Using tutorials/books week 2 - Donna Kato

One of my favourite polymer clay books is Dona Kato's - The Art of Polymer Clay Millefiori Techniques. I have always admired the Translucent Overlay Beads featured in the book, as has my friend Hannah so this week we decided to try them out together.

We both made a couple of canes from the selection Donna suggests and put them together. The instructions are pretty clear and as all the canes themselves are reasonably simple we had no trouble making the canes. We made coloured translucent clay by adding Kato concentrates to translucent Kato clay, this is the red and blue clay shown in the canes below. Here's our cane collection.

We both made a large bead/pendant out of scrap clay which we covered with a layer of white clay - so that we didn't get murky mud colours showing through any translucent parts. Here's Hannah's in progress. Again Donna gives instructions of how to construct the beads which are relatively straight forward.

The layers need to be really thin, the Kato translucent clay was pretty soft so we put the canes in the fridge for a while but they were still pretty hard to 'shave' thin layers from without terrible distortion. Leaching the soft clay at the start probably would of been helpful. I would also recommend practising shaving thin layers on a block of scrap clay before using your canes if you haven't done it before. I need more practise still I think!

The photos above are in progress snapshots captured with my little point and shoot camera whilst we worked. I am currently taking part in an excellent guided online photography course with Brit Hammer - Photographing Fine Art and Craft . so I took a little more time to photograph my end result. Here's a couple of shots - I'd be interested to know which you prefer if you have the time to leave a comment. The course is keeping me busy but hopefully I will have plenty of beautiful photos to share with you soon. I would highly recommend it as Brit really takes time to find out what it is you want from your photos and helps you to achieve it. I am having great fun and learning loads!

 

I wish I had taken more care in placing  my overlapping translucent skinner blend striped layers.  I don't like the way they meet in places. The ripple cut mokume cane (the red and slightly zig zaggy gold bits) is a subtle effect when done with a fine ripple blade. My favourite part is the jelly roll mokume gane which is the gold and translucent spiral cane. It looks like gold fingerprints to me! You can't sand it much as the layers on the surface are so thin. I just gave this a light sand/polish with some micromesh cloths. 

I made my bead quite large as I wanted it to be bold and striking. Well it's certainly bold! Perhaps a little on the large side so I shall make smaller ones next time!

 I am pleased with my end result although it's not quite as I had in mind when I started out. Of course I much prefer Donna Kato's beads so at some point I shall revisit this and try out different colours and different placement of the component canes. 

I hope you are having fun in 2013 so far!

Cara

Even easier jewellery photography

You may remember me talking about my photography set up a while back. Here is the homemade light box set up

Well the tissue paper got torn in storage above my work area and actually if I want to take photos with the box I have to clear my bench (probably no bad thing but...). So I have the cheap, cheerful and super easy alternative to show you...

I have 2 lamps with 100W equivalent daylight bulbs (one is my angle poise I use for my work area and the other is a small, inexpensive photography lamp I bought, cheaper than a new angle poise lamp) I have taken some white tissue paper and stretched it across the lampshade, held in place with an elastic band. The tissue diffuses the light. The photos from my last 2 posts were taken like this and although perhaps not quite as good as in the full on light box I think they are perfectly acceptable photographs.

I probably still need to find some more interesting things to drape my jewellery over and a photography buff friend was recommending a light box made of mirror card - hmm must try that too sometime.

You can check out some other lovely photographs of crafted items in this beautiful collection from Craft Blog UK . There are also some links about photograph tips there too.

Now I just need to get organised to use these photos and to open that online shop people keep asking for.

Thank you for reading my blog, I really appreciate you taking the time and I hope you find it useful.
Cara

Photo set up further improvement - stage 2

A while ago I posted about trying to take better photographs of my jewellery (read my stage 1 photo set up post here). Well finally I got my hands on a suitable cardboard box and have made a light tent

The light on the left of the picture has a 100W equivalent (it's energy saving so actually only 25w) daylight bulb in it, it's my normal work bench light. The light on the right is one of my show set up lamps and I thought I could put another 100w daylight bulb in it but alas it has a tiny screw fitting so it doesn't fit. I will need to find another lamp but the show lamp will do for now.

Here's a couple of shots of that pendant I made to match a new top a while back (I did promise a close up picture so here it is - rather over due - sorry!)

This shot was taken with me holding it up by the cord, you can see a yellow spot which is the from the 'wrong' lamp.

Lightbulb box with white felt draped over it supporting the pendant

Here's that top again as I am sure you don't remember it!

I am pretty chuffed with the photos I've taken, so I move onto the final stage in perfecting the photos - getting that second lamp and finding some staging items, or at least supports for jewellery.

I've got so many  more things I want to show you, new jewellery, new ideas, new textures but I can't sit here at the computer all day so I will post some more tomorrow.

Improved photographs - first stage

I am really proud of my latest jewellery and was thinking I must sort out the photographs show I can show you properly. Then today I was emailed some photographs by a friend to use on my blog (post coming soon), they are great photos and I just couldn't put them up against my poorly lit ones so the 'sorting out a photography set up' jumped up the to do list!

See why I need to sort it out...  Here's the rainbow owls photograph from yesterday, I took it on my work bench with my normal room lighting.

Original, just on my work bench, owl photo

Original photo cropped and colour adjusted in Picasa

I wanted to make a light box from a cardboard box (as demonstrated on Kate Tracton's Shibori Girl blog) but typically we don't seem to have any boxes kicking around today. Whilst researching how to set up jewellery photo shoots previous I seem to remember someone using a transparent plastic storage container so thought I would give that a go whilst I find a box.

I switched my usual light bulb to a full spectrum daylight bulb and tried lighting from the top.

Plastic box and daylight bulb lit from the top through the box

I thought it was quite good but my husband who is much more 'precise' than me pointed out that it was still dark at the bottom. So he adjusted the set up and...

Plastic box and daylight bulb light from the front photo - as shot!

Here's what the set up looked like

Better definitely but there is a bit of 'glare'. So my next step is to track down a suitable cardboard box to make a light box and another lamp (with daylight bulb of course) and try lighting from the side. So hopefully you will be enjoying some better photographs from now on.

Photographing your work

I am not that happy with my current photographs but being on crutches at the moment I just can't fuss around setting up a photo session. I have a digital SLR but at the moment am using my Canon compact as I can carry it round in it's tiny pouch with a shoulder strap easily from clay space to comfy chair and laptop.

Once I am back on my feet I intend to set my self up to take some decent photographs and am looking at buying or more likely making some sort of mini studio -

 I have been reading up, thanks to some other bloggers.

There are some good links in this post http://polymer-clay-art.com/?p=224

Kate from Shibori Girl's blog has a tutorial for making your own light box here http://shiborigirl.blogspot.com/ . I think I might go down this route. I don't have any photographic lights but I do have a couple of very expensive full spectrum daylight bulbs which I was hoping would be bright enough - they give a good clean, natural looking light but I am not so sure they will be bright enough. Only one way to find out!

I'll update you on what I find to improve my photos. In the meantime I shall share one I am not happy with