New ring bowls and new blog

I have a new blog over at my normal web address now - www.carajane.co.uk . I will continue to update this one for now but do feel free to come visit me over there.

I have been practising the intricate kaleidoscope cane I learnt on the workshop with Sarah Shriver recently. I have used some of them to make little polymer clay ring bowls. You may remember the one I made for my sisters birthday last year - you can see it here.

Small Intricate Brown Ring Bowl by Cara Jane

Intricate Kaleidoscope Cane Purple Ring Bowl by Cara Jane

I also made one with a red flowers from a cane I reduced to many different sizes. It has a textured outside. Here's a view of the inside.

Small polymer clay ring bowl decorated with red flower cane

Southbank Bristol Arts Trail coming soon

I am busy making some new jewellery for the Southbank Bristol Arts Trail on the 18/19th May. I will be in the Southville Centre along with plenty of other talented artists including Emily Ketteringham who designed the brilliant posters. If you are local to Bristol do come along and say 'Hi!' I am going to be doing a little market research over the weekend and will draw one of the participants at random to win a Cara Jane prize to say thank you!

I have recently finished a couple of the pieces I started in pre/post Synergy workshops whilst in Atlanta.

Here's a five star bead I made in an amazing 2 day workshop with Dan Cormier (if ever you get the chance to work with Dan do I learnt so much from him!). Dan has taught me to slow down and to pay more attention to what I am doing - it has changed my whole polymer experience for the better!

 

 

Here's one of the 11 Bauhaus style lentil beads from Angela Garrod's 'Secession' necklace workshop. They are quite involved beads but an amazing result! Thank you Angela for showing us how to create such neat looking work.

 I will have some new workshop dates to share with you soon and hopefully plenty of new work too!

Sarah Shriver workshops

Recently I was lucky enough to attend some workshops with Sarah Shriver organised by the London Polymer Clay Group. It was a real treat as I have admired Sarah's work for many years.

On Saturday we learnt how to make Intricate Kaleidoscope canes. They are very intricate but Sarah did a great job of teaching how to make these magical canes. Here's the canes I made I am very pleased with them! They were made from Kato polyclay

           

                              


On Sunday we made big beads. The process is complex and rather involved but produces stunningly beautiful beads. I learnt so many news skills from Sarah during these workshops and have 2 lovely finished beads that I am very proud of. Can’t wait to make a few more and turn them into a necklace.

 

It was great to meet up with old friends and meet some new friends. It was a great bunch of people to spend a couple of days with and we had a lot of fun. Sarah is an excellent teacher as you can probably tell by the result.

Sarah Shriver and Cara Jane, London, April 2013

You can see some more pictures on the London Polymer Clay Group Facebook page

Work is underway on the new website. I look forward to sharing it with you soon.

This blog is changing....

I have just about recovered from my fabulous trip to Synergy and I'm working on changes here.

I have a web designer working on a proper website! There will be a blog as part of that website. I intend to maintain this blog for the foreseeable future and it will have the same content as the new blog. But in order to facilitate that the web addess for this blog will change so I apologise if that causes any disruption at your end! http://carajaneuk.blogspot.com will be where you will find this blog soon.

I am about to update my spring workshop schedule. If you are interested in more details either get in touch or sign up to my mailing list as I shall publish a list of dates by email soon. If you are interested in me running a workshop for your group or in your town please feel free to get in touch!

I am working on a new tutorial - can't wait to share it with you! Might take a while as I have a lot of other stuff going on at the moment too.

I am lucky enough to be going to 2 workshops this weekend with Sarah Shriver with the London Polymer Clay Group. I hope you can have some collective creative time soon - you can't beat it!

Synergy 3 - Wonderful!

I am just back from Atlanta where I have been attending the IPCA conference - Synergy 3. It was wonderful!!!

The seminars were excellent. I have many new ideas to take on board. My head is still rather muddled from the travel and tiredness (didn't sleep a lot whilst I was away for many reasons - excitement, noise, different time zones, parties....) but I shall sit down and read through my notes again in the next few days. My work was already heading in a slightly different direction through the course I was taking on Voila and the photography course I took with Brit Hammer but now the path is clearer.

It was amazing to be surrounded by so many talented and truly lovely people. Everyone was so welcoming and friendly - even my polymer hero's. I have made some truly great friends and I just wish I had more time and money so I could go visit them all soon! I know I will see lots of them again but it might just take a while. Thank goodness for technology for allowing us to keep in touch even when we are on the other side of the world!!It was so nice to connect in real life with people I considered friends online. The best thing is they were all even nicer in real life!! What a lot of fun we had!

Marjon, Amanda, Me and Saskia at the gala dinner

I don't want to overload you with photos (and I don't want to share loads of other people without their permission - sure the above ladies won't mind being featured here)- you can see more on my Synergy 3 facebook album . While I'm mentioning facebook - if you don't already like my facebook page please do so - another 70 likes to get me to 1000 likers which is incredible! I'll do another giveaway when I get to 1000 as a thank you to you all for taking the time to like my page.

The gallery of work for sale was an amazing source of inspiration. So great to see the work I have admired in photos online up close. Wow there are some amazing artists out there! I had a small selection of things in the gallery - thank you to those of you who purchased things it made my day to know that polymer people appreciate my work too! It was great to see all the jewellery people were wearing too.

I was lucky enough to take some pre and post conference workshops with Angela Garrod, Maggie Maggio and Dan Cormier. They were all very different and I learnt different things in all of them. They are also all lovely people. I will try and finish off the things I made to share with you soon.

Thank you to Cynthia Tinapple for sharing one of my pendants (the one I wore on the first day) on Polymer Clay Daily - it was an honour to be featured! It made my transition back to the real world a little easier ;) Here's the image (my pendant being in the bottom right corner) and you can read the post here - http://polymerclaydaily.com/2013/03/18/treasure-chests/

I am really looking forward to the next polymer clay get together - it's so nice to connect with real people who share your passion!

Demonstrating at the NEC

As you are probably aware I am a huge fan of Kato polyclay so I was over the moon when I was asked if I could demonstrate with it at the Craft, Hobby and Stitch International trade show at the NEC last weekend. I spent 2 whole days showing people the magic that is polymer clay - I can't think of anything better to do (well apart from spending 2 days being shown how to do new things with polymer clay!). I was amazed at how many people in the craft industry hadn't even heard of polymer clay before!

Here I am in the Decoman booth - in a quiet moment when you could see past crowds of interested people! Decoman are the European distributors for Kato polyclay.

I made a lot of different things - mainly cane work and mokume gane as they are fairly simple to show and impressive to see. Here's some of what I made.

 

There was plenty of beautiful jewellery on show in the big glass cabinet, some of it mine and some from other artists such as Donna Kato - it caught a lot of people's eyes as they were walking past! It was a real pleasure to be a part of the Decoman team!

Since I've been back I have been busy working on something I can't show you yet - so I have been making things for my thing a day challenge but I can't share them.

Tomorrow I am off to demonstrate at Hobbycraft in Cribbs Causeway Bristol from 10am -1pm. I am also teaching a workshop there next week on Friday 1st March 10am-12.30pm. I still have 2 places left if anyone is interested please get in touch

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!