Polymer, Pamper, Play - Perfect Again!

WOW what a weekend, so much creative time, inspiration, fun with friends, good food, learning new skills, couldn't ask for a better weekend!

The venue was in beautiful surroundings and the food was marvellous, we were thoroughly spoilt!
There were plenty of old friends, it was great to spend time with them and also plenty of new interesting people to meet. We had such fun!

As for the workshops! Well what wonderful tutors! I have come away with some wonderful jewellery I am very pleased with and a whole heap more skills and a brain about bursting with ideas!


 This is the Bento pedant I made in Ana Belchi's workshop on Friday. I am not normally one for subtle but I love her constructed mokume gane (you can see it as the decorative blue in the inside of the form) and have some part made pieces with it. The construction was interesting and has opened up some more ideas for me to play with. I have been following Ana's blog for a while so it was great to actually meet her and see her lovely work up close.

On Saturday we had a workshop with Eva Ehmeier. She taught us how to make her beautiful Artichoke pendants. They are quite a lot of work to make but I enjoyed it and love the end result. She is a great teacher and I really enjoyed the class. Here's one of mine, I did have time to make a few other bits playing around with the basic technique too. I have a few ideas for colour schemes I'd like to try out, Eva uses wonderful colours in her pendants.

On Sunday we had a workshop with Melanie Muir. She showed us how she makes her Mokume Gane sheets, and how to construct a cuff bracelet. Here's the cuff I made. I wasn't that pleased with my colours in the end, I made them to match a pendant I already have but they could of done with something with a bit more contrast I think (especially when you are looking at Melanie's inspirational jewellery!!). She was an amazing teacher and I learnt a lot of new techniques.

The finish Mel gets on her jewellery is beautiful and her techniques are a little different from the way I have been doing it so I shall play around trying out her way a bit. I can get a great finish too but I work a bit harder to get it so if I can use her way and get a great finish with slightly less sanding that's good news! I have been playing with the idea of getting a bench top buffing wheel and having seen one in action I will get one sooner rather than later - will just have to tidy up that bench to make room!

Thanks to all the other participants too, I learnt a lot from you guys too and it was fascinating to see the variations in colour choice and how everyone just tweaked things a little. I really enjoyed all your company! If you aren't already in touch with me please do get in touch on facebook or by email.

 Thank you so much to Debbie Carlton and Rebecca Thickbroom the organisers of Polymer, Pamper, Play, it really was the most perfect polymer clay weekend - again! Can't wait for next year!

Inspiration from 'Black and White'

As you know I recently had a tutorial published in   'From Polymer to Art' Black and White, well the magazine is crammed full of interesting tutorials and even though I should be packing for going away to Polymer Pamper Play tomorrow I thought I would have a sneaky go at one, to make my earrings for this week (for the 52 earrings a year challenge).

I thought I could use the beads from this stunning necklace tutorial by Anja Overdijk

  

I decided to use blue instead of white and here are the earrings I made

I was really enjoying using the decoration technique so played about some more and came up with these (which will be my earrings for my week 10 out of 52)

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The result was a little scruffier than I wanted but I quite like the effect.  I will play about with it some more when I get a quiet moment!

Right off to pack my clay things now - so excited, really looking forward to 3 days of polymer clay and good company!

Black kaleidoscope set

Here's my latest kaleidoscope set. I am really enjoying playing with kaleidoscope canes at the moment!

Not long now til Polymer Pamper Play - I can't wait! Looking forward to showing you the new things I will have learnt when I get back.

My 'Charming' Starflower tutorial published!

The latest edition of the wonderful and colourful  'From Polymer to Art' magazine is out, it's the Black and White edition and I have a tutorial in it! I just received my copy, my kids were so excited to see me in the magazine - I was pretty excited too ;) You may remember that I also had an article in the Purple Edition too, about my curing experiments.

Here's a little sneak of what else is in the magazine, there are some fantastic projects I can't wait to try!

My tutorial is to make the flower beads I demonstrated at the London Polymer Clay Guild in January, I blogged about them here. Here is a charm bracelet I made with the 'Charming' starflower beads in black and white. I must credit Zuleykha for the inspiration to make charm bracelets, if you haven't seen her charm bracelets you should go check out her Etsy shop.

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I haven't had much clay time so far this month :( but I am really looking forward to heading off to  Polymer Pamper Play next Friday - 3 days of bliss! I will of course tell you all about it!

Where you can find me...diary up to date

I have updated my calendar and the Diary tab (up there just under the title) is now up to date. At the moment I have 2 local sales, one this Friday at a Pamper night in Rangeworthy Memorial Hall from 7.15pm.

The following weekend, the 17th March my jewellery will be at the Arts Market at Dr Bells and St Matthias school in Fishponds. Unfortunately I won't be with it, I will be off having fun at Polymer Pamper Play but it will be in the safe and friendly hands of Rachael Symons who will also have some of her own artwork for sale.

There will be new workshop dates coming soon, and Bristol Clay Day dates so keep an eye on it - or better still get in touch ( carajaneuk(at)gmail.com ) if you are interested in attend polymer clay workshops or clay days in Bristol and I can email you to let you know as soon as the dates are set.

I have plenty of new jewellery available for sale thanks to my Thing a Day challenge (which remind me I haven't shared the last lot with you - I will do that later in the week) . Here's a new pair of earrings in the meantime.
 

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Bristol Polymer Clay Day

There aren't any polymer clay groups that meet in my local area, I travel to London when I can for the London Polymer Clay Group meetings but decided it would be nice to be able to meet at other times with other people who wouldn't get bored of talking polymer clay all day! So I set up a group.

Last Thursday we met for the second time, although mainly it was different people from the first time due to peoples availability. It was great fun! We all have very different experiences and interests and we all learnt lots of tips from each other. We were a bit squashed at my kitchen table but it seemed a shame not to be sat together (I did have space on my work bench in the adjoining room)

 Here they are busy at work from the left its Anita, Harry, Sandra, Ann, Penny and Dana

I showed them how to make my little cats, but forgot to take a picture. I know that the 'danger man of polymer clay' Harry took a picture of the cats so hopefully he will share it on his blog soon. So glad he was able to make it, he has a very different approach. You can find him on facebook too Purky-Products

Here's the show and tell table

 As you can see we have a range of different styles and use quite varied techniques in our work. It was great to discuss how we did things.

We watched Sandra make a lady in a red dress to go on top of a celebration cake - I couldn't do that! You can see some of her figures in the centre of the picture. She also makes cupcake bouquets , real cakes not polymer ones, which look amazing!

It was great to meet Dana, I love her polymer clay creations, you can see a better view of her creations on flickr. Anita  is fairly new to polymer clay (she'd been to a workshop with me so has got off to a flying start!) and has some interesting ideas, I look forward to seeing what you make next!

It was great to have Penny Vingoe of Clayaround come down to join us with Ann, thank you for coming all that way ladies! If you live in mid Wales get in touch with Penny to find out about her own clay days - I've been to one and they are a buzz  of  inspiring creativity (oh and you can get some clay or supplies whilst you are there from her amazing clay room!).

 We are talking about having some kind of swap at the next one, perhaps texture sheets. If you fancy coming along to the next one do  get in touch. Why don't you see if there are people you can meet up with to craft together near to you?