New Beads

I kept my word to myself this time.  I didn't start playing with clay until I finished nearly 4" on my rope.  I've only got about 12 or so more inches to go!  Yea!  But as soon as I put the rope away, out came the clay.  My daughter Sara spent the night at my mil's house last night so it was just me and Matthew hanging out in the kitchen.  He was playing X-Box (as usual) and I was getting ready to play with clay.  I asked him if he wanted to help me, and he jumped right up ready to go.  He's always game!

I got this idea from Marie over at Art From My Heart.  Man, is she awesome!  She sent me a link to a cane that was made by stacking extruded squares on top of each other to form a pattern.  I pulled up my Bead Creator Pro program and decided to play around with making patterns.  Here are the steps Matthew and I took to make some new beads...

First, we decided on three colors:  white, red and light blue.  I wanted to bring light, medium and dark tones to hopefully give some contrast in the finished cane.  I think it's really hard to extrude clay.  We worked and worked and worked the clay both with the noodle bender (that's what my dh calls the pasta machine) and with our hands.  The blue was exceptionally hard to work with.  Maybe it was a stale block or something.  We put that clay through the bender at least 20 times, snaked it, mashed it.  We put it in the Stim Pak (that's what Matthew calls the extruder.  A Stim Pak is a thing that you use to heal yourself in the X-Box game Fallout...lol...always about the video games with him.)  Anyways we put the blue in the Stim Pak at least 3 times, couldn't get it to budge and started the conditioning process again and again.  And that was with us putting it with the plunger side on the table, my hands around the barrel pushing down and Matthew's hands on top of mine pushing down.  It would. not. go.  My hands were hurting!  I had him laughing so hard because I put the clay in his armpit to try to get it warm.  It was kinda funny.  I did finally manage to get it through, but I actually worked up a sweat working that Stim Pak!!!

Once we got all the clay extruded and cut to (sort of) even lengths, we started stacking.  Here's what it looked like to start off with:

I put it in the fridge for a while and then took it out to stretch and pull.  I took it in my bedroom, layed in bed, watched t.v. and stretched the cane in the dark.  It was easy to do with it being square.  After I stretched it, I cut it into 4 even pieces and stacked it again...

Ok, so maybe my squares didn't stay exactly square, but I thought it would add "character" to the cane. lol  Do you buy that?  I let it rest for a few minutes and stretched it out again.  Then I cut 4 more pieces and stacked again...

If you look at the stripes on the outside I do think I did a pretty good job keeping it straight.  And you can see how intricate the inside is getting.  One more time of stretching and pulling and this is what I got...

As interesting as the inside is, I liked the outside even more.  I let it rest for the night, but as I was laying in bed I had images swirling through my head on just how I was going to use this cane.  I really like it.  I think Matthew and I did a good job!  This morning I cut the cane into beads.  I poked holes in them, some of them length-wise and some of them sideways.  I'm going to alternate the beads going across and then up/down for a necklace with some rounds in matching colors in between.  Here are the final beads...

I made 18 of them...10 going long ways and 8 going up/down.  I goofed on one and made it a little shorter than the others, and one I started to drop and as I caught it I mushed the end a little.  I'll just put those in the back. :)  Do you like our striped beads? 

Also, I posted this pretty quick after my last post, so if you didn't see my leaf headpins I made scroll down to see those.

I Lied

I didn't get back to my beading project like I said I was going to do.  I couldn't stay away from the clay last night and this morning.  I didn't do anything earth shattering, but I had lots of fun.  I played around with Sculpey Bake n Bond, some shell pieces, wire, two colors of clay and 2 colors of Pearl Ex pigment powders.  I also messed around with some alcohol inks, but wasn't successful with it.  I am making a brooch.  I have the main part of the clay done, but I need to embellish it somehow so I'm not going to show you that yet.  What I am going to show you today are the 13 leaf headpins I made.  I took 3 parts of a green green color with 1 part chocolate and got a more subdued green.  I shaped them into leaves, put a little dab of Bake n Bond on the end of a piece of wire and stuck it in the clay.  Then I brushed a green Pearl Ex powder all over, but it was pretty bright.  So I brought it down a few notches by going over it with copper powder.  After baking I coated it in some kind of gloss I got on clearance.  I'd tell you what it is, but it's all put away now and I just don't want to dig it out again.  I almost had a heart attack when I tipped over my little jar of green powder and half of it came spilling out!  Luckily I got most of it back in, and I used what was on the table to cover the leaves with.  Only a little ended up being wasted, thankfully!  That stuff is pricey!  So here's my experiment for the weekend...Leaf Headpins on 22 gauge non-tarnish copper wire.  The leaves are not all the same but they roughly measure 15x8mm on the big end to 10x5mm on the small side.

