The Great Cover Up

Every January finds me wanting to clean up and reorganize closets and drawers. Well earlier this month, while doing just that, I found a sack full of old beads....I'm talking A LOT of beads! Ugly beads I made years ago when I first started learning and experimenting with polymer clay. (Admit it, every beginner has them.) Well, I questioned what I would ever do with them all. I certainly didn't like them any more (and I'm pretty sure no one else would) and I couldn't just throw them away! Then I remembered......some famous artists, like Picasso and Van Gogh, painted over, or covered up, some of their original paintings. Whether they felt their first attempts were failures or they just didn't have the money to buy more canvas, they persevered and kept painting. So with that thought in mind, I took out a couple dozen beads from that sack, feeling pretty certain I could do better this time around.

This was a pretty messy job and a lot harder than I thought it would be.

I wanted to change the shape of the beads and was hoping to be able to cut them clean in halve but that didn't happen. Polymer clay is tougher than I thought! I don't know if it was me, the knife, or the brand of clay. Some cut fairly easy while others chipped and crumbled. But none of them gave me two perfect halves.

Once I had several halves I experimented with covering them in different ways. Some I covered with slices of a skinner blend bullseye cane and I added texture using rough sandpaper. For some, I covered them with a thin layer of solid blue clay and then imprinted lines around them. And for others I used some dry, chopped up clay much the same way I used to make some ring dishes last year. (You can find those instructions here).

They remind me of something you might find washed up on shore somewhere!

After they were cured (and a little white paint added to the blues) I was pretty happy with the results so I decided to make a few more, using some more of my "ugly" beads in various other shapes. 

So much better, don't you think? I really love the organic look. I'm so glad I decided to keep on trying! I'll be listing these soon in my Etsy shop. I don't have time to make them into jewelry. I have more beads to cover up!

February Highlights

As promised yesterday, I'm going to play catch up on things that I have created this year. And so that brings us to February.

February, I think, is my least favorite month of the year so thank goodness it's also the shortest! It's usually one of the coldest too. I'm pretty sure when February rolls around, many others feel the same way I do. They're tired of the cold and just want Spring to hurry up already!

February found me making a few new items. All of which were fun, bright colors, in the hopes of curing the winter doldrums.

I started with keychains! Flowers, butterflies, fish....yeah that felt like spring.

Then I moved on to earrings. They may be small but they are bright!

I even tried my hand at thumbtacks. What a cute way to pin up notes, reminders, recipes, or whatever!

A new item I started making this year is dread beads! I really like making these single, large holed beads. Wear them in your hair or string them on some thick cording, the choice is yours!

Anticipating warmer weather, I made these hair ties. I wear my hair back all the time and thought these would be a fun way to dress up that ponytail!

 

And finally, I made these fun refrigerator magnets!

That's about it. Although it's no longer winter these fun, cheery items for you, your home and office will always brighten your day. Some are still available in my Etsy shop. I invite you to stop by and take a closer look!

Inclusions in Clay

I have been playing around with polymer clay for nearly 20 years now. Wow! After all that time you would think I've seen and done it all. Hardly! There have been weeks.....even months.... that I haven't even touched my clay. And with it's versatility, new ideas are always being discovered.

What I've been playing around with the past 2 days is certainly nothing new. I'm not the originator of these ideas. Others have been adding "things" to translucent clay for years. But I wanted to try for myself and share the results.

First up, dryer lint..... Yes, that's right.....  Dryer lint.  Now most of the time I'm fighting the battle of keeping my clay clean. Anyone who has ever worked with polymer clay can tell you....it's like a lint magnet! No matter how clean my work surface and hands I'm always picking little pieces of lint or cat hair off of my clay. So why in the world would I intentionally mix it in? Because, just look at the results.

At the top is the lint. The bottom right in uncured translucent clay with the lint mixed in. The little owl figure is the cured piece. 

The top is some green dryer lint. The bottom left shows what the uncured clay looks like. The pebble on the right is after curing and sanding.

Isn't that little owl cute? Looks like carved stone, right? And what about my green pebble? It reminds me of a polished river rock.

Well, while I was experimenting I decided to try out a couple other ideas.

This little bird was made by adding blue crayon shavings to some translucent clay. I love the speckles!

I mixed in some bright orange play sand and got a gold fish!

These simple little animal totems are so much fun to make! I'm not sure what I will do with them yet. Perhaps I'll drill holes through them and turn them into beads. Or maybe another idea will come to mind. But I do believe I will try out some other colors of both the crayons and the sand. I do love colors! So.....off to the work table! Until next time........

Another Bead Tutorial

Last week I wrote about making beads from some of my old, hard clay.  I mentioned the same technique could probably be done using old canes.  I hadn't tried it but figured it could be done the same way. So.......I decided to give it a try. It just so happens that I have been holding onto some ugly, brittle canes. Just when you think something is unusable....think again!

I started off the same as before, chopping up my cane with my clay blade until I had a pile of small pieces.

Since this clay was really, really dry I drizzled some liquid clay over it and mixed it all up. This is the point where things took a turn.

I was planning on painting my pieces, like previous, but I just wasn't sure it would work with this now sticky pile of clay. So.....I picked up a small amount and smooshed it together. I rolled it into a fat log and started twisting. This made the colors spiral. I flattened it out and ran it through the pasta machine. This gave me a nicely lined sheet of clay. Next, I folded the sheet in half and ran it through the pasta machine again. This started blending the lines into each other. I kept repeating this procedure until I liked the look of it.

Then....what do I do next? Hmmmm..... I remembered I had made some beads once before by wrapping a veneer around a core of scrap clay so I decided to do that! I rolled a ball of clay to use as the center of the bead, cut a strip of the lined sheet just slightly wider and wrapped it around, cutting it where the ends met up. 

Now, here's what you end up with.

Just gently pinch the ends together and slowly work the clay closed.

Then roll the bead in your hands to finish joining it all together.

The next thing I did was to add some texturing to the beads. Why? Because I absolutely hate sanding. I love the look and feel of a perfectly sanded and polished piece of polymer clay but I dread the work it takes! I especially hate sanding and polishing small round beads! Do you know how many times they get dropped???? So, I took the lazy way and added some texture to these beads by rolling them in salt and this is what I got. The only thing left to do was to pierce a hole through it. One down, several more to go.

Here's what I ended up with. Twenty rustic looking beads, all with their own unique colors. I think they look like old, distressed beads that have just been dug up at an archaeological site. (I always wanted to be an archaeologist when I was little.) Or maybe tiny planets, complete with craters! (I never wanted to be an astronaut.)

So there you have it. Yet another way to use up old dry clay!

Polymer Clay Bead Tutorial

Just the other day I came across a blog post on Art Jewelry Elements about making beads using old, hard clay and it gave me an idea.  I have a container of old clay that I thought was unusable but had just never brought myself to throw away. So, what did I have to lose?

* Note, I didn't follow the instructions exactly as Rebekah gave in her tutorial.  Like I said, her technique gave me an idea of my own to try. This is what I did.

I picked out some colors that I thought would look good together; royal blue, purple, yellow, orange and dusty pink.  I don't have a clay dedicated food processor as suggested in the original post so I used my clay blade to chop it all up into small chunks, mixing the colors all together. (All of this clay had been previously conditioned)

Next, I added some white acrylic paint and mixed it all up, covering all the pieces.  I set them aside for a few minutes to dry.

Once the paint was dry, I picked up small amounts of clay and pressed it firmly together. I formed my beads into small cubes by pushing it against my work surface on all sides. After I was pleased with the shape, I pierced a small hole through the bead using a needle.

Then they went into the oven for an hour. I wasn't sure of the brand of clay, Premo or Fimo, it may have been a combination of both. Since both of these brands have different curing temps and times, I decided to bake them at 275 degrees Fahrenheit. I tented the beads with a piece of foil to prevent burning.

Once the beads cooled, I wet sanded them with a very course grit sandpaper.  After I had removed all the paint I could, I switched to a finer course paper. This is the result. Some of the white paint remained in between the different pieces of clay, resulting in a mosaic look.

If you work with polymer and have a stash of old, hard clay then why not give this (or one of Rebekah's techniques)  a try for yourself? You could even use old canes that have become dry and brittle. The results just may surprise you!