Beautiful Sunny Sunday!

It’s a gorgeous, sunny day here in Southwestern Ontario.  When I got up this morning, the sun was literally making the flowers in my garden sparkle!  There were still some dew droplets sitting on some of the flowers, and the way the sun was hitting them….wow!  I took some photos, and will put them on my scrapbooking/cardmaking blog – http://kimmerbe.wordpress.com

So, on to some more clay projects!  I’m hoping that some of you expert clayers out there will take the time to look at my work, and give me some feedback (good or bad).  I’m totally enjoying this craft, but can tell alaready that it takes tons and tons of practice!  Not enough hours in the day!

First, with these pendants, I was going for an opal look.  I didn’t have any large flake glitter, though…just fine holographic glitter.  They turned out okay, but I’ll have to go on a search for the large flake glitter and try again! 

I had some of the clay from the above projects left over, so I did some experimenting.  I added some $ store glitter that I had on hand, but quickly learned that it was not heat-proof, so when I cured them, the glitter popped out of the clay.  So, I tried sanding, and adding a few coats of acrylic, and they turned out “okay”.  I may use them on a scrapbook page, or a card…?  I forgot to put a penny in the pic to give you an idea of size.  The smaller butterflies are about 3/4″ across.

Next, in keeping with my current love of everything owls, I made a couple of owl beads.  I did lift the design from another source, but I cannot remember where I got them from.  My apologies – I will definitely try to give credit to the originator in future.  If anyone knows where I lifted the design for this darling little owl from, please let me know.  The only thing I really changed were the colours.

That’s all for today!  TFL!

 

My First Plunge into the Klay Blogging World

So, here I am!  I’ve been blogging in the virtual scrapbooking/cardmaking world for a while, now.  However, I have recently found the art of polymer clay, and jewellery making, and am thoroughly enjoying it.  So, the next step, for me, is to *gulp* get some feedback about my work.  I think I’m doing okay, but I have no idea how it compares to other clay novices out there.  So, I welcome feedback.  This is going to be a long post, as I have quite a bit to show you.  It took me a while to find the time to take photos, and upload them.

My very first creation:

believe the instructions were on a Youtube video.  He’s cute, but I learned that you need to wash your hands when changing from a dark to a light colour of clay! 

Next, I made an owl pendant, but I guess I hadn’t quite figured out the hand washing thing, yet…

So, I was having so much fun, that I went to the library and brought home a bunch of books, and decided to try the Mokume Gane technique.  What fun!    Here’s a couple of examples of my faves:

I

Whew!  That was fun, but quite time-consuming.  I used silver leaf, and layers of black, translucent, and grey clay.  I used a fuschia base for a couple of the teardrop pendants.  To get them to shine, I sanded with several different grits of wet/dry sandpaper, buffed them, and then applied several coats of acrylic (Future floor polish).

Some simpler projects:

I used a Hero Arts owl stamp, and some silver seed beads for his eyes.

Here’s a necklace I made with the owl pendant, and some of the Mokume Gane beads.  Of course, I had to add some bling – some silver seed beads, acrylic crystals, and a silver-plated chain:

A closer look at the chain - it’s adjustable in length:

Then I moved on to caning, and made some beads, which I know I will probably laugh at once I get better at this art:

I’ve already used a couple of them on cards – they work well for that!  They make great flower centres.

I used some flower-shaped molds to make these – thought they would make a cute earring/necklace combination for a younger person…

I started playing with various additives with these next few projects.  Mainly, embossing powders, glitter, and ink:

The embossing powder I used for the dangling bead on the bottom of these earrings was not heat-proof, so it kind of popped up out of the clay, so I covered it with embossing powder, and heated it, and kind of a funky look, which isn’t really evident in the photo:

I made some purple, and some orange (which turned out kind of brassy-looking);

Okay, so now I had a bunch of beads and pendants.  What do I do with them?  I make jewellery, of course!  lol  So, if you’re gonna make jewellery, you need some findings, chain, tools, etc.  So, before I could do that, another trip to the library….read some more books…spend some more time in my studio playing with the stuff…and voila!  lol….here’s the fruits of my labour, so far:

This is a pendant that I haven’t made anything with yet….

And a heart-shaped pendant that I made with the same batch of pink marbled clay, that I strung a necklace with:

 

So, that’s all for today.  I told you it was going to be a long post!    Please leave me a comment.  I’d love some feedback.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hello world!

Welcome to WordPress.com. This is your first post. Edit or delete it and start blogging!