I need to find some, what's it called? Gum Arabic? to make paint with my powders.  And I need to get a better paint brush.  Anyone know where to get that stuff?  I'm wondering if I can get it at JoAnn's or Michael's or if I have to go to a good art supply store.  Or maybe I can find it somewhere online.

My exciting news (for me) is that this month I sold over $60 in patterns on The Bead Coop!  Woohoo for me!  Can't wait to get the deposit in my paypal account...more shopping is in  my future!  :)

Up All Night

Had an anxiety attack, and when that happens it takes my body a VERY long time to get back to normal.  Therefore, I didn't sleep a wink.  But you know what that meant?  An all night clay-fest!!! 

I got some molds in the mail, but I wasn't altogether happy with them.  It was partly my fault.  I didn't look at my measuring tape to see exactly how big they were going to be.  I wanted BIG.  Sadly, 25mm isn't really all that big.  And one mold was so tiny I know I'll never use it.  But also, one that was big has a floral pattern in it and the pattern is very shallow so it doesn't give the best impression.  Bummer!  I decided to make my own molds.  I dug and searched and hunted for any cabs I had and larger beads with an interesting shape, got out my mud clay and made me some molds.  I don't know why I didn't think of that before I spent the $27, but it was because I didn't know to make a mold from the clay itself.  'doh!

I played around with some colors, some translucent, some mud, some glitter and some powder pigment.  How can you go wrong with all that???  Making cabs, I discovered, will take some time to learn the nuances of; but I think I came up with some interesting things.  After baking some I sanded and buffed and some I didn't.  I coated them all in Diamond Glaze.  The only problem with that is that it left some eeny weeny bubbles.  Bummer again!  Could be my cheap paint brush too though.  Ok.  Here's what I made in my all night party of moi...

These were made from my mud from my canes the other day.

This I used some kind of brownish color, gold and a hint of red.

This was made with slivers of my cane from the other day covering a base of clay.

For these I used translucent and raspberry and glitter and threw them in an ice bath after baking.

These were interesting.  I used a translucent light blue, a royal blue and some blue pigment powder.  When I mixed them there were large streaks throughout.  After baking it looked solid blue.  But after sanding and buffing, some little details came through that I think are kind of cool.  Love the color!!!

This was made with a lot of translucent white and a little blue.  I threw it in an ice bath after baking.

There you have it!  My party for the night.  I am pretty happy with what I created, and my mind is already working out what I'm going to make with these babies.  I'm thinking the pink ones will be first up!  Oh, I forgot to say...don't pay any attention to the edges.  I didn't quite get the hang of nice clean edges, but it won't really matter anyhow because they'll be covered up with beads.

BASEBALL HIGHLIGHT!

Watch Matthew's great at-bat from last night's game.  We won, btw, 13-3.  Go Bulls!

Playing with clay

Don't laugh!!!  I'm a beginner!  I've got so much to learn, and this is going to be a real process.  I have been searching as much as I can on the internet on making polymer clay beads as well as checked out a couple books from the local library.  I've been working on some very basic things, and the ONLY reason I'm showing you these things...not because I'm so proud of them...but because I'm hoping for some guidance (maybe Marie? :)

The first thing I did was a simple jellyroll.  Matthew helped me late one night over the weekend.  We had fun together!  We picked red and yellow...good high contrasting colors.  My first lesson was all about translucents.  lol.  The yellow didn't look so yellow after being baked.  Ok, so I think we did all right on the jellyroll...except that I can't cut them right.  I watched videos and read and watched more videos and read some more.  I learned that the clay has to rest in between steps or it will become distorted.  Check.  I'm not usually a patient person, so this will be a real test for me, but I did let the clay rest, and even refrigerated, between steps.  But the clay just seemed to get so warm and soft so fast.  When I would go to cut the slices they wouldn't stay round.  I even rolled the cane a little as I sliced downward like I'd seen the pros do.  But mine still came out all wonky. 

Next I decided to try a simple flower looking cane.  I chose a gold, bright blue, black and a hint of white (which was such a "hint" that it altogether disappeared later in the process).  I got the cane all cut, let it chill, stretched it out, let it chill, and then went to cut it.  Same problem...lopsided slices.  grrrr.  AND by looking at the petals I realized I was twisting as I was stretching because the circles became distorted.  Even so, I was ok with my first attempt at a flower cane.

Decided to go a step further and make that cane into another cane.  cut the pieces, stacked them, wrapped, let it chill in the fridge overnight.  The next day I stretched and pulled.  I did a much better job of keeping the cane straighter as I stretched this time.  BUT I still can't cut a slice to save my life. When I did the slices some were thicker than others.  On the really bad ones I was going to put the clay in the "mud" bag, but decided to see what it would look like if I made the garbage into beads.  Kind of a nice affect.  Lesson learned...nothing is garbage.  Try different things and you just might get something interesting. 

