Granma's Bed

Well I spent the last few days reducing all of our feather canes and shaping them into beads for necklaces, boot jewelry and earrings.

Here are the canes that I started with.

  You will see what color recipes I used here.

We now have plenty of sanding and finishing to do over the next few days as well as working on a fresh new look for our displays at the Cowboy Festival which starts a week from today - March 11.  It is going to be an exciting event with plenty of food, fun and entertainment!

New Bargello Colors

We're extremely busy these days getting ready for the Cowboy Festival which is one of our larger shows of the year.  Since I don't have too many finished pieces to share yet I thought I would give you a sneak peek at some of our latest Bargello we are working on.  This one is in the color combos of Grape (color recipe # 10-4), Blueberry (color recipe # 9-3) and Lagoon (color recipe # 8-3).  The color recipes are provided in my Clay Color System Tutorial.

The beads have just been baked and haven't even been sanded or buffed yet.  I will show you how the finished pieces will look later on when they are done.  Now I have to get back to work (play) ....

Blog Debris Thursday

I'm up to my eyeballs in lizard tails and making faux turquoise.  Will have some more new stuff to show you soon.

In the meantime, I came across this video on carved candles the other day and it really got my mind whirling and thinking about how this could be applied to polymer clay.

Making More Buttons

I've been making my own polymer clay buttons and wearing them on my own clothing for a few years now and love how they look.  What I like most is how I can even coordinate them with my jewelry.

A quilting store in our area is now carrying some of our buttons which I specially for them.  Here are a few of my favorites that are all very large and measure around 2 inches which look great on quilted bags.

Some of these will be available in our Etsy shop as soon as I can make up some more.

Polymer clay works great for making buttons and if you are a newbie and want to learn how to make proper ones that won't fall apart in the wash as well as look good, Lisa Clarke of Polka Dot Cottage is running a free 5 week tutorial on her blog.  You will find her first lesson here.  Second lesson here, and her most recent third lesson here.

If you are a more advanced clayer or want to go to the next level,  I have a tutorial I published called "Making Beautiful Buttons".  It is available in both our ArtFire Studio as well as our Etsy shop.

Album tip for my Clay Color System Tutorial

I've been getting a lot of positive feedback on my latest tutorial, Carolyn's Clay Color System.

These are a few comments we've received so far (now for some shameless self-promotion):

"Quick delivery and a lot of fun.  My photo album is filling up nicely!"


"Excellent tutorial.  Great way to learn about color and organize your clay stash!"


"I'm so excited.  I have always been afraid of dealing with color.  I know what I like; I just don't know how to get there.  You just opened the door for me!  ...... I'm impressed with your system.  Worth every penny."


"Just received my new color tutorial.... I can't wait to get in and start mixing some clay together and fix myself up the recipe cards...."


"I finally had a chance to look at your Color System Tute that I bought.  It's SUPER!  I am actually going to follow all the steps. :)  Thanks for making it for us.  I recommend it HIGHLY!

I did receive an e-mail today, however from someone who was having difficulty finding a photo album that is 3 photos per page.  If that is a problem I have a solution.

You can always go with a photo album that is 2 photos per page and then use 2 pages instead of the one for every color.  This will give you room to hold 4 cards per color instead of the 3 and you will have room for more color recipes to add later.  You can print out the blank cards on page 47 to use as the 4th card for each of the colors.  If you go this way, you will still only need 12 pages total for your album.

The binder type albums are best so you can add more pages for other things like keeping some of your color mixing charts, etc.

If you have any questions or more comments regarding this or any other of my tutorials, please feel free to contact me or leave a comment.  We are always happy to hear from you!

Follow up!

I did come up with another file system rather than a binder which I now really like.  You can see the post on this here:

http://2goodclaymates.blogspot.ca/2014/11/new-idea-for-clay-color-system-card.html

More on Textured Tubes

I recently purchased a few more texture plates by Helen Breil which are so much fun to play with.  I love the deep textures and flexibility of them so I can run them through my pasta machine with the clay but had discovered they are a little too flexible to use for the textured tubes.  My Textured Tubes tutorial is available in our ArtFire Studio as well as our Etsy Shop.

Solution:

Make a copy of the texture plate with regular clay and/or the Sculpey Bake & Bend.

Tip:

If I'm going to use my texture for tubes only,  I prefer to make the texture sheet a little thicker and out of regular clay as I don't need it to be flexible.  I also don't need a large texture plate -- just an area large enough to texture my beads or a pen blank.

How:

In this case I wanted my texture to be exactly like the original texture sheet so this is what I did:

I studied the texture sheets to see what areas I would want to use and would work well for the tubes.  I then made a texture plate of that area from Sculpey Bake & Bend, using my pasta machine so I could get a deep impression.

After baking, I created another texture plate from the one I just made but this time making it with regular clay and running it through my pasta machine again so I could still keep that nice deep impression.

Voila!  I now have a texture sheet that is an exact replica of my original but out of regular clay that I can use to make my textured tubes!

And here are some tube beads I created from the new texture sheet....

These were made using a turquoise color mix called Lagoon (recipe #8-3 in Carolyn's Color System Tutorial) and highlighted with antique copper mica powder pigments.  I embedded some antique copper beads into the ends before baking like I showed in a previous blog post.

I have a necklace design in mind for these beads and will show you when it is finished.

Blog Debris - Beautiful Minds: Stephen Wiltshire

Someone sent us this video link and I had to share it with all of you.  It is totally amazing and I'm sure you will be totally blown away like we were!  Enjoy!