Polymer Clay turtle for my challenges...

For my Thing a Day challenge and also my personal challenge to actually use my books and tutorials I made a turtle today.

Father Christmas brought me the Christi Friesen 'Under the Sea' book this year so I decided to try a turtle. I like the way Christi does these 'beyond projects' books: there's a whole heap of ideas to help you customise your own creations. I'm tired today so didn't want to get too adventurous so mainly followed the turtle that Christi made in the book. I didn't happen to have any lovely lampwork beads around like Christi uses to make her lovely turtle so I found some scraps of brown clay and marbled them a bit to make an interesting little focal. My plan is to add some resin to that when the turtle is cured so I made the framing swirls a little proud to help keep the resin in place - I'll let you know how that works out!

Anyway here's the little turtle (well I say little he's a lot larger than my normal tortoises which are 2 or 3cm long), he's about 8cm long.

There's a lot of things I would do differently if I made him again, that's the thing with doing projects like this - different from your normal things, you learn new things! I should of cut my nails first - there's a few nail marks I didn't really want but those are of course part of what makes it handmade and unique! I didn't like the mouth when I first made it. It just didn't seem right and it had gone too close to the eyes. For some reason I decided to poke the end of a knitting needle into the slit I had made and hollowed round to make a mouth cavity - it changed the whole look of the face which I much preferred. Colours aren't really my colours but they are quite turtle I guess.

I had fun playing with my clay and I enjoyed Christi's humour which she has infused throughout her book. If you are at all interested in sculpting with polymer clay and you like Christ's unique style of polymer clay work you will love her books. They are packed full of inspiration pictures, tips and techniques, subtle variations, things to get you started. You can use it as a step by step book or just as a starting point with some tips to guide you - I like that and I think it works well.

If you want to keep up with all my Thing a Day's for February I suggest you check out my flickr set as that seems to be the only place I have put them all so far.

I'll be demonstrating in Hobbycraft Bristol tomorrow between 12-3pm so I am sure I will have plenty of things made tomorrow! I'll update you with my things in a couple of days.

Have fun !!

Cara

Little dragon

So as I mentioned in my last blog post I treated myself to  some books one of which was Christi Friesen's Dragon book.I made my first dragon, which is a largish pendant,  with some left over bits of some of my other projects, thinking it might look interesting.

Well I didn't like the look of it but never fear - Christi Friesen comes to the rescue again with Swellegant!  
a metal coating. I will do some more playing about with it and let you know more about it another time.

The little guy got a coat of bronze. Much more elegant ;) He's made from Kato clay but he has Fimo Glow in the Dark eyes - I love to give creatures glow in the dark eyes - so they can watch you at night ;)

I'm really pleased with how he turned out. I love the style of Christi's  book it's step by step but also lots of alternative suggestions which enables you to develop a creature of your own easily.

More Christi Friesen Inspiration

Inspired by the wonderful stained glass technique I learnt from Christi Freisen I made some earrings for the earring a week challenge.

They were fiddly but I was pleased how they turned out and I think they were worth the effort!

I also made some heart earrings and a pendant to match, again Christi showed us a neat way to make a heart and she taught us how to make the flower and the leaves that embellish it so it was a good way to practise some of the many techniques I learnt.

Thanks to a suggestion from the lovely Chris Pellow I then made a pair of sunflower earrings, and a matching pendant. These earrings are my earrings for this week.

 I made these from Pardo clay, mixing a little colour to translucent clay. They are noticeably more translucent than the previous tulip earrings I made from Premo again using a little colour mixed with Premo Frost translucent. I am struggling to get a picture that shows this - if anyone has any suggestions please let me know! The pedant is not ideal unless you have a 'glowing chest' (as suggested by Christi ;) but I think the earrings should demonstrate their translucence as they dangle from the ear.

Disappointed I couldn't go to the second  Christi Friesen workshop London I cheered myself up by buying a couple of Christi's books so you can expect more work inspired by Christi!

Right just off to watch the Craft Cast workshop with Melanie Muir (yes it is the middle of the night here in the UK!). You can buy a download of this workshop in the morning if you missed it ;) So hopefully you will see a Rock Cuff bracelet before too long aswell!

Fantastic Christi Friesen workshop

I was very lucky to attend a polymer clay workshop with the fantastically fun Christi Friesen today. It was called 'In the Garden' and we whizzed through lots of different techniques and were overloaded with tips and techniques. And entertained at the same time! I don't know how she manages it! Thank you Christi for such wonderful day!

Look at all the things I made - yes in one day! Christi is a slave driver ;)

It was great to see some good friends and meet some new ones and so great to be taught new polymer skills by such a talented lady! The venue, which is the same as the one the London Polymer Clay Group use is such a good one with a brilliant cafe. Wish everyday could be a polymer day like that!

 Can't wait to try out some more of the things we learnt and to play with the Swellegant I bought. In the meantime go check out this useful information on Swellegant from Chris Pellow. Will of course let you know how I get on with it!