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

52 pairs of earrings a year challenge - week one for me

I was wondering what type of earrings I should make first - then it became obvious - little cats of course!
(You can find my free tutorial to make them yourself here  - I wouldn't recommend starting so small though, they are very fiddly small!)

They  are 2cm across, I had to make 3 cats as I realised after I made the second identical to the first they would look better mirroring each other.

If you like to make things why not join the challenge? They don't have to be made from polymer clay, just be earrings. It was set by Anke Humpert on flickr, to make 52 pairs of earrings a year. I am starting this week so I should play along for 52 weeks and finish this time next year. My intention is to make a pair and list them for sale in my online shop but I haven't got my shop up together yet, nearly there! I am not happy enough with these to sell them anyway. Week 2, next week the earrings will be listed for sale!!!!!

Check out the earrings made already this year in the group photo pool

What challenges have you set yourself for this year?

Cat tutorial

I am so thrilled that you are enjoying my cat tutorial and delighted with the results I am seeing! I have had a few suggestions for further improvement which I shall implement but they are fairly minor changes. I wanted to share some of the results that people have been kind enough to photograph and share, I loved seeing them! Please do let me see a photo if you've had a go.

Beautiful little cat by Pippa - love the colours and the flower she has added petal by petal!Adorable!

 

 

Love this cat by Lupe Meter ! Really love the markings on this cat and the crystal in the centre of the flower looks great!

 And another cute little cat by Lupe Meter, I hadn't thought of using other things to decorate.

 

A collection of cute cats from Kim Mack. Great photo - love the arrangement and beautiful cane on the big ones bottom! That one on the branch looks rather smug ;)

A collection of cute cats from Fiona, love the range of colours she's used. She's not sure she can pick a favourite and neither can I! 

I have a cane tutorial almost ready to share with you too, so watch this space!

My Sleeping Cat Tutorial

Here is the promised cat tutorial, I hope you enjoy it! It is also available as a PDF document which I can send to you if you email me, I am really happy to do so - just couldn't find an easy way to have it as a download online. If you use it I would be really grateful for some pictures of your cats, and as always a comment, or like here or on my facebook page really makes my day. I would also appreciate any feedback you have to help me write even better tutorials in future. Thank you for taking the time to read my blog. Have fun making cute cats! Cara

** You are welcome to make cats for your own use, or to sell them. I would consider it polite if you post/sell them online that you link to this tutorial - or at least mention my name! You may share this tutorial with your friends or your group/guild but I ask that you don't teach them when you are being paid to teach without asking me first**

Pin It

Cat tutorial is in production!

You may remember these cute little fellows with flowery bottoms.

 

Well I also made plenty in random coloured stripes with odd little scraps of clay ...

and I did promise you a tutorial.

Well I have started working on the cat tutorial and the deal is I will share it with you all as a thank you for encouraging and supporting me when I get to over 100 blog followers - so if you don't already follow my blog please take a few minutes to do so by clicking on the 'join this site' button over on the left. If you are new to blogs and don't already follow any let me reassure you that it's nothing scary or sinister, or time consuming (unless you get addicted to reading blogs like me ....) - being a follower allows you to keep track of new posts on blogs you are interested in.  If you really don't want to be a follower fair enough but please be kind enough to keep my smiling by leaving a comment on my blog (any time you fancy - it's good to know your opinions on my ramblings!) or come 'like' my facebook page - you can find me there by following the link or by searching for CaraJaneContemporaryJewellery

If you already follow my blog a huge thank you to you! I really appreciate knowing that people are interested.

I hope you are enjoying the first few days of 2012. I am off to play with some of my new tools and books I got for Christmas and then sometime soon I will work on that web shop......

Faux Wood Tutorial from Craft Edu by Sylvie Peraud

In one of my last posts I mentioned I was going to actually try and use some of the many tutorial and projects I have been reading and admiring but not actually using! I finally got round to trying out one of the Craft Edu tutorials I purchased ages ago. It's Faux Wood by Sylvie Peraud. I was lucky enough to take a class with Sylvie at Polymer Play Days last year and am a big fan of her work and I know she is a good teacher!

Generally I like to learn from a book. I like to have words and plenty of pictures that I can take in at my own speed, that I can flip forwards and backwards easily. I find videos more difficult to watch and learn from for some reason. I like to watch people work in real life, in workshops, but will take pages of written notes for my benefit later. The craft edu format sort of works for me, as long as there is a handout I can print. It's a bit like having pages of a tutorial that someone talks through for you. Often there are some real gems of information in the talking through. Being impatient I can sometimes find there's too much information that I want to skip, luckily it is easy to skip forwards and backwards to the next slide.