This is the "mud swirl" made from garbage

This is a side-by-side progression of my canes

After I let the slices and beads chill again, I tried making the bead holes through them.  They became even more distorted.  *whimper, sniffle*  Still I carried on.  Next was sanding.  That didn't last long.  How in the world do you sand something so small???  I couldn't even hold onto them, let alone sand them.  I ended up putting the sandpaper on the table and holding it with one hand while rubbing the tops and bottoms with the other hand.  I wonder how long one has to sand in order to get that glassy finish I've seen the pros do?

Oh...I forgot.  I also did some wrapped beads by layering four colors of circles into the extruder, pushing out long snakes, wrapping a core bead made from mud (again, using the garbage), baked them and then started sanding down through the layers of colors.  Looked really cool on the video, but it seems the only color I could get to show through was the orange.  There was also yellow and green in there.  Still a fun bead to make, and I'll probably play with this one a little more in the future.

So that was my adventure in an intro to polymer clay over the weekend.  No masterpieces yet. lol.  No...that will take quite some time, I'm sure.  But I'll keep you posted on my progress.  And anyone who wants to chime in with any tips, I'm ready for it!!!  Oh!  I've got some molds on order that I'm hoping come any day now in the mail.  Got about 5 different cab molds.  It will be fun to swirl colors and powders and glitter together to see what happens!  Will post more on that later.

Bead happy.

The Day After

Wow!  I had an amazing day yesterday!!!  It all started with all of you who sent me such thoughtful birthday wishes.  Thank you all!!!  In reading the comments, I was so pleasantly surprised to find that so many of you agree with me that inexpensive beads are NOT a bad thing.  I have read some blogs where they really bash those types of beads.  Not my friends!  Nope...we're all on the same page!!!  :)

I'm going to give you a run down of my day and show you some pics of my haul.  First, after dh dropped the kiddos off at school he brought me breakfast in bed...a sausage egg mcmuffin with cheese.  i just love those things.  We started out at mid-morning and drove across town to Hobby Lobby.  Remember how excited I was about going there?  It turned out to be a big disappointment.  First off, their weekly coupon was for 50% off...sharpie markers.  That's it???  That's the coupon of the week???  AND they DON'T take competitors' coupons.  I have a hard time paying full price for anything when I don't have to.  I specifically went to Hobby Lobby, though, because they had the pasta machine I wanted.  I read reviews of lots of different ones, and this one seemed to have the best feedback.  Therefore, I ended up paying the full $24.99 for it.  Ouch.  That kills me.  I got 2 little packages of basic cutters in squares and circles and an extruder.  Other than that, they didn't get my money.  Very little to choose from.  And the bead section?  Disappointing.  Michael's and JoAnn's are much better.

On the way home we went to JoAnn's.  I went crazy in there!!!  Just look here at everything I got!

Ok, maybe it doesn't seem so impressive when I lay everything out, but I felt like I hit the jackpot of goodies.  I'm so dumb, though!  I got to the register and realized I brought the WRONG Michael's coupon and I could only use the one JoAnn's coupon.  Bummer!  I still saved over $25 with that one coupon!!!

By the time I got home I was exhausted.  I have a terrible time getting good, solid sleep, so I always sleep during the day for a while.  My usual sleep time was past due, and I was ready to hit the pillow.  After a good, long nap I woke up to do more shopping...online.  I went to Mad About Molds and bought about 6 different molds for my clays to make different sizes and shapes of cabochons.  That was fun!

THEN we went out to dinner.  I just realized as I started typing this post that I should have taken pics of our outing...dummy me!   We went to Souper Salad for a buffet dinner.  Was it ever good!  My son, Matthew, hit that buffet hard!  lol.  Sami had lots of vegetarian things to choose from, and they even had her favorite food group...fishy crackers!  You know those little fish-shaped yellow/orange crackers, right?  She looooooves those!  Sara didn't eat a ton, but she got her chocolate milk and had fun getting up and making all the kids strawberry shortcakes with whipped cream on top.  Jeff had loads of pasta, which he loves.  We had such a fun, happy time at dinner.  It was really wonderful.

When I got home I got ready to go out AGAIN.  This time I went to Michael's...with the right coupon this time!  I splurged on something I wanted but would not normally buy because it was really expensive.  But it was my birthday and I had that 40% off one item coupon.  I got a 12 jar set of pigment powder for my clay!!!  I saw this being used in a You Tube video once, and ever since then I wanted some, but I could never find any.  It was my lucky day though.  12 jars for just $14!!!  That was the deal of the day for sure.  I looooove the bright, beautiful colors and the way they totally shimmer in the light.  I can't wait to try them!  The colors don't show up nearly as vivid as they really are.  You'll have to take my word for it.  They're awesome!

