Sharing the joy

I had the pleasure of having my oldest granddaughter with me this weekend.  We were pretty busy!  I was showing her different crafts and we made a kumihimo bracelet, soap and a polymer clay heart.  It's nice to have someone to share crafting with; maybe she'll carry on the tradition.

Here she is working on her kumihimo.....

and, the finished bracelet.....

 Here is a sample of some soaps we made.....

and lastly, her hand formed and stamped polymer clay heart...

hers is on the left!

I think all that activity tired her out; it's 7:30 and she just said goodnight!

Busy Weekend

Been busy making beads all weekend, but did have a chance to string a necklace with the blue torn water color beads from my last post.

I love pairing polymer clay with crystals {I used blue and clear with some white glass beads}.  I also made a pair of earrings to match.

I recently caught up on my viewing of the polymer clay tutorials from Cindy Lietz.  I think I found a new favorite technique.  Jasper stones come in many different colors; red, blue, green, tan and brown, to name a few.  Cindy's faux Jasper tutorial was very easy to follow and I think I made a dozen or so beads. 

Here are just a few waiting to be made into pendants or necklaces.

I love the shine I was able to get with my new Dremel 4000.  I have a grinder/buffer, but need some space to set it up.  This new dremel is electric {my old one was battery operated and didn't hold a charge too long}.  Mind you, the pads that come with the dremel don't work too well for shining polymer.  I happened to fine some cotton batting I bought years ago and cut some circles out and attached it to the dremel with one of the screws included with the set.  The batting is very soft and does such a good job, I may use this for my smaller pieces from now on. 

Til next time, stay safe and be happy.

New beads

We have our first show of 2013 coming up in March and I need some new inventory.  I make a lot of polymer clay pendants that we sell with cording {hence the kumihimo strands}, but  I decided I want to add to my necklace and earring sets.

I subscribe to polymer clay tutorials by Cindy Lietz @ http://www.beadvideos.com/ .  If you have any interest in trying polymer clay, her videos are very easy to follow and she makes everything sooo easy!  You can't beat the price either.  I also spend a lot of time searching through the internet for information on different techniques (you can find tons of free tutorials out there! - just google polymer clay}. 

While some of my favorite techniques are mica shift and mokume gane, I recently came across a tutorial for torn water color.  Now, I had seen this a while ago, but for some reason, didn't give it much thought or work.  Well.....I'm on a roll now.  I've been making different colored sheets to make into beads and have multiple colors in the works.

Here are some beads ready to go into the oven. {My two favorite colors!}

Here are a few already baked waiting for sanding...

  I just finished applying liquid wax to the blue beads...

I still have red, green, and yellow sheets to work on.  Once I complete a necklace/earring set, I'll take another picture and post it.

Til next time, stay safe and be happy!

More Kumihimo

For those repeat viewers, let me know what you think of the new look of my blog.  I felt I needed a change and wanted to lighten it up some.  

Been busy working on some more kumihimo strands for our show in March.  I've been lucky and  found several resources on the internet and have been experimenting with different patterns.

This is one of the patterns I found for a 20 strand.  I wanted to make a slightly thicker necklace and  used red, orange and yellow for the strand.  I probably should have used black for an accent, vs white, but I think this one turned out pretty good.  I figured it can be used alone or with a pendant.

Here are a few others made with different patterns.  You can see the pattern a little better in the orange one in this picture.  I'm almost done adding the hand wrapped clasps to all of the strands I made.

Below is a finished bracelet I made with our Baltimore Raven's colors.....just in time for the superbowl win!!!  Way to go team!!!!  This pattern matches the blue and silver one above.  You may be able to see the raised black strand a littler better in the bracelet, than the blue above.

Til next time, stay safe and be happy.