My Tutorial at the PCA Retreat 2016 Goes Live Today!

I can hardly believe how time has been flying by.  It was a whole year ago when I first announced teaching in the Polymer Clay Adventure Retreat and my video tutorial will finally be going live today.

If you already signed up, I hope you drop in and I will be available to answer any questions.  I am also looking forward to seeing your finished projects as well.

We have some supplies and kits listed in our online store to create the Kite Necklace and Earrings.  You will find them listed on our polymer and jewelry supplies page here.

Some New Art Deco Designs and Shapes

I have been on an Art Deco kick for a while now and is my favorite technique since discovering it.  We had piles of containers of scrap clay that I was saving and just couldn't bring myself to mix up and planned on using to make Natasha beads one day.  That pile is finally being reduced, freeing up some of the containers, but we still have so much more to play with.

The fun thing with this technique is that the pattern in the cane changes making each piece totally unique.  For instance, it is hard to believe that the snaps shown below are all from the same cane. 

As I sliced the cane, I noticed that at one end the colors were more a combination of purple, green and blue and when I sliced it from the opposite end, the colors were mainly deep pink with little bits of teal green and blue.

Occasionally you can end up with several pieces that are close enough to pass as a matching set which work really well for items such as earrings.

Most of our Art Deco is being made into buttons for the quilt and yarn shops and snaps for our interchangeable jewelry.  I have also been playing with new shapes like these earrings.

And some round beads which will be made into a bracelet.

So I am off to play some more and see what other shapes I can come up with.  Have a great summer long weekend!

Organized Jewelry

I sometimes feel I have the best "job" in the world and at times at the end of the day I feel I played more than I actually "worked".   I also get to wear a lot of jewelry that I custom make for myself to coordinate with my clothing.  Every time I wear something we created I look at it as a form of "advertising" when people notice it and ask me where I got it.

Over the years, I have accumulated a fairly large collection of jewelry pieces that we have made and I thought I would share with you how I have some of it organized.  Since all my earring beads are "interchangeable", I can keep all my sterling silver and gold-filled ear wires safely packed in my container handy to add to any of my earring beads that I want to wear.  The case is also handy for storing some earring beads when travelling.

I needed a way to hang my earring beads and found these Christmas ornament hangers on sale.  Of course I could have made my own hooks but these were handier.

This is a large cork memo board that I covered with fabric and hung in the bedroom.  The rod below it has shower curtain rings that hold my scarves and scarf necklaces.

I use push pins to hang some of my necklaces on the left and my bracelets along the top.  The earring beads are on the hooks I showed above and hung on two 20 inch lengths of chain.  The bottom row are my brooch/pendants hung on the same hooks.

I love having most of my jewelry pieces hung up like this so they are easy to see and coordinate with what I am wearing.  Sometimes I am in a rush and don't have time to spend rummaging through everything to find just the right thing.

Christmas Earrings & Chase Country Christmas

Our Chase Country Christmas is this weekend and we are preparing for our local craft fair on Saturday at the community hall.  It is a fun time and starts with a parade Friday evening with other events throughout the weekend.

These are some Christmas earring beads we made this year and will have for sale at the craft show.  All our earring beads and ear wires are sold separately to mix and match in our interchangeable system.

We will have lots of candy cane earrings on hand.  These are a real popular item this time of year.  We made some longer styles with chain tassels and Czech crystals in red or green.  You can click here to see my free tutorial I shared on this blog 3 years ago.  I added a slight variation on this last year which you will find here.

The red rondelle beads in these earrings are made from polymer clay and look like real glass pearls.  I have a published tutorial to make these type of beads.

These earring beads have Swarovski crystals embedded.  These beads are also reversible making them more versatile to wear year round.  To create the snowflake pattern, we used some metal snowflake findings to make our own "texture plates".  I share how to make your own texture plates and these type of beads in my "Constructing Accent Pieces for your Scarves, Sweaters & Shawls" tutorial.

Snowflakes are the theme for this year's Country Christmas celebration so we made some in different colors.

We love this time of year when we can get together with our friends and neighbors and really look forward to this weekend.

Faux Turquoise Earring Beads that are Reversible

Remember the earrings I showed in my last two posts?  They looked both the same but one was in the  Faux Red Turquoise and the other in the Faux Green Turquoise.  Here are the photos of them again:

The unique thing about these earrings is that they are actually the same pair.  They are reversible with the red on the one side and the green on the opposite.

These are the silver bead frames I used to make the earrings.

In my Fabulous Faux Turquoise tutorial I show how to fill various metal bead frames with a clay veneer.  I also have a free mini-tutorial on our blog for filling bead frames like these which you will find here.

For more of my free tips and tutorials, you can visit the page link at the top of this blog.

Faux Green Turquoise CaBezel Necklace and Earrings

I finally finished off the necklace with the Faux Green Turquoise CaBezel beads.  I shared the new green turquoise clay color recipe a while ago and you can find it here.

I used the "Lemon Egg" CaBezel mould to create the beads in this piece.  The ribbon is velvet and is not only extremely soft but completely washable and colorfast.  There is something unique about the earrings shown below.  I will share the surprise and how I made them with you tomorrow.

Faux Red Turquoise Collar Necklace and Earrings

Here is a collar necklace and earrings I created using my Faux Turquoise technique in the new shade of red.  I am really in love with this new color and the deep mica shift effect it has.  To create this color I used the Pantone Fall Fashion Color Aurora Red.

Craft-a-Fair 2014

The Salmon Festival is over and we are preparing for our first Christmas Show of the year.  It is the Craft-a-Fair at the Interior Savings Centre in Kamloops this Sunday, November 2nd.  It is put on by the Royal Inland Hospital Auxiliary with this year celebrating their 30th Anniversary.

We will be in the same spot as we have been for several years now which is on the concourse --  turn left at the main entrance.  We are down a little ways on on the left hand side.

Our main feature again this year is our interchangeable earring system with plenty of new styles of art beads to wear along with our most popular selling item, our scarf jewelry.  This year we will also be featuring our latest interchangeable scarf necklace designs which were first introduced at the Lake Country Art Walk last September.

More Flip Flop Sandal Jewelry

Here is another style of flip flop sandal jewelry pieces using the extruded retro square pattern.   They are a different look for those who are not into the flowers as much.

We will have a selection of our popular flip flop jewelry available at the Lake Country Art Walk coming up in September.  Each year there is a theme and this year's is "Shoes: A Step Forward".

Single Flower Style Flip Flop Jewelry

We've been working on some more flip flop jewelry pieces.  With so many lakes and beaches in our area they are a popular summer item.  The pendants are all hung on the gorgeous Softglass cords that we get from Shades of Clay.  Both the Softglass and the buna cords are beautiful and drape so softly making them perfect for these lighter weight beads.  I found a simple way to finish off these cords which I will share with you in my next post.

Flip Flop Sandal Necklaces

Flip Flop Sandal Earring Beads

I had fun creating these in a variety of colors some of which were in the latest Pantone shades.  All the ones shown here are now availabe at Chum N' Luba's Unique Boutique in our town of Chase.  Here is the one in a Pantone color combination of Celosia Orange and Cayenne (top photo far left) with one of the gorgeous maxi dresses at Chum N' Luba's.

 

Flip Flop with Summer Maxi Dress at Chum N' Luba's Unique Boutique

New Brilliant Blooms Jewelry

Every spring I get into a mode of making lots of flowers.  I am not sure if it is due to spring fever and all the flowers popping up that inspire me or more to the fact that when I go through our inventory, I discover that we have few flower designs left in stock and the need to make more.

This year I wanted to create flowers that were extra bright and cheerful.  I decided to use the Pantone Spring 2014 Fashion Colors for inspiration.

Whenever I make my flowers (shown above), I like to save some extra "petal" canes to make the sculpted flowers like the ones in the scarf necklaces and earrings (below).  These were made the same way as the "Daisy" flower in my Sculpted Flowers Tutorial.  I just used bright colored clay in place of the white and black instead of the grey for the outlining.

These are our new falling petal earrings

for our interchangeable earring system:

The colors I used to make the flower petals shown above (left to right) are:

Dazzling Blue (with more white added),

Violet Tulip (reduce the amount of white mix to 1/2 part)

Cayenne, Radiant Orchid, Celosia Orange, Freesia

Each earring comes with three "strands" at different lengths that can be worn individually or combined in various ways.

Just a Happy Customer

Here in Canada we don't have too many places we can purchase our jewelry or polymer clay supplies.  It is difficult at times to order south of the border and even though there are companies that offer huge discounts, the cost in shipping and U.S. currency exchange can end up being more in the end.  We are very fortunate to have Shades of Clay as our major supplier of Kato clay as well as so many other tools and items at a very reasonable cost right here in our own country. Even though they are more than 5000 kilometers (3000 miles) away from us, they are still a Canadian company and we don't have customs and high shipping costs to deal with.

Shades of Clay has been around for quite a few years and last year Wendy Orlowski took over the company from Margaret, the previous owner.  Wendy continues to give the same excellent service and is working even harder to build up a wider selection of cool items for us.  The latest news is that they will be bringing in some of the Pebeo Fantasy Prisme paints and zentagle markers which I am very excited about.

So why am I telling you all this?  I am not being paid to promote Shades, but just a happy customer and wanted to share that with you.  We are also both Canadians and therefore we like to support one another.  It is wonderful to find a supplier that you can work with directly and can supply so many items that we need.

Anyhow, I cannot write a blog post without showing you at least one picture.  Here are some new flip flop sandals we are working on for this year.  The flowers are from the new canes I showed you earlier (you can see them here).  Since we live at a beach (lake) and there are many lakes with beaches surrounding us, our flip flop jewelry is generally a big hit at the summer shows.  We decided that this year was time to come out with a new look and this is just a sample.  The cords on these pendants are a type of "buna" called "softglass" which is available here.

It is already warm here and is nice to be wearing summer clothes and flip flops again!