So here is the result of my first attempt at Faux wood, the shape is one Sylvie demonstrates how to produce as part of the tutorial. The tutorial is clear and easy to follow.

 I am pleased with how they worked out, they feel nice, they did need a little more sanding really. Not quite sure what they will become. Perhaps a pair of earrings or maybe part of a bracelet. Sylvie uses them as part of a pebble and faux wood bracelet as toggle closure, and she also showed a pair of earrings.

Tutorial links

There are hundreds of polymer clay tutorials out there on the internet, some you pay for ( in my experience these are excellent, the authors have put in much more time and they are very detailed) and many are free. There are lots of creative and generous artists out there! Some people have kindly collected the tutorials together onto pages of links and I would like to share a couple of these with you now so perhaps you can find  a new tutorial to play with.

http://www.everclay.dk/1_Tutlinks/tutlinks_US.htm is a very organised and comprehensive list of links 

http://beadyeyedbrat.com/polymerclay.html has a whole host of links both under 'Our Clay Tutorials' and 'Tutorial links' again they are well organised and comprehensive.

Not forgetting of course the wonderful http://www.polymerclaycentral.com/ . That link will take you to the master index of projects but there is a whole host of other things that are great about PCC - if you haven't been to the forum yet you should!

Textured Beads, mini tutorial

I have been admiring peoples textured beads for some time and wanted to make some of my own. I tried rolling beads on some rough sandpaper but there wasn't enough texture and I kept rolling the texture I made off and getting bits of sand on my beads - not good. I asked for help from some more experienced clayers - on PCC forum and I also emailed some people direct who had photos of textured beads on flickr. Many people were very generous sharing their techniques - I love the polymer clay world!

Bettina suggested rolling beads between two pieces of rough sandpaper in your palms but I wasn't happy with my sandpaper. I will try that when I have some coarser, clean sandpaper.


The suggestion I am currently using is from Ayelet (you may remember I reviewed her Ayelet Beads tutorial sometime back). I have prepared a mini tutorial for you (although I am sure you could all work it out without the pictures, I had the camera handy). Enjoy!

You will need a ball of clay, a fine grater (this is a nutmeg grater) and a piercing tool (I have a needle tool)

Roll the ball around on the grater

Check it for bald spots, reapply to the grater starting in this spot

Pierce the ball and reroll on the grater to rough up any smooth spots you made whilst piercing (I texture before piercing so it is textured all over or you wouldn't have texture right up to the holes)

I was going to get another flat grater as it would be easier to roll the beads on it but then realised the curve allows you to touch up the top and bottom of the bead whilst on the needle tool.

The finished (nutmeg grater) textured bead.

Clayworks by Kim Detmers Tutorial

Kim Detmers has kindly shared a tutorial on her blog of how to make this lovely Spring Bouquet. Check it out here http://claybykim.blogspot.com/p/tutorial.html

Playing with the extruder - square sticks

I have been playing a lot with  polymer clay recently, trying out new things.
I thought I would share some of them with you, here's the first...

Square sticks

I didn't quite take the right pictures so you will have to piece it together a bit yourself.

I put some sticks of polymer clay in the extruder barrel instead of the usual discs to see what would happen. As you can see I was just playing around and not taking my time to be neat. I would cut them into neater square cross section sticks of even size in future. On the right are 2 bits of the extrusion you get with a triangle pattern.

Here is a shot I took for my reference. I used square sticks in the barrel and the square extruder die and I got out the square diamond patterns. Here you can see what they looked like put together. There are 16 of the extrusions in that pattern piece. I put 4 together to make a larger square and reduce it, then cut and restacked into the slice shown.



I guess if you rotated the square extruder die in relation to the square sticks you would get a quarters pattern.

(just playing about with the e-pen I am trying out hence the sketch - I drew it on paper with the e-pen which also captures it as a jpeg)



You could of course just cut square or triangular  pieces of polymer clay and put them together to make this but it might just start you of on an experimentation with the extruder of your own.

The tutorial is here!

The Surfing Cat Graduated Pointy Stripe Extruder Technique - Polymer Clay Tutorial

Kato extruder beads

I just realised that although there is a fair amount of talk on flickr and in the comments about these brown Kato Extruder beads I haven't actually posted a picture of them here. I know you have seen the necklace which uses a disc pendant and some smaller beads using this technique but here are the beads I made first. I am writing the tutorial as we speak! It'll be here soon.

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

Polymer clay cane tutorials put to the test

I have found and used lots of free polymer clay cane tutorials on the internet, thank you to all those clever people out there who share their knowledge.

