Another special pen

A special pen for my niece's 21st birthday! Happy Birthday Jessica!

Design Seeds colour Palettes

I love Pinterest. The best thing about it is it doesn't take too much time, I can use it to file away pictures I want to see again and I can have a quick flick through to see what everyone else has come across but (so far) I haven't spent half my day sat there playing with it.

I came across a new web site today, courtesy of a pin by the amazingly talented Zuda Gay Pease called design seeds. It's a collection of beautiful pictures and the  corresponding colour palettes.  Here's one I particularly like.

I am trying to be more organised and co-ordinated in my creating so I might have a hunt around to find some funky colour schemes to play about with. Although of course I should be trying to keep up with the colour palette challenge on flickr, not been doing very well with that recently.  I've got some new creations to show you, and some I can't show you just yet. Watch this space.
I'm also excited about going to the London Polymer Clay Group meeting this weekend.
have a colourful day!
Cara x

Teacher presents

My children made present for their teachers to say thank you for such a wonderful year (they have both had amazing teachers this year lucky things!). I managed to persuade them to make spoons instead of necklaces, much more useful. Here they are:

My daughter who is 5 made all these things. She has 5 adults who work in her class and she adores them all! Her actual teacher got one of the flowery spoons and the necklace.

My son who is nearly 7 made these 2 teaspoons.

They are both very proud of their flower canes (I'm not surprised as they about the same as the flower canes I was making at about age 15 but then they have the benefit of my experience lucky things - can't wait to see what they're making at 15!). They are always wanting to sell their jewellery, I think I will try and find an opportunity for them to give it a go as they are making some pretty good stuff - look at these pendants

Cane and pendant made by James aged nearly 7

Cane and pendant made by Daisy aged 5

I am busy working on some special jewellery, I will show you soon. Hope you are all having fun playing with your clay!

Cara x

Giveaway winners!

It is time to announce the winners of my giveaway.

Prize 1
Thanks to all of my followers, I am sorry you couldn't all win. The random number generator picked follower 14.

 I counted up from the beginning (unfortunately the people with no google id go to the beginning so they had to count as numbers 1 - 4 even though they weren't my first 4 followers) - so I make number 14 Flowermouse. I am delighted to be sending this necklace to such a colourful home!

Prize 2
Not sure I explained this giveaway very clearly as only 3 people are entered, 2 who left comments on the giveaway post and another I received by email. To be entered you needed to post a link to my blog somewhere and let me know. Comments on the post didn't count but thank you for your kind comments.

I put the 3 peoples names on slips of paper the appropriate number of times (one for each link) and my daughter chose one. The name she pulled out was nickandkatherine. Congratulations! If you could email me with your address I will get the earrings in the post.

Thank you all for entering. I will do another giveaway when I get  to 100 followers on this blog.

Will have some pictures to show you of the lovely presents my children made for their teachers later, made from polymer clay of course!

Deadline extended 48 hours - giveaway

I had a super busy weekend and forgot to remind you about my giveaway deadline - so I'm extending it by 48 hours (because I'm working tomorrow so won't have time to draw it anyway).

So if you haven't entered you still have time - so far it's one of 2 people who will win the second giveaway prize. To enter all you need to do is put a link to my blog on facebook, twitter or your blog and then leave a comment or email me (see contact me link above) to let me know.

The first giveaway prize will be drawn from all my followers - so if you haven't signed up as a follower already now's a good time!

Good luck!

Cara

Faux Wood Tutorial from Craft Edu by Sylvie Peraud

In one of my last posts I mentioned I was going to actually try and use some of the many tutorial and projects I have been reading and admiring but not actually using! I finally got round to trying out one of the Craft Edu tutorials I purchased ages ago. It's Faux Wood by Sylvie Peraud. I was lucky enough to take a class with Sylvie at Polymer Play Days last year and am a big fan of her work and I know she is a good teacher!

Generally I like to learn from a book. I like to have words and plenty of pictures that I can take in at my own speed, that I can flip forwards and backwards easily. I find videos more difficult to watch and learn from for some reason. I like to watch people work in real life, in workshops, but will take pages of written notes for my benefit later. The craft edu format sort of works for me, as long as there is a handout I can print. It's a bit like having pages of a tutorial that someone talks through for you. Often there are some real gems of information in the talking through. Being impatient I can sometimes find there's too much information that I want to skip, luckily it is easy to skip forwards and backwards to the next slide.

