Beath of Gold Brooch Article

I've just realised I never did show you my Breath of Gold Brooch! There is a step by step tutorial of how to make your own published in the Wind Edition of 'From Polymer to Art' published in March 2013. I was recovering from Synergy when it was released which is how I forgot to show you!

From Polymer to Art - Wind edition

I have some beginners workshop in Bristol, UK this  month and a more advanced 'little ball of flowers' pendant workshop which will take place on Saturday 27th July in North Wales.  I am just sending details to people on my mailing list now. If you would like details too please get in touch - or sign up to my mailing list of course!

Don't forget you can find this blog over at www.carajane.co.uk/blog - it gets update before this blog does.

Using tutorials/books week 1

I randomly picked a publication from my bookshelf to try out something new (my new year challenge - to use the wonderful resources sat under my nose!) and picked the magazine From Polymer to Art - Orange. A quick flick through and I chose to try out a project by Fabi. Her pendant in the magazine was orange and green - not really my colours so I changed the colours to some more 'me' ones from some left over clay I had from other projects.


I understand it's difficult explaining projects fully for magazines as there are limited steps and limited text. I struggled at a few points to understand but luckily the pictures are good and helped me through to the finished pendant. It didn't take too long and there's a lot of different bits to the project, many of which I had done before but it still taught me a couple of new tricks.

However my first attempt didn't work out quite so well due to me trying to rush. A common theme in my life - trying to squeeze too much in and not giving it the time it needs. I am trying to slow down and take more care but  I forgot all about that. I decided in my wisdom that I could put the back on at the same time instead of baking the front and then applying the bail to the cured front piece to save time. But I made a couple of critical errors - I rushed putting the back on and tried to bake it on the baking paper I was using to smooth the surface. When the pendant went to the oven there was air trapped under the back layer (because I had rushed and just placed it down rather than laying it down carefully), which bubbled and ballooned. If the pendant was on a tile the front surface would probably have stuck to the tile and just the back would be deformed but because it was on the light weight paper the front was able to lift up and deform too. The result - the front of the pendant instead of remaining nice and smooth and flat and needing minimal sanding looked corrugated! I decided I could solve this with sanding as the layers were quite thick I'd just sand it flat. There was a lot of sanding to do and I had run out of my normal 'I need some serious sanding' 320 grit sandpaper so used 240 grit sandpaper instead. Another error - it was so rough it made deep scratches in my pendant which I haven't quite managed to sand out as I then realised that although the layers were quite thick the stripes on the edge pieces were only on the surface so that pattern was ruined - so I gave up. I am left with an unsatisfactory piece due to my haste!

Made in too much haste - see ruined stripe pattern on the right hand edge - the scratches don't show too badly here but they look terrible in real life.

I still had some patterned pieces left so I made another pendant - baked the front piece and then took my time to add the back and bail to the cured pendant with care.

I'm pleased with the result and will try out some more like this sometime soon I am sure. The brighter colour and better contrast made Fabi's pendant look good - I will try and be bolder next time. Thanks Fabi! It was great to play with clay again after a couple of weeks of family time!

I hope your 2013 has got off to a great start! I'm off to browse my bookshelf for this weeks project...

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)

Pin It

   

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!

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.

Pin It

 
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!

From Polymer To Art - Purple - I'm in it!

Hurray I have just received my copy of From Polymer To Art - Purple! I'm so excited because have an article in it! You can see me in the top left hand corner of this 'contents' picture.

I was asked to write an article about my curing experiments. If you have been following my blog for a while you will probably have read all about my tests to try and cure Kato clay so that thin bangles wouldn't break. I also did some tests with Fimo soft to see how the curing time/temp effected the strength of Fimo Soft - you can read about it in the article in the magazine. I will publish those results of my Fimo tests here in a while, and I have more tests planned too for the new year (slightly busy with Christmas just now!).

Thank you Saskia and Marjon for giving me to opportunity to contribute to your wonderfully colourful magazine!

'From Polymer to Art' a review

I have now received my copy of 'From Polymer to Art'. It is the first edition, a sneak preview before the sale launches in 2011. Each edition will have a colour theme, this first one being Red.

It feels and it looks nice. The paper is a good quality paper and the magazine has been set out beautifully, interspersed with the articles and tutorials are snippets of poems and pictures of things red. There is a page of photographs of different red flowers. In this preview edition the advertising pages are blank but I see there are plenty of spaces for advertising although not so much that it overwhelms the content as in some magazines.

There are 8 tutorials at a range of levels including these fab projects...



Red berries tutorial by Oksana Volkova

Oksana's work is new to me and I love these berries - so realistic - can't wait to try it!!

Baroque Necklace Tutorial by  Anja Overdijk

Anja is another artist I did not already know and I greatly enjoyed browsing through her flickr photos.


A Red shades Skinner blend necklace tutorial by  Cecilia Botton - Mabcrea. I can't find a photo of this project but I like it, it is reasonably simple but very effective. I have been a fan of her work for sometime having discovered her beautiful creations on flickr


There is a tutorial on producing patterned clay sheets using alcohol inks and stencils from Jan Geisen, another new artist to me. It is an interesting project and she has included some different variations of finished jewellery pieces to get your creative juices well and truly flowing!




There are 2 tutorials from the fabulous Fabi . I have been following her blog for a while now (with the help of Google translate!) and if you haven't seen it already you should definitely check it out!









So the big question - is it worth it? It is expensive but it is a good quality magazine with good content. It only comes out 4 times a year so it's not a monthly expense. I will certainly be subscribing!


Thank you ladies for publishing a quality polymer clay dedicated magazine!

 

New Polymer Clay Magazine

I have just found out about a new polymer clay magazine From Polymer to Art from a blog post by Fabi on http://fabicontusmanos.blogspot.com , I have ordered a copy and can't wait to see it. From her blog post and the magazine website where I ordered my copy it looks very exciting! They ship worldwide.