For a while I have come across tutorials that you have to buy and I have always wondered if it would be worth it. Well one day I decided I would splash out and give them a go. I have been delighted with the canes I have made and I hope I can now take what I have learned from these talented artists into some amazing creations of my own.

The main difference between these tutorials and the ones people share freely is the level of detail. They are complex canes and there are many pages of photographs to make sure you can follow them easily.

I have bought 3 now and love them all.

They are all in PDF format and arrive by email. Here are some of the canes I have made.

Hippy Flower Cane Tutorial from Sigaliot Designs 

The tutorial was from Sigaliot's Designs Etsy  and cost $12. It arrived in my mail box very quickly and I couldn't wait to try it out.  It was well worth the money and I hope she makes some more tutorials soon! This is my personal favourite tutorial.

I made this cane in Kato clay. The detail is beautiful. I kept the centre more simple than Sagit suggested as I only had limited clay colours available and no time to mix. She has really taken time over the tutorial and set it out beautifully.  It was very clear with plenty of photographs. It was easy to follow and produced good results. Sagit details the colours she used on the cane  (she uses Fimo) in the tutorial and gives a recipe for a custom orange she used. She also shows the cane made in a different colour scheme and details the colours she used for that too. Sagit thoughtfully details all the steps in her tutorial including the skinner blend and includes a template with measurements for a 3 colour blend. I am sure if you used her colours you could make a cane identical to the one in the pictures. She also shows some pillow beads made with this cane which was nice to see. No special tools are needed (assuming you have a pasta machine - it is possible without of course but...)

I love her work Sagit uses such bright and cheerful colours and seems to be a real perfectionist. I don't normally even think of  buying other peoples polymer clay things - normally I think oh I'll have a go at making something similar - but I am quite tempted to buy some of her beads, they look amazing and so well finished. I am not sure I will ever have the patience for all that hand sanding etc. Check out her blog

I've said it before but I just want to emphasise what a beautiful tutorial this is to look at. It doesn't effect the result but it is such a pleasure to read it becuase it looks so nice.

Flower with curling petals cane tutorial from Zuleykha

The tutorial was from Zuleykha's Etsy  and cost $10. It arrived in my mail box very quickly and I couldn't wait to try this one  out either (I am not the most patient of people).  It was well worth the money as it's quite a different effect for a flower cane and I look forward to seeing some more tutorials from her, in fact I hope she writes a tutorial for her flower bracelets. This is a great tutorial!

The tutorial is well set out and has plenty of photographs. It is easy to follow and produced good results as you can see. I made this cane in fimo soft clay. She doesn't give details of the colours she used for the cane illustrated but does show the cane produced in 4 different colour schemes which was good for some inspiration. She didn't give a template for her 3 colour blend but there was a clear photograph and my blend worked out well. Zuleykha assumes you know how to do a skinner blend which is probably a fair assumption. She doesn't use any special tools (again assuming you have a pasta machine).

You can see some more of Zuleykha's work at her blog here. Her work is beautiful and I hope to be able to make things like that one day too! Zuleykha has lots of lovely things for sale in her Etsy store. I do particularly love her flower bracelets like this one.

Update - Zuleykha has a tutorial for beads like this on her blog here. Not having done much beading I think I would need some helping putting them together into a bracelet as beautifully as she does.

 Ayelet beads tutorial

The tutorial was from Ayelet beads Etsy  and cost $7. There was a slight technical hitch at my end (mail box full - they are large files) recieving the email but Ayelet was very friendly and helpful.  It was the cheapest tutorial and it was $7 well spent.  When I first came across these Ayelet flowers on Flickr I thought they were amazing and wondered how on Earth she made them. I was delighted to find her tutorial and now I can make my own! It is an amazingly detailed bead and works well as a pendant on it's own so I am wearing this one already. The others are waiting to be turned into a necklace (I am not so keen on the putting it all together bit I realise). I love this tutorial and have had some great comments about this necklace.

This tutorial has plenty of clear photographs. It is detailled and enables you to produce your own amazing ayelet flower beads easily. This was my first attempt and I can't wait to try some different colours. Ayelet doesn't detail the colours she uses and only shows one colour scheme in her tutorial although you can see plenty of her flower beads on her Flickr . She shows a necklace made with her finished beads in her tutorial which is good inspiration. You don't need any specialist tools for this either with the exception of the pasta machine as always.

Ayelet also extremely kindly shares some free tutorials on Flickr that you can find here. She is a talented lady! 

 

I am glad I bought these tutorials they have helped me to make some beautiful canes and I have picked up some tips that have help me to develop as an artist. The price of the tutorials perhaps reflects how long it took these talented ladies to make them. The more expensive ones being set out and decorated better but they all have clear instructions that are easy to follow.