Workshops in September and October 2012

I am pleased to announce my workshop dates for September and October 2012. All these workshops will take place in Bristol, UK. If you want more information please do get in touch - carajaneuk(at)gmail.com

There will be more workshops in November and December which will have a festive theme - we will be making Christmas decorations and presents. More details will follow. If you want to be one of the first to know you can sign up to my email list here

Workshops Dates September/October 2012

Workshops take place in a small group in a comfortable home environment in Fishponds, Bristol unless stated otherwise. All  materials, use of tools and workshop handouts are included. To book your place please contact Cara - carajaneuk(at)gmail.com. A £10 deposit is required to reserve your place. Payment may be made by cheque, bank transfer or PayPal.

An introduction to polymer clay.

You will learn how to work with polymer clay and to make some simple canes. You will be shown how to use your canes to decorate items such as pendants and how to make beads from them. £30 per person, ideal for beginners

• Thursday  20^th September  7.30pm-10.30pm
• Friday 5^th October  10am-1pm

Cute Creatures

I will show you how to make a tortoise, cat and owl from polymer clay. There will be some of my flower canes available for you to decorate your little creatures. They can be little ornaments or we can turn them into charms or beads. Cost £20 per person, suitable for all.

• Tuesday 25^th September 8pm-10pm
• Saturday 6^th October 10am-12pm at Hobbycraft, Cribbs Causeway,  Bristol

Charming Starflower bracelet

Learn how to make my starflower cane and then turn it into these beautiful 3 dimensional beads. We will assemble the bracelet in the workshop. Cost £55 per person, beads and findings included. Some polymer clay experience required, if you have made simple canes already yourself or been on one of my previous workshops you should get on ok.

• Friday 19th October - 10am - 3 pm

Frome Market This Sunday

I am excitedly preparing for taking part in the Frome' Super Markets' this Sunday 2nd September. I have a posh new gazebo just in case it's wet but the forecast isn't too bad just now.

I went to visit the 'super markets' in August - it was pouring with rain but it was amazing. There were so many market stalls - over 150! - selling everything from wonderful food to vintage goods. There was plenty of handmade inspiration too. The market meanders through half of the town it seems starting at one end on the car park at Market Yard and up through Market Place and then along Catherine Hill, Palmer Street and Stony Street. And there's a craft market in the Cheese and Grain too! So much to see and so many free food samples - hopefully I will get  a chance to have a look around too!

I am going along as part of Magpies & I, local Bristol based Vintage, Flea and handmade market organisers, who are having a guest slot in the Frome Flea Market. You will find me on the Market Yard car park between 9.30am and 2pm and my lovely sister is coming to keep me company!

The market is on part of the large car park and there will still be plenty of free car parking available.



Just a few future sale dates for your diary - you can find them all on my diary page (link up top under header too):

• Sat 29th and Sun 30th September I will be exhibiting my jewellery and gifts at the Jack Brimble Centre in St Werbughs Bristol as part of the St Werburghs Arts Trail.

•  16th-18th November I will be taking part in the Totterdown Arts Trail, Bristol - you can find me in Hawthorne Street with the brilliant Emily Ketteringham 

• 24th November I will taking part in Fishpond, Bristol  arts trail - in my own house! I am helping to organise this event. We ran Bristol's shortest arts trail last year in 2 houses a couple of door apart. This time we are hoping to spread further down the street!

Workshop dates will be announced very soon (I know I have been saying that for a while - kids go back to school on Tuesday so finally I can get some proper work time!)

Peacock Cane

I started this peacock cane ages ago. I looked at several images of peacock feathers to get the colours and the shapes. It has to be simplified a little as I didn't want to replicate a feather exactly - too delicate. I did the centre fairly easily but was then uncertain how to deal with the outer green and gold layers. I wanted to hint at the feathers structure but didn't want to get too complicated.

Finally I tackled it and I'm pleased with how it worked out. Here's the cane

I then decided I had better make a pair of earrings from it (as I am now rather behind with the earrings a week challenge on flickr). I made then from a simple slice but decided they needed a little something to make them more interesting so I added some score lines to indicate the feathers structure and then scored a line down the centre and used that to folded them slightly (as you see I couldn't resist a little peacock too ;)

 I then remembered some brilliant design advice I got from Inga - Kni.Kni about changing the little silver balls on the ear wires with tiny beads - boy did that change the look of the earrings for the better! It lifted them from being ordinary earwires to being special. I could of chosen any of the colours in the feather but decided to pick a nice bright blue to match with the centre as I had pretty seed beads in the colour. Thank you for the tip Inga!

 My kids are still home for the summer for a couple more weeks then I hope to get a little more clay time and update you more regularly again! I hope you are all having fun.

Cara

Green Mokume Gane Set

I made this set of jewellery in Mokume Gane from several custom mixed green shades of Kato clay for a friend's birthday. I was delighted with the result and was dying to show you but couldn't post them just in case!! She's had them now so I can show you too. Couldn't resist a little owl with the mokume gane shavings! As you can see I am making good use of what I learnt from Melanie Muir in her workshops.

Faux Lapis Lazuli demonstration

On Sunday I went to the wonderful London Polymer Clay Group and demonstrated a way to make faux Lapis Lazuli from polymer clay. The focus of the meeting was faux techniques in the colours of the Olympic rings. As well as my demonstration there were brilliant demonstrations on faux malachite from Sue Margetts and faux bone/ivory from Debbie Carlton. There were handouts available for some other techniques.

Here's what I had a go at from the demos/handouts

Faux cinnabar , faux malachite and faux Lava rock

I spent a lot of time playing about with several different Lapis Lazuli techniques and colour recipes before I share my demo with the group. I will try and write some of it up properly to share you with soon, including some colour recipes for Kato clay. My favourite technique was the one in Carol Blackburn's excellent book  In the meantime here's some pictures

The beads are real Lapis, the cabochons in the middle were made with different recipes

Precious little creatures.

Some of the owls have had some Pearlex powder applied to the markings - you should be able to spot the 2 who have. There is also a cute little faux Lapis cat!

Bettina Welker's Pixelated Retro Blend Cane

I was so excited when I saw Bettina Welkers Pixelated Retro Blend Cane Tutorial - it looked so cool! Loads of people have been trying it and it's great to see all the variations popping up on flickr and facebook.

Finally I found some time to try it. Here's my first cane

I then decided to use it to catch up with the earrings a week challenge on Flickr and made these earrings

 Which ones do you like best?

They are all available to purchase direct from me. Please email me if you would like more details.
It is the school summer holidays so I have my children home. We are having great fun and enjoying some lovely weather! Hope you are all having fun!

New Online Mailing List

I have been running a mailing list for sometime to keep in touch with local people about when I am teaching workshops and selling my jewellery. It has been getting a little cumbersome so I decided to investigate Mail Chimp as a tool for keeping it a bit more organised and most importantly keeping everyone's data safe!

Mail Chimp has lots of tools and enables me to make subgroups within the list of people interested in different things. So I am now opening my mailing list up to people who live further away but may want information on when I finally get that online shop up and running, or want to know when I release another tutorial.

So you will find it over there on the top left ' Subscribe to our newsletter' and there are some boxes you can tick to say what you would like information on. I will try and keep it relevant to you! I'd be interested to see where people are from so do fill in the Location box - just a city or a country. That'll help me keep it more relevant to you too. If you live in Canada I won't email you to invite you to a sale in my house in the UK - although it'd be great if you could all come!!

I would love to show you the new jewellery I've been working on but it's for a surprise so I had better keep it quiet for now. I'll show you as soon as I can!