterest pinboard here.

Grey, blue and teal jewellery

Here's a top, new to me and the colours I mixed to make some matching jewellery.

I didn't really like the flower so didn't want to recreate the pattern, just make something that would go - using the colours as my palette. I had great fun playing around and trying new things, making up my own flower canes rather than using my old familiar favourites.
 Here's some of what I got up to

Flower pendant, matches top pretty well

Flower pendant - my favourite but too much white to really match with the top.

Another picture to show you the little petal dangle I added to help the cord hang right, got a spiral center on this side

Made with some scraps  - more to show you with that flower when I've finished it!

Me wearing the grey flower pendant

I am back to my clay bench now to make some inchies (1" square polymer clay tiles) to swap with the other participants at The Polymer Clay Event in Alfreton this weekend. I can't wait! Can't believe it was only a year ago that I first met so many of my polymer clay friends, feels like I've know you all for much longer than that. Last year I went along knowing no one, this year I am really looking forward to seeing my old friends!

Latest jewellery - blue and brown pendants

 I am still busy making special things that I can't show you - yet. In the meantime here are a couple of new things I've made with some of the scraps from my secret project.

This was a birthday present for my soon to be (official) sister in law Heather.

This you might recognise as one of the projects from the new Julie Picarello book - Patterns in Polymer.

Time for a giveaway!

In celebration of my new blog I am going to run 2 giveaways.

Giveaway 1

To enter all you need to do is be a follower, I will use a random number generator to pick a follower, with 1 being the first follower. Those of you who are already following me here, thank you, you will be entered.

This is the prize for giveaway 1

Giveaway 2

To enter this you need to link to my blog. A blog, or facebook post, or tweet - about my blog in general or the giveaway will count as one entry (you can do all three and get 3 entries if you want). A link in your blog roll will count as 3 entries! Leave a comment to let me know you have made a link to my www.carajane.co.uk blog site so I can enter you in the giveaway. If you have problems leaving a comment please email me at carajaneuk'at'gmail.com (replacing the 'at' for @ ). For this one I will enter all your names into a hat the corresponding number of times and get my lovely daughter to pick one out.

This is the prize for giveaway 2 (It can be swapped for a pendant if you aren't an earring wearer)

***DEADLINE NOW EXTENDED TIL 19TH JULY!!!! ***

 

The closing date for both giveaways is 17th July 2011 so you have plenty of time. I will post overseas. Make sure I have some way of contacting you, email address on your blogger profile or leave your email in the comment - or email me. If I can't contact the winner I will redraw.

Thank you for reading my  blog, I enjoy writing it and it's so nice to know that people actually read it!

Good luck to you all!

Cara

Latest jewellery - and it's all for me!

I haven't had any new jewellery for myself for a while now, I was busy making sale stock and completing orders. So far this year things have been quieter so finally made myself some new things. Here's some of them

3 blue and white skinny bangles. I am road testing these to see how they strong they are. Baked them extra long to try and make sure they were strong!

Blue and white oval cabochon pendant, I do love this simple blue and white flower cane. This is the second batch of the cane I've made and I can see I will be making more.

The blue and white colours are also the colour palette for this week in the Flickr Colour Palette a Week group - do come and join in with whatever medium you craft in.

Hollow beads made using the technique I learnt on Christine Dumont's Hollow Bead Workshop. She is just about to start an online workshop for these beads so follow the link and check it out.

Hollow beads strung as a necklace


I've more to show you tomorrow. Hope you all have a great weekend
Cara

Purple and green jewellery set

Here's some green and purple jewellery I made using the technique I learnt from Natalia Garcia de Leaniz  at Polymer Plays Days in Nottingham earlier this year.

Yes a hat pin! But can also been worn as a brooch or decorating a bag.

You may recognise these colours as being the project which produced the scrap clay for the lentil pendant I showed you recently.

Actually made some jewellery!

Last night I delved into my big box of polymer clay things and liberated some to become jewellery. Here they are.

Here are some of those Kato extruder technique beads (the tutorial is being written!)

I am really pleased with how this turned out. Although normally I really don't like brown or orange, somehow I love the colours on this. I wouldn't wear it as it wouldn't go with my normal colours so I will have to make the same but in different colours I guess. Probably turquoise and green.

Here is a purple creation made from a few bits of scrap and a couple of purple sparkles. It's a little on the random side but I quite like it. This is that same Kato extruder technique with purple, magenta and white.

 

Here I am wearing a necklace made from the Kato spliced flower cane I made as part of my brand comparison trial. I only made a small cane and I just about managed to squeeze 3 slices from it. 

Close up of splice flower cane beads

I spent this morning making a bracelet from a kit I was given for Christmas 2 years ago!It is jangling as I type, and definitely not recommended for wearing whilst working with clay lol.

Blue glass beaded charm bracelet

I would like to say a huge thank you to my wonderful mum who has not only given up the last 3 weeks to look after our family (whilst I am on crutches after having an operation on my foot) taking the kids to school, shopiing, cooking, cleaning, washing etc. but has got out all my clay things for me everyday, and tidied them up! She bought the bits I needed to complete the brown necklace at the weekend and has been a great artistic sounding board!

It feels really good to actually make somethings rather than leave all my beads and bits in a box waiting to be brought to life. I hope to liberate some more soon (another sanding session in order...)