Blue Thing a Days - Delft inspired cane

It's all been a bit rushed this week but I have managed to make some canes for my Thing a Day Challenge. I chose blue as a theme as the lovely Sarah of Beadscrumptious was challenging herself to create something blue this week too.

Here's the canes I've made over the last few days - inspired by my recent trip to Delft!

Day 1 I made a fairly simple flower cane with a crinkly centre

 Day 2 I made what I call a flourish - the bits you get at the corners or the sides of the main delft pattern - or on the corner of tiles

Day 3 I put them together. It wasn't my original plan to put them together like, I was originally going to make a square cane with flourish corners but... this just happened.  They seemed to fit so well

I carried on and put them together a bit like a flower cane. I like the way it's turned into a flower within a flower, with a flower on each of the large flower petals. Now I just need to decide what to make with it!

I'm going to have plenty of making time over the next few days, I am hosting a kids polymer clay party for one of my daughters friends (much to my daughters delight as she will of course be the expert and my helper!) and then I am going to be demonstrating polymer clay for a couple of days at a trade fair - I'll tell you all about that when I get back!

Black and Grey Flowers

A good friend of mine was making a new dress to wear to a wedding - so I offered to make her some new jewellery to match. It turned out just beautiful! Here it is

If you are familiar with the polymer clay work of Ayelet you will notice my inspiration! I made the grey beads and textured them with salt, they match the colour of the dress.

I'm busy working on some Christmas gift and ornament designs, I hope to be able to share some soon. I hope you are having fun whatever you are doing.

Easton Arts Trail this weekend

I am exhibiting my jewellery at the Easton Arts Trail this weekend, Saturday and Sunday, from 11am -6pm in the Community Centre on Kilburn Street. There are lots of other lovely things on display there too - I got a great preview whilst setting up last night. I'll try and share some of them with you when I have more time.

 

 Here's one of my newer pendants - Electric Zebra Flower in Green and Blue. It's for sale at the arts trail today of course!

Have a great weekend!
Cara

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!

Pick a Pinterest tutorial.....

On Sunday night I decided I had worked hard for the last few days and instead of getting on with the things on my ever increasing to-do list I would do something just for me! I went to my Pinterest Polymer Clay tutorials board and picked something that wouldn't take too long. 

I picked this

from http://polymerandmetalclay.com.au/flowerpetaltute.html . 

This is a free tutorial and I really appreciate people sharing them for free.  I know how much effort it takes to take all those photos and try and find words to describe what you are doing - that make sense! I had a few moments of confusion with this one but I got there. I think the original colours used were more striking. Mine is a very pearlescent purple I mixed from Kato clay (more on pesky pearlescent Kato in a blog post soon!).

Pin It 

I am not quite sure if I shall string it as a pendant with the oval beads either side, or have the oval beads as earrings, or do something completely different with it. What do you think? I know a few people have had problems commenting on my blog, if you do please let me know by email - carajaneuk(at)gmail.com or on facebook or Twitter

As you can see by my 'pin it' button I am getting sucked deeper into the world of pinterest, it's a great place to be - so inspiring!

Thanks for reading my blog, I hope you are having a great week and find some time to do something, just for you too!

Cara

Pink from La Fille du Consul

la vie en rose
Originally uploaded by delphineR2M

I have just come across the work of Delphine- thanks to Polymer Clay Daily featuring her work.

I love these flowers they are so delicate looking. She has a giveaway on her blog and one of the entry conditions is to post something pink on your blog. What better than her own pink flowers!

I thought that I didn't really use pink but actually I do have my pink flowers from the paisley cane

My pink flower.

Purple plastic flower brooches

I started making these brooches back in July 2009 but they have been sat waiting to be finished since then.
They are made from shrink plastic and then painted with acrylic paint. They are about 6cm in diameter.
Finally they are finished!

Shrink plastic and acrylic paint brooches

Silver flower prototype

A while ago I saw instructions to make a  necklace in a jewellery magazine that I loved. I thought wow I am going to make one of those. I set of to the computer to buy the beads listed and realised that the price of the components was over £60! Now I have never spent that much on a piece of jewellery before and didn't intend to start spending that now either. I realised that the most expensive part was the silver flower focal bead because it was Thai Hilltribe Silver and cost £35, so over half the cost.

This was the thing that made me finally get round to buying the tools for Polymer Metal Clay that I had been thinking about for a while. I shall make one myself! (I always say that and how often does it ever get finished?). I have used PMC before in a workshop and I bought myself a book too so I should be OK. Needless to say I haven't quite got round to trying it yet but I have made a silver fimo prototype. I wanted to check out how I was going to construct it before I started playing with the expensive, and quick to dry out silver clay.

Here is my fimo version.

Well now it's out here in blogland perhaps I will get round to trying it....

I've finished and used the buttons (well 1 of them ;)

Anyone who knows me will recognise the power of the blog - I am not one to finish things as a rule. So this week I not only made some buttons but I finished them (sanded and buffed - they came up pretty good) and then made a brooch using one. Here it is

 Felt flower brooch with polymer clay button

I am thinking about making a blog about the rest of my life as this one seems to be a very good motivator (I don't want to bore you all with the state of my house or why I can't get out of bed in the morning...)

My daughter who will be 4 next week is sat on one leg whilst I write this. She just said, "I want to make one of those!" So off to get the felt out again!

Bee brooch

I made this brooch as a birthday present for my Mother-in-law. Feb 2010