Trying out Cernit translucents as candleholders.
Birds on a wire
These tiny birds are beads for a swap with fellow clayers- the theme of the swap is simply ‘bead pairs’… sometimes being so open-ended can be more challenging to pick something to make.
Building a Blue Willow
My latest projects include trying out some new cane ideas from Rian Schreuder-Sanderse’s Facebook page called ’52 weekly cane projects’. A few weeks ago, I created a cane from this tutorial: http://polymerclayfimo.livejournal.com/4078420.html written by ‘Kalinkapolinka’. I don’t read Russian so it was a good thing for me that she had clearly documented the cane steps in photos!
I changed my cane to include a lot of translucent clay and I also used purple/blues and white instead of the original black and white clays. I wanted a Blue Willow Delft look:
Matryoshka dolls
Clay Camp 2015 will be here in less than one week and all my clay friends are excited! For five days, we eat, breathe, and dream about the clay projects we are working on in a beautiful mountain setting near Wallace Falls State Park in Washington State. This year’s swap theme is ‘Charms’ and I decided to make tiny, tiny Matryoshka dolls (less than one inch tall) for my charms. I hope all of the ‘campers’ like them.
If you’re interested in the process, I created a free tutorial to download.
(Special thanks to my daughter Lydia for taking all of the photographs for the tutorial we made.)
Rabbits and chirps
I created these two spring brooch pins for some friends of mine- I was inspired by some ‘vintage’ Japanese and Scandinavian textile prints and adapted the designs for polymer clay.
Owls and peacocks
I made a small cane of an owl and one of wood- and made a brooch for autumn.
I also finally pulled out a peacock cane I started a while back, it’s about seven inches tall. I packed it with a layer of PlayDoh, because I was going to then wrap it in scrap clay, reduce the cane and be able to peel off the scrap and have a ‘background-less’ peacock. Here’s a tip: If you’re not going to slice your cane RIGHT AWAY (within a day), don’t pack it with PlayDoh! It will dry out fast and pull your cane in directions you don’t want. Take it from me- I’m chipping off the dried PlayDoh and not happy about my wasted effort and time.
Summer
A few simple bullseye canes in colors inspired by the Mexican coast. I sliced and stretched each disc until they had the organic feel I wanted.
A ‘whimsical bead’ bracelet strung on memory wire. My challenge was to create no two beads exactly alike with this mostly neon palette.
Faux stones and runes
The Elder Futhark alphabet was used by Anglo-Saxon, Germanic and Norse peoples over three thousand years ago. The symbol-letters were carved onto weapons to give them strength, onto buildings and boats for protection, onto gravestones to ease the departed on their way to Valhöll… I’ve carved these runes onto jewelry for good luck and decoration.
