Southbank Bristol Arts Trail coming soon

I am busy making some new jewellery for the Southbank Bristol Arts Trail on the 18/19th May. I will be in the Southville Centre along with plenty of other talented artists including Emily Ketteringham who designed the brilliant posters. If you are local to Bristol do come along and say 'Hi!' I am going to be doing a little market research over the weekend and will draw one of the participants at random to win a Cara Jane prize to say thank you!

I have recently finished a couple of the pieces I started in pre/post Synergy workshops whilst in Atlanta.

Here's a five star bead I made in an amazing 2 day workshop with Dan Cormier (if ever you get the chance to work with Dan do I learnt so much from him!). Dan has taught me to slow down and to pay more attention to what I am doing - it has changed my whole polymer experience for the better!

 

 

Here's one of the 11 Bauhaus style lentil beads from Angela Garrod's 'Secession' necklace workshop. They are quite involved beads but an amazing result! Thank you Angela for showing us how to create such neat looking work.

 I will have some new workshop dates to share with you soon and hopefully plenty of new work too!

Sarah Shriver workshops

Recently I was lucky enough to attend some workshops with Sarah Shriver organised by the London Polymer Clay Group. It was a real treat as I have admired Sarah's work for many years.

On Saturday we learnt how to make Intricate Kaleidoscope canes. They are very intricate but Sarah did a great job of teaching how to make these magical canes. Here's the canes I made I am very pleased with them! They were made from Kato polyclay

           

                              


On Sunday we made big beads. The process is complex and rather involved but produces stunningly beautiful beads. I learnt so many news skills from Sarah during these workshops and have 2 lovely finished beads that I am very proud of. Can’t wait to make a few more and turn them into a necklace.

 

It was great to meet up with old friends and meet some new friends. It was a great bunch of people to spend a couple of days with and we had a lot of fun. Sarah is an excellent teacher as you can probably tell by the result.

Sarah Shriver and Cara Jane, London, April 2013

You can see some more pictures on the London Polymer Clay Group Facebook page

Work is underway on the new website. I look forward to sharing it with you soon.

More things....

Here's some more of the things I've made for my thing a day challenge. I am really enjoying the challenge and so far have made something everyday without having to cheat. Sometimes it's a cane, sometimes it's finishing something already started and some days it's a something from start to finish.

 

If you want to see all of my Things for February so far, and another one added daily (I hope!) you can find them in this Flickr set

More tutorial links

A while back I share some tutorial links with you http://www.carajane.co.uk/2010/05/tutorial-links.html

I have just come across another collection of tutorial links thanks to Marlene Brady on her It's All About Creating blog. What I really like about this collection is that it is photographs so you can see exactly what the tutorial is for. Thank you Iratirita for sharing them!

Iratirita tutorial list 1 - canes and miniatures
Iratirita tutorial list 2 - beads, pendants, bracelets, rings, surfaces, other

and don't forget my tutorials available here (use the tutorial link on the left to find them another time or use the links below)

Star cane with cookie cutters











Textured beads

Stripey beads (using extruder)

Blue and White beads

I have been making some blue and white beads to make a bracelet for my friends birthday (she has a blue and white flower print top). I made a pair of simple matching earrings too.

 

Zebra cane and bracelet

I had a go at the zebra cane from Cindy Leitz video newsletter because I didn't have much time but wanted to make a cane for the PCC forum June Cane Challenge (a good excuse to do lots of cane making). I didn't think I liked animal prints really but thought this zebra one would be a variation on black and white stripes.  I made this cane and decided that I loved it!

I then made myself some beads. I sanded and buffed them today - without the Dremel cause the battery charger is not working :( 

I then spent about an hour trying out different ways to string them (they didn't quite look the same on the stringing as they did in my head). I would do them differently if I did them again. I would make the beads more similar in size. I wanted them to be an eclectic mix just strung together without spacers but wasn't sure that looked right when I tried it. Here is what I ended up with (mark 1 I feel, I feel a charm style bracelet coming on with beads like these and also perhaps another go at one like this but with more similar sized beads). I used up all my cane so I will be making more!

I  must also either select some beads to use with my polymer clay ones before I start making mine or go and buy some beads once I have made them, I never have anything that is just right it seems. I also must spend more money on fastenings. i bought some silver plate toggles which are pretty but the plating is coming of my favourite bracelet already (I have worn it a lot but....). I must invest in some solid silver ones even though they are expensive.

Perles givrées - Frosted beads

Perles givrées - Frosted beads
Originally uploaded by gRiS bLEu

I have to say I  often see polymer clay things that are breathtakingly beautiful. There are so many talented people out there! I have an ever growing collection of favourites on flickr.


I came across this from Gris Bleu today and I just had to share it.

Quick clay play today - scrap lentil beads

It's the weekend and the kids are around so it is time for family but my kind husband took the kids down to the gym this morning which meant I had just over an hour of clay time alone. I spent my time playing with the extruder but didn't produce anything I would bother repeating. So what do I do with this pile of scrap I have just produced? What else but swirl lentil beads. They haven't been baked yet but here they are.

 Scrap clay lentil swirl beads

My aim is to try and turn them into some jewellery realatively soon (but I do have a lot of birthdays coming up, 5 next week including my daughter, my Godson and 2 close friends!).

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...)

Tutorials from Parole de pate

Having been off my feet recovering from surgery for quite some time last year and now again  I have probably had more hours than most people to trawl round the internet. There is an amazing amount of information and inspiration for polymer clay artists out there. I am sure you all have your favourite blogs and sources of information (feel free to post a link in the comments to any of your favourites as I may have missed some).

I wanted to share a few blogs that aren't in English with you as it took me a while to come across them and then I was put off initally by the language problem - my French is rather rusty and not that technical anyway. Then I discovered Google Translate! To start with I loaded the web link into the google translate page everytime but then I found the translate button. If you scroll down to the bottom of this linked page you can find a button you can drag to your tool bar for your language. I now have the English one on mine and if I find a site that is in a different language I press the button and it translates it (often rather ammusingly but you can get the gist - cane is translated as duck in French by google )

So check out the French blog   http://paroledepate.canalblog.com/  It is described as a 'living newspaper' of all things polymer clay. There are plenty of tutorials on this site, from artists around the globe.
In the Canes tutos archieve there are 7 pages, yes 7 pages!, of different tutorials of all sorts of canes.Polymer clay addict heaven!
They have even kindly translated some into English and these can be found on the translation__traduction page

The first tutorial on that page is from Nathalie is to make these beautiful extruder flowers  as seen in some of these beads above. I have very briefly tried this with a few bits of scrap clay but without the Core Adapter as I don't have one, I replaced it with a disc with 7 holes in as shown by  Galina in her Russian Blog (again that google translate came in handy!) Here is my first attempt.

 

Need a bit more contrast next time but they were the colours I had out at the time

Cindy Leitz has a video which shows this technique as part of her members video library - Extruder flowers video information