I also picked up a few odds and ends...

In addition to the stuff in the pics, I also got a couple jewelry display forms for photographing my necklaces.  And the best part?  I still have a little bit of money left after all this shopping!!!  I am going to have a LOT of fun this weekend, that's for sure!

After all that shopping I then sat down quietly by myself and opened up my birthday cards...one from my kids and one from my husband.  The kids' messages inside were so sweet!  Even though the card made fun of my big milestone birthday number, it was still a great card.  The card from my dh brought tears to my eyes.  For real.  It was so sentimental and spot on.  I know he spent some time looking for this card because it was absolutely perfect.

And they bought me a giant Symphony chocolate bar with almonds and toffee bits!  So after everyone was sleeping I got into bed, turned on the tv and savored a few squares of that decadent, delicious chocolate.  What a way to end a fabulous day.

sharing a giveaway...come look!

As you have read recently, I am delving into the world of polymer clay.  Can I tell you how many times i typed "polymer clay", "polymer clays beads", and all other variations into google?  I found a blog over on Wordpress that has an amazing tutorial series on African Trade Beads with polymer clay.  At the same time my friend Beth kept mentioning the name Marie Segal to me.  Then Marie came and visited my blog here on blogger, so I went and visited her blog (also on Blogger).  Wouldn't you know it???  It's the same blog that is on Wordpress, and even though Beth had mentioned her name several times I didn't make the connection...it was Marie's blog!!!  Then to have Marie come visit my blog in the meantime.  How funny.  Small world!  Anyhoo, on Marie's blogger blog (not Wordpress), she is having a giveaway of one of her pieces she created using her polymer clay canes.  It's really beautiful!  I want to win it for myself, of course, but it's so pretty that I thought you should see it too.  Just go see her on her blogger blog (not the Wordpress one) at Art From My Heart for a chance to win.  And while you're there take a look-see at some of the other wonderful things she has done.  Good luck!

Last chance to enter my giveaway!

WIN ME!!!

I'm excited about the giveaway.  Remember, if you want to get in on the fun and have a chance to win my Drops of Honey embroidered cuff, deadline is tonight.  So hurry and get your name in the hat.  Go to the previous post for all the details!

I'm also excited about the new things I will be creating soon.  I have decided to jump head first into the pool of polymer clay.  I've seen such amazing things come from polyclay that I wanted to give it a go and see what I can do.  I am in no way, shape, or form talented in the area of painting, so making amazingly painted face cabs like Beth over at Bellesanbeaus is definitely out...but, I think I can mix clays and techniques to make some pretty cool polyclay beads and focals.  I'm hoping the birthday fairie (my daddy) comes this month.  I have on my wish list a pasta machine that I saw at Hobby Lobby, an extruder, some little cookie cutters and, of course, lots of colors of clay.  I bought a few blocks of clay about 2 weeks ago along with some tools and a bead roller.  I learned one important lesson already.  Don't use Fimo Classic!  It is soooooo hard and is nearly impossible to get soft enough to work with.  Fortunately I only bought one of those.

I have 2 books about polyclay beads on order at the library.  One of them came in and I'm going to try to get hubby to take me to the library to pick it up.  I can't drive myself....had a scare yesterday morning.  I got up early and went to the corner store.  I have no a/c so I was driving with the windows down.  I heard a swoosh-swoosh-swoosh sound coming from my tire as I was driving along.  I thought that maybe i need some air in the tire.  They sometimes make that sound if the air is too low.  Went home, got Sami ready for school and was headed out the door to take her to school.  I decided to take another look at my tire.  I bent over, put my hand on the tire as I started looking at it, and OUCH!!!!  Something cut me!!!  Holy crow...my tire is almost shredded!  The wires are coming through and the tire is all cracked around the side wall!!!!  I am sooooo lucky my tire hasn't exploded and come off already!  Especially on the freeway or something.  How dangerous is that?!  So, to make a long story short, I will not be driving my car until we can afford some new tires and I will be depending on my DH to take me where I need to go (I don't drive his van).  Sooooo I am excited about picking up the one book that came in and drooling over the pretties and learning whatever I can.  I will keep you all posted.

Also, I have learned how to make PDF patterns for beadwoven pieces.  I have made a pattern of my Wrapped in Red netted collar necklace and a pattern for my hematite flat spiral bracelet.  If you'd like to take a look, they are in my Artfire shop here.  And, I had some pros review my first patterns.  They were gracious enough to take the time to guide me along, give some critiques and suggestions, etc. to make sure that my patterns are as professional as possible.  Thank you Nicole from Beadwright and Kathy from England!!!  You two were my angels these past few days, helping me with something new.

Ok, kids.  I'm going to head off for now.  I have been rambling today, haven't I? :)  Don't forget...go to the previous post and enter the giveaway if you haven't already!