A plethora of pretty things!

Shame 'plethora' is such an ugly sounding word or that title woulda worked better...

For all you jewellery lovers out there I have a tasty feast of eye candy today. Plus some stuff that I made :p

First off - I still haven't sanded & polished the weekend's lentil beads and realistically I can't see it happening before Friday now so here they are in their unfinished form.

First off - the best of the bunch





The beads I made out of the remainder of the red mix




Best of the blue/pink/silver



And the remainder



And these were made out of the scrappy leftovers from the previous 2 mixes (believe it or now, quite a lot of creamy gold went onto the red ones!)




Now... the Scheherazade necklace and earrings set - slightly better picture although blue goldstone is an absolute bitch to photograph. Its a little chunky for my personal taste.



And the first of the necklace connecters to go with the previously made red pendant (not yet finished)



And finally, these turned up today. I almost never use gemstones, partially because I sell Swarovski crystal for a living and so have lots of it lying around and partially because I'm not really an earth-tones kinda gel, however I've been looking for this stuff for ages - its titanium coated druzy (druzy is a generic name for the tiny little quartz crystals that sometimes form within rocks) and the titanium coating means it comes in a whole range of completely non-natural shades :p They're gorgeous. Far better than expected, I was absolutely blown away by this lot.













The druzy came from www.druzygems.com

Indecision!

You gotta hate it when that happens. Y'see it's the weekend, which is cool given that I'm on a strict no-work regime at the weekend BUT I'm at a total loss as to what to do with it. Not because I don't have any choices, but because I have too many choices.

• I want to make a necklaces for the pendant I made last weekend.
• And earrings to go with the dark blue necklace.
• There's a set-out necklace in my bead tray that I wanted to do once I had some GF wire - which has now arrived.
  
• I want to try some 30ga wire weaving stuff that's been floating around in my head this morning.
• I have a whole bunch of different yarn and ribbons that I want to try some mixed media stuff with.
• Last night, I spent FIVE hours (I kid ye not) sorting out all my personal beading stuff and threw up a whole bunch of beads & findings that had been dumped in little boxes with the idea of making jewellery to showcase the relevant componant products so that needs doing.
• I also found an entire collection of half-made pieces / pieces that need fixing that I'd like to not be sitting in a to-do box.
• I got my moulds delivered yesterday from the US so want to play with moulds and clay. I got them from madaboutmolds.com which has some gorgeous designs.
  
• And I STILL haven't tried the cool lentil beads tutorial I intended working through last weekend

Damn.

Clay will be tomorrow I think - Geoff has to go out a couple of times today which means I'll have Finn running around and uninterrupted time is def better for clay.

A to-do box sounds a bit too much like actual work I think...

And product showcasing IS technically work...

...which still leaves me which a whole bunch of choices!

But look how organised everything is! The trays stack on the bead storage table so they don't take up anywhere near as much space as they do in the picture :o)

Polymer Clay & Bipolar Babes

First off here's my weekend efforts with polymer clay. They are very amateurish but it was the first time I'd EVER worked with clay and I'm confident I will improve, it always takes a little time to get the feel of a new medium. I'm currently midway through making a lily focal which is noticably better than the first pieces

Selection of pendants, drops and connecters. My poor fairy has a scratch which I'll fix before covering her in resin for a nice glass-like finish:



Beads made with the clay 'leftovers'. Mainly I just wanted to see if I could manage regular, consistent spheres



In personal news, I was at the docs earlier partly to get more drugs, partly to see what my psych guy said about me after my January appointment. There wasn't anything particularly mind blowing there as we'd covered it all in the psych appointment. Being referred on to cognative therapy and psychotherapy, being kept under the mental health team's care as ongoing, no I don't want a change of drugs. Nothing surprising, nothing mindblowing - just yet more waiting around for referral appointments to happen. And they wonder why I periodically get sick of it all and self discharge from mental health care. Speaking of mad-as-a-hatterness I was reasonably gratified to learn that Jennifer Dangerfield of The Art of Curiousity is another bipolar babe. I don't know why I find that gratifying other than I admire her work, she's another Brit and unless I go out of my way to look (ie on dedicated forums) I rarely come across anyone 'openly' bipolar. Like being closet gays but with more stigma, and you can have a sex life even if you do hide it from the entire world *weird exasperation/irritation/amusement mix going on here*. I won't get on my mental healthcare soapbox or I'll never stop.

Geoff's off out tonight with Jan & Darren which is fine - only Finn & Jay here as its half term and Cam has gone to stay with the in-laws. Finn will be asleep within an hour if he's not already which leaves me free to get on with stuff that desperately needs doing. Mainly stuff directly relating to making money. Its a case of screw the Big Plan this week. Its a good plan. In fact its a GREAT plan. But it does involve long term slow and steady buildup of contacts, reputation and publishing which while will do wonders for business, doesn't help me pay the bills this month. So I'm having a focus-on-sales week. Newsletter to write, a squillion ebay listings to put on 10 day runs (I want about 1000 extra live for the end-of-the-month buying spree). eBay is a bit of an art form in itself. Sometimes having everything running quietly on 'background' shop listings is a good idea, sometimes going all out with the more expensive but more exposed 10 day auctions & Buy Now listings is better. After 5 years I'm still doing it largely by feel, and I currently feel that an extra thousand prominent listings is a Good Plan for the start of march.

Geoff saw a cat being hit by a car on his way back from collecting Finn. Just round the corner but it was gone when he walked back round to check (looks like the car that hit it stopped and hopefully took it to a vet). We've accounted for all our likely suspects but one so I'm keeping an eye out for Mini as Geoff thinks it was a tabby or a grey and Mini is tabby. Somehow I think I'm going to be reasonably agitated until I've found her. I'm trying not to think about it too much.

And finally, Darren was diagnosed as longsighted a week and a half ago, and got his glasses on Thursday. He looks... I dunno, older in them? Seems perfectly happy to have them though.

Polymer Clay

It was with great excitement that I unpacked my first ever delivery of polymer clay and associated paraphernalia last week. Friday night was the first chance I had to play and I figured I'd start just figuring out the feel of the clay and how to work it. Problem one soon struck in that I had a overly dry block of black that crumbled when I tried to condition it. Not a problem, I'd thought ahead and my little bottle of clay softener was put to work. I got it worked into my clay and tried again. Soon I had a nice, flat sheet of clay and stamped a star out then rolled some super thin rolls to decorate it with spirals. Problem two. Polymer clay and lint don't mix. I live in a house full of dogs and cats so I tend to have a coating of animal hair on whatever I'm wearing. Which happened to be a fleece, it being February and winter in the UK and rather chilly - fleeces however, particularly bad for collecting pet hair. No matter, fleece removed and I continued to work in a strappy pink vest.


I continued through Friday evening and Saturday morning making a selection of pendants, drops and canes, learning the feel of the clay, how to roll it evenly, making nicely round beads, mixing colours and marbling, texturing, applying mica powders and metallic finishes, then went through my art folder on my PC and miniaturised a number of my creations for use in pendants. So by midday Saturday I had, ready to bake, the original star pendant, plus matching drops for earrings, a selection of copperised drops, a marbled pendant frame with one of my tiny pictures in, a second pendant with another star motif, and a whole collection of beads.

After some experimentation, the correct temperature on the kitchen oven was obtained and things happily baked to completion. The kitchen still smells vaguely of molten plastic but I have assured my family (and two slightly perplexed German shepherds that live in the kitchen, who've never seen Mummy cook before) that as soon as my mini oven arrived, baking would take place in the utility room with the back door open.

I then dug out my Proxxon mini drill (like a Dremel but well... Proxxon) and associated bits and again, after some experimentation, sanded and buffed my creations to a reasonable finish.

Things I Discovered on the Journey
1. Polymer clay sticks. Not massively, just enough to pull up little patches of clay from your nice flat sheet when you stick it through a pasta machine or roll it on the purpose-designed mat. My solution - this is greatly reduced by working on greaseproof (baking) paper. You can roll it through the pasta machine like this as well - just cut a piece to size, fold it in half and put the clay inside at the fold. I did read a suggestion of talcum powder to stop sticking - like using flour to roll pastry on - and would appreciate an opinion. Surely this just weakens your clay by introducing a new, and very dry ingredient to it?
2. I discovered that clay doesn't behave as well as wire when you spiral it. Slippery little buggers like to retain their default position of 'log' but I eventually persuaded my tiny, slightly misshapen rolls to stay put and firmly stuck them in place with another, smaller star at the centre.
3. Somebody somewhere recently posted in a forum that pasta machines were a LOT easier to clean if you remove the front panel - no more taking apart to clean them. I am eternally grateful to this genius of 21st century art. For good measure, the back panel came off too.
4. The little things in drill accessory sets that look like miniature sanding discs are in fact for cutting. In fact they cut marvelously through 18ga sterling wire, embedded in your clay as a bail. Like butter. They don't sand very well either.
5. Luckily, you can, it seems, attach sticky-back sandpaper to sanding drum attachments without any problem and I happen to have rolls of such in a number of super-finenesses from 600 to 2000 grit.
6. Its not a good idea to catch your fingernail on the surface of printed, baked HP photo paper. My pretty little fairy now has a white scratch which I shall try and fix before covering her in resin!
7. If you're going to use repousse punches as modeling tools, when you wrap the clay around it, put a sheet of greaseproof paper around FIRST! I didn't think it would stick - steel not affected at the temperature polymer clay fires at so I figured they'd slide off afterwards. I was wrong. I now have a highly decorated repousse punch with completely immovable clay wraps (prettily textured and copperised).
8. Using liquid sculpey to help unfired clay stick to fired clay works wonderfully. It also leaves a white seam between the two pieces. The book suggested PVA.... maybe I should have listened.
9. Polymer clay is really good at taking fingerprints. It also deforms when you try and smooth them out. Practice, practice, practice! Do latex gloves work or do you lose sensitivity too much? (or does the latex react with clay?)
10. The more accurate you are getting your shapes right when you cut, the less sanding there is to do!
11. If, like me, you're used to working in wire of a maximum thickness of 18ga, its almost instinctive to try and work with the clay really, really THIN. Thicker clay makes better weight pendants though! There is no shame in 2mm+ thick pieces!

Today I intend sending the OH out to get some alcohol (arghhh polymer clay has driven me to drink!)... just kidding, its for cleaning the glaze brushes so I can get them finished up - then I need to make necklaces and earrings with them :-) Given that wirework and stringing is my normal MO, no matter how pretty a pendant is, I won't feel I've finished until I've incorporated it into something and just stringing them on cords simply won't do!