So here is the result of my first attempt at Faux wood, the shape is one Sylvie demonstrates how to produce as part of the tutorial. The tutorial is clear and easy to follow.

 I am pleased with how they worked out, they feel nice, they did need a little more sanding really. Not quite sure what they will become. Perhaps a pair of earrings or maybe part of a bracelet. Sylvie uses them as part of a pebble and faux wood bracelet as toggle closure, and she also showed a pair of earrings.

Photo challenge on Tropical Blonde blog

I don't seem to have had time to play with my clay for nearly a whole week now - I'm getting twitchy! Hopefully tomorrow I will get some time. I am thinking of trying to challenge myself to try out some of the many tutorials and projects I have from books and the Internet. I love to read them and look at the pictures but for some reason very rarely actually use them. I am going to commit to doing at least 1 a month and sharing the result here, I won't be able to show you how as that wouldn't be fair on the people who wrote the book/tutorial but I will reference it so you can find it if you want to try it too. It's good to try out new things!

I came across this photo challenge on Kate's Tropical Blonde blog
http://tropicalblonde.blogspot.com/2011/07/photo-challenge.html.
Looks like fun to take part and not too demanding as she doesn't insist on it being a new photo - off to scroll through the archives to find some colour!

Polymer Clay Day at my house

I was lucky enough to have a polymer clay day today with friends old and new today!

I invited all the people I knew who lived in the South West corner of the UK to get together at my home (being as it's fairly central and easy to get to) and was lucky enough to be joined by 4 of them.

It was great to spend some time with like minded people, who know what you are talking about and to share tips and ideas.We all brought some things to show each other and it was amazing how different all our polymer clay work is. Sorry this isn't a great photo but here's our collection of polymer clay treasures.

If you happen to live within reasonable travelling distance of Bristol (UK) then please get in touch and I can let you know if we arrange to get together again.
Thank you ladies for a lovely day!
Cara

Pinterest

Oh dear I have made the mistake of looking at Pinterest! There goes half my life playing with it! But how wonderful to be able to pin up pictures from everywhere in one place. I have a lot of favourites on flickr and I have lots of starred or tagged blog posts in Google Reader but now I can keep them all together!

I still haven't quite figured it all out yet but I have made myself 2 pinboards, one for polymer clay inspiration and one to collect together peoples wonderful polymer clay photo tutorials. I shall spend some time hunting around seeing who else has interesting polymer clay pin boards - if you've got one let me know and I'll go check it out.
 I'm CaraJaneUK on Pinterest (there was already a CaraJane). If there's no new clay work here for a while - blame Pinterest!
Cara x

Melody O Designs - new artfire shop

Check out the beautiful 'Wearable Artwork' from Melody O Designs, the lovely Anita's new artfire shop. Her polymer clay works really are works of art! Wish I had her patience!

http://www.artfire.com/users/melodyodesigns

Outdoor sale set up.

Here's my stall. I shared it with my lovely mum, that's her knitted and crocheted creations on the left side.

 

My clever dad made me some display cases and they worked brilliantly making my set up a breeze as I was able to take them 'loaded' with jewellery.

The weather wasn't too bad, warm and dry and not too windy, but I did have to sellotape my little signs and labels down! There were lots of people at the event and I got lots of compliments about my work. I sold a good  amount of jewellery and am now looking forward to a well deserved take away meal with my family!

Sale at Heathfest Tomorrow!

I meant to tell you all about this sale before, just in case you lived close enough to come along and say 'Hi' but somehow in all the other preparation and general life I forgot (hmm people who know me will know that I always try to do too much, in too little time and that makes me rather prone to forgetting things).

Tomorrow, Saturday 2nd July, I will be selling my jewellery at my first outdoor show - Heathfest in Bromley Heath which is about 2 miles from where I live. I am very excited to be able to show of my new banner and my very posh new Moo business cards. I will try and get a photo of my stall set up to share with you.

I have lots of lovely jewellery to show off too, here are a couple of my newest pieces

 

This flower is based on the excellent tutorial from Ayelet - Ayeletbeads flower. I have made quite a few of these now and have my own little modifications.