I remembered forget-me-nots

Tags

earrings, flower cane, forget me not, polymer clay, soutache

I remembered to make some forget-me-not jewellery for the window display at Craftworkshop. I made a flower cane inspired by Ivy Niles’s class on Polymer Clay Adventure.

I made the background using transparent clay so that I could add the flowers to different coloured backgrounds. It worked pretty well on the plain blue polymer clay.

Forget-me-not earrings by Cate van Alphen

However it did cause a mica shift effect on pearl clay which is more visible from certain angles. It was a bit unexpected but I don’t think it’s necessarily bad as it gives the flowers a little halo.

Forget-me-not earrings by Cate van Alphen

Unlike this…

This bookmark was one of the first things I made back in 2009 and I’ve been avoiding translucent clay ever since! Putting aside the confused design of flowers and stars together, there’s a long list of things I did wrong here. I cut my cane slices too thick and then squished the sheet through the pasta machine to try and flatten it, so everything got distorted. I don’t think the plaquing was entirely my fault (beyond the thick slices) but more to do with the fact that I used pre-formula-change Fimo. I used Pardo for my new forget-me-not cane. Anyway it’s quite encouraging to look back at old work and think: “Yuck, I can do better!”.

I also made a pair of faux soutache earrings inspired by Jana Murinova’s tutorial (again on Polymer Clay Adventure).

Faux soutache earrings by Cate van Alphen

Polymer clay challenge week 40 – bead

Tags

2015PCchallenge, beads, flower cane, lavender, polymer clay

For this week of my 2015 Polymer Clay Challenge, I made beads using my violet colour palette. I reduced and mirrored my flower cane to form a pattern like you’d find on fabric.

Floral fold beads by Cate van Alphen

I made fold beads. They are smaller than I’ve made previously because I wanted to keep them under an inch, so they don’t become focals.

Floral fold beads by Cate van Alphen

I also made some triangular pillow bead headpins. I even sanded the fronts! Unfortunately the sanding rubbed off some of the silver coating on the copper wire, but as long as I add a bead or wrap the top I think they’ll be ok.

Polymer clay headpins by Cate van Alphen

Of course I couldn’t decide if the triangles should point up or down, so I made some of each.

Triangle pin pair by Cate van Alphen

The backing colour is the colour I mixed from the cane ends. It’s not strictly in the palette, but I thought it was pretty. It makes me think of lavender soap.

Polymer clay headpins by Cate van Alphen

Polymer clay challenge week 39 – focal

Tags

2015PCchallenge, flower cane, focal bead, polymer clay, