Having Fun in the Sun

Finally finished off a bunch more flip flops and posted them in our Art Fire Studio.

Summer at the Beach

Summer is already here -- at least in our area and our summer markets are already starting and gearing up for the coming tourist season.  Since our town is on a beautiful lake with a nice relaxing beach I've been busy working on items that go along with that theme, like the flip flop sandal pendants and earrings.  Here are some new colors with more in the making.

These are fun to do as you can really get carried away with all the designs and colors but they are even more fun to wear!

Summer all year long

Earlier in the year I made a flip flop type bead for our "Fun in the Sun" themed necklace (see posting in February). We thought they would make cute earrings so I then made a pair (the pink ones shown on the left) to test them out. Well they turned out to be a hit and even though summer has come to an end, I have been getting orders for more of these.

I also decided to experiment a little further and make some matching pendants. I mentioned earlier how I like doing custom orders for people like the ones shown in the photos below. It can seem a little intimidating at first -- worrying whether the color combination will come out all right and meet the expectations of the customer -- but it can also be fun and exciting.

Anyhow, this summer seemed to be shorter and colder than usual and now it is over for another year but when I'm making these flip flops it puts me in a summery mood and I can imagine sitting at the beach hearing the ocean waves and soaking up the sun.

   

   

A Stringing Challenge

Honey, I want to enter this contest!
-- Say what??
This contest in the magazine you bought the other day.

I looked at the article and was still in shock as we had never even thought of doing anything like this before.

The theme was titled "Fun in the Sun". Sounds like we could have some fun with this. Maybe it would give a little more exposure to the many uses of polymer clay.

We threw a few ideas back and forth and went out on a hunt looking for the right "findings", but all we came up with was a pineapple charm. Well, I guess I could make some out of clay. After all, we need to use more clay other than just a sunhat pendant. Maybe we'll start with some sunglasses and some flipflops. How about a palm tree? We have lots of shells we collected from our few years of living in Mexico. A beach ball could be fun. What else? How about a glass of lemonade or pina colada? -- A what? I can't make that! -- okay, I'll give it a try.

Well, we arranged our necklace but decided it needed one more thing --how about suntan lotion? I never thought I would ever be making a bead shaped into a suntan lotion bottle! Well it did make sense and what do you know, it fit perfectly in that spot. But now there was still one more thing. We had all our findings made out of clay except one lonely metal pineapple! Okay dear, I'll try and make a pineapple!

Now what about a clasp? (I had just discovered how to disguise a barrel clasp inside a bead.) Could you do a fish clasp my husband asks? A fish? Why not!?

So now you have it -- a rundown of how our Fun in the Sun Necklace was created. And they even accepted it in the Stringing Magazine competition! In case any of you want to see the many wonderful entries there and even vote on your favorite (ours is #31 hint hint - lol) you can check it out for yourselves.

Hope you all have a sunny, fun or at least a funny day!