Bright Flowers - a new set

The weather here in the UK is horrible today so I have tried to cheer things up with these bright flowers

 

These are slightly different from my normal flat flower pendants as they are slightly curved and each petal slightly cupped. They also have a dimension centre which looks like little tubes but is actually just little sticks of clay (adhered with the wonderful Kato polypaste) that I poke a pin into to give the illusion of being hollow. I think the curve looks elegant and adds interest.

The will be for sale this Saturday at:

FishFest's Fabulously Festive Fair, 4-9.30pm,  All Saints Church Hall, Grove Rd Fishponds: arts, crafts, live music, beauty treats, freshly made nibbles and childrens' activities. Buy unique gifts, support local craftspeople and next years' Community Festival!

Will anyone buy them, if so I wonder who? I hope the weather isn't too horrible where you are.

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

Some more new jewellery

I have been very busy making things this week. Here's a couple of my newest pendants. I am trying to always add a little extension chain and dangle, it means the length of the necklace is adjustable to some degree and the clasp is more likely to stay at the back.  I wrote a blog post a while ago about keeping necklaces in place - you can find it here

'Dark Red with a Yell' Jewellery

I should of mentioned that palette I showed you the other day was named 'Dark Red with a Yell'. I showed you the canes I made, here's some of the jewellery I made from them and the colours in this palette.

Another bracelet like my purple crinkle one, with matching earrings. The spacers were smaller beads so I needed a lot more discs, must remember that next time and find larger beads! I put some of the spacer beads on the jump rings for the earrings, not sure about them - what do you think?

 Changing the yellow for a darker one and adding a cream gave me this lovely flower! (Based on the tutorial from Ayelet but I have made a few changes as always) Pictures shown are the front and back of the same flower pendant, I like to add a different colour centre to the two different sides as it really changes the look.

I have another more complicated beaded necklace sat in bits on my workbench, I show you when it's finished.

And with the scraps I made

These will all be for sale at my next show which is Totterdown Arts Trail, don't forget to check my diary page to see what else I am up to. Maybe I will find time to set up an online shop before then too. Now I am off to make 40 inchies for a swap as part of The Polymer Clay Event I am very much looking forward to attending in Alfreton,Near Nottingham, UK in just 3 weeks! Hopefully I will see some of you there!

Strong can be too hard!

I used what I'd learnt from my recent strength test experiments to make sure my latest polymer clay jewellery was cured to make it good and strong. The pieces were cured at 160ºC for 30 mins. I was pleased when I handled them, they seemed good and strong. Then I tried to sand them. Yup they are strong, and hard and that makes them really hard to polish! I spent about 4 times longer than I normally would polishing this flower pendant and I am still not at all happy with the finish.

So my advice is, think about what you are making and what it's purpose is before you decide how to cure it! Make it strong enough, but not too strong!

The stages of making my purple flowery cabochon

I have been asked a couple of questions about my purple flowery cabochon pendant so here's a little more information  about how I made it. Looking at the colour differences due to the lighting in my pictures I really should go back to using my  photography set up but I took these pictures as a record for me rather than for sharing with you.

First I made 2 canes (typically I made them with little bits left over from another project so they were tiny and of course beautiful! If I had made them larger they wouldn't have been so nice, it's the cane law!).

The purple flower canes

I then hand formed a cabochon shape from scrap clay, starting with a ball shape which I cut in half and smoothed it down onto my work surface. I don't get the shape perfect at this stage as it will be squashed about when I add the decoration.


I covered the scrap clay cabochon shape with thin slices of the cane pressing them in firmly once I am happy with their arrangement and not worrying too much about the distortion of the shape of the pendant. I use a knitting needle (a short double ended metal one, it's my favourite smoothing tool) to smooth the cane slices so the joins were no longer visible. The cabochon then needs a little reforming (OK quite a lot sometimes!) and then gentle smoothing to remove finger marks. It is then baked, for more information about getting the ideal curing conditions  see my latest curing experiments

Cabochon after first baking, unsanded (yes this is a different one from pictures below)

When making this pendant I couldn't decide whether to give it a border 'frame' or not. So I took a picture without then added one and took a picture with the border so I could compare side by side. I decided the 'frame' added to the look of the pendant so was worth the extra time.

These pendants have been sanded but not buffed. I make the basic shape, bake and sand it then I add the backing, bail and a border. It's then baked and  repolished with the last few grades of sand paper only and buffed with my homemade dremel buffing wheel. I have tested it out and found you don't get a better shine particularly by sanding and rebaking but it does mean it is easier to sand right to the edge if there isn't a border in the way. It is better to add the backing, bail and border to a baked cabochon as you don't distort it whilst doing so.

Here's the finished piece!

Hopefully that answered the questions, if you have any more feel free to ask either by comment here or email me (see the contact me link above or to the left). Also if you are having trouble leaving comments can you let me know - by email I guess.  Thanks

Cara

Purple Flowers,pendants, micromesh and pens

My mum got more birthday presents made by me. I wasn't quite sure how my disc necklace would work out so I went back to something I knew would work just in case - a flowery cabochon. Again in purples. It turned out very well, I'm very pleased with it. She ended up with both.

I recently bought some new micromesh sheets in the 8000 and 12000 grits. Previously I had the basic hobby kit which went up to 6000. The difference in the shine is marked. Polishing up to 12000 grit micromesh means that you can buff to a glass like shine by hand on a tea towel! Add a little mechanical buffing on the dremel and they are glorious! With this one I made the cabochon (hand formed) then I baked and polished it then added the frame and rebaked.  I polished again through the last 3 grades briefly and then buffed. It certainly doesn't look like polymer clay any more!

I also made my first proper pen, with a pen kit rather than covering a cheap biro. Again for my mum, she was a little spoilt I think, but she deserves it!

In theory it's refillable but I had some trouble fitting the parts together so I am not sure how easily it will come apart to put refill in. Again it's polished with the new finer micromesh cloths and it's a thing of purple beauty! I wish I had made my polymer clay bits a tiny bit thinner so it doesn't bulge out from the central band. Next time I will - or I'll just cover the band with a different clay pattern too! I've ordered some more pen kits so watch this space for more. I have ordered some different types to try out. There are so many different ones out there it's hard to know which ones to buy.

I've made some other jewellery bits with the same 2 purple flower canes. As always I didn't make the canes big enough, if I didn't like them I would have lots of it of course! Sometimes canes just really turn out great. With these I love how the colours work together but because I wasn't sure if using all purples would be too much I only made very small canes. Luckily I am getting good at cutting thin so I have made them go a long way.

Flower pendant

I have been meaning to make some texture plates for a while (I don't have any) but got a bit distracted and ended up making a flower stamp instead.

I carved the one on the right (and baked it) and the one on the left is an impression taken from it which has been trimmed. They are both made in scrap clay.

I then got out the Fimo Silver Powder I bought a few years ago but still hadn't used. I covered the flower with it and used some Fimo Deko Gel mixed with some alcohol ink to fill the surface. It needed varnishing to protect the silver powder and at that time I only had the Fimo varnish. I wasn't very happy with the finish and that prompted the search for the 'Future' equivalent.

It was also one of the first times I had used the Deko Gel and the alcohol inks are a new addition (bought for the glow in the dark jelly roll cane) so all in all this was a lot of new stuff for me. It's in my box ready to be given a lease of life....