Pandora Style Beads

I just finished an order for 3 sets of large hole beads for a friend. She wanted 5 beads of black & white, pink and also torn watercolor blue.

The torn watercolor beads are made by rolling three colors together - always black and white then the color you want the beads to be. Then you tear off little strips and add them to a base bead. A little of the black and white show at the edge of the strip. It makes an attractive bead. I used a pearl blue for this set.

My friend saw my kitten ring holder and decided it would make a good gift for some friends so she ordered four of them. I hope these go faster than the first one did. I could never charge for the time that one took.

August

My friend Sally is making Kumihimo and was talking about how hard it is to get focal beads with a hole big enough to put all the cords through. I made her a couple samples out of scrap clay to try. The holes only have to be a little bigger than what I make in the Pandora style polymer clay beads. I'll probably make some more only making them a little better if she thinks they would suit.

I'm working on making a figurine of a cat. I have a dvd with a demo of making one. Hope I can make mine half as cute as theirs. I know I'll have to make a few of them so they look good.

Summer Season

I've done two craft shows recently. One at York Township for Relay for Life and one at the Medina Fairgrounds for the Antique Tractor Show. I wanted something new for these shows so I covered some pens with polymer clay and made some bracelet helpers and covered them with polymer clay. The bracelet helpers are a tool that acts as a third hand when putting on a bracelet with a clasp that is hard to put on. I had fun trying different styles and techniques of polymer clay to cover the pens and the bracelet helpers.

I've entered the Polymer Clay Artists Guild of Etsy's monthly challenge the last two months. The last month was vessels and I put a bowl I had made in it. This month is using the extruder with polymer clay. I put a pendant I made that the extruder made little flower canes. I put slices from the canes on a sheet of black clay.

Out of My Comfort Zone

I decided to try something different than my usual pendants and beads. Christi Friesen had a tutorial at Fire Mountain of a peacock necklace. I decided just to make the peacock sitting on a limb as a pin. It doesn't look a lot like Christi's but for a first try, I like it.

Flowers

I've been making flowers with polymer clay and just love the results.  I am donating the above necklace to the Salvation Army Spring Silent Auction.

 Next I think I will make a sunflower if I can mix some clay to the right shade of dark yellow.

Bead Fest - King of Prussia

Recently I went with my daughter Robin to the Bead Fest in Philadelphia. We both took two classes, one the same and the other was different from each other's. The first class we took together was on cold connections and resin. We really wanted to learn more about cold connections but the teacher spent about 10 minutes on that and the rest of the afternoon on resin.

The second class I took was with Meredith Arnold on polymer clay. If I hadn't learned anything new it would have been an interesting day since I love working with polymer clay. We used pearl-ex, textures, glitter and other things to make the polymr clay more exciting. We made a bracelet of tiles with Buna cord pressed into each piece to mark the holes the beading wire would go through. I learned some things to NOT do the next time I make a bracelet like that.

After the classes, we shopped...and shopped. There are so many interesting booths to see and new techniques and products to see. We loved it!

Red, White and Blue Jewelry

I made several pieces of the red, white and blue jewelry but Apropos weren't taking any new jewelry at this time. I put the pieces on Etsy.