Polymer clay challenge week 15 – toggle

Tags

2015PCchallenge, Cate van Alphen, handmade bead, mosaic, polymer clay, retro, toggle, yellow

This week I’m slightly early for my Polymer Clay Challenge piece because it’s nearly time to start the next colour – green. I made toggles this week. I kept it fairly simple because I knew I didn’t have much time to work on it. I wanted to make something to go with my retro beads.

Yellow focal toggle by Cate van Alphen

I used the cut and replace technique from Anke Humpert’s class on the Virtual Retreat. It’s the same on both sides, but I think it would be interesting to try contrasting colours on the reverse.

Mosaic focal toggle by Cate van Alphen

The mosaic focal toggle happened by accident because my on my first attempt the clay was a bit thin. Adding shards of polymer clay helped add some thickness and I like the look of it too 🙂

Now you can find it in my Etsy shop.

Spring snow

Tags

Cate van Alphen, inchies, polymer clay, swap, virtual retreat

With the sun making a spring appearance, I thought I’d better show my snowflake inchies before they melt. I had been waiting for them all to arrive with my swap buddies, but I’ll put the last one down to an exotic postal system and show the rest now.

Snowflake inchies by Cate van Alphen

I made these polymer clay snowflake inchies for the Virtual Retreat January swap.

Inchies from Carole Klinko, Claire Fabian, Eva Eriksen and Tina Struck (left to right)

Here are the inchies I received in return. Thank you ladies for your lovely artwork and all the extras you sent with them 🙂

Orange kaleidoscope canes

Tags

kaleidoscope, kaleidoscope cane, polymer clay, polymer clay cane, virtual retreat

This week I have been inspired to make some polymer clay kaleidoscope canes by Teresa Pandora Salgado’s class on the Virtual Retreat.

I’m surprised I don’t make more canes since this is what originally got me hooked on polymer clay. I’m pleased with how these came out – I think the patterns look like designs from antique biscuit tins.

Polymer clay canes by Cate van Alphen

Unfortunately as I was a bit impatient with mixing colours and blends I didn’t end up with as much cane as I’d like, so I don’t know if I will get to try scayning (sculpting + caning) with these. I’m planning to use these in toggles for my 2015 Polymer Clay Challenge so I want to focus on the engineering of that without the added dimension of petals.

I can picture some fantastic focal pendants though… [Insert more TIME here!]

Polymer clay challenge – week 2

Tags

2015PCchallenge, bead, bracelet, brown, handmade beads, orange, polymer clay, red, retro

My orange colour palette includes orange and chocolate brown which is a colour combination that screams “retro” at me. So for this week I used one of  the techniques from Syndee Holt’s class in the Virtual Retreat.

See the black bracelet with wasabi and cerise dots on square tiles (bottom left)? Retro – right?

I made little polymer clay tile beads featuring central dots of contrasting colours. The beads have two parallel holes and a flat back so they would be ideal for use in a bracelet.

 

I couldn’t resist doing several colour combinations…

I’m not sure that the red beads play very nicely with the others though.

What do you think – is the red too loud or does it add a nice bit of pep?

Something to look forward to

Tags

art, mixed media, polymer clay, Polymer Clay Adventure, virtual retreat

I’m really excited to have signed up for the Polymer Clay Adventure Virtual Retreat. Just have a look at the awesome selection of teachers (and click on the links to see what they’ll be teaching)!

BUT it only officially starts 1 January 2015, so there are a few sleeps to go. But now, as the year speeds by so quickly I barely have time to notice it, it’s a good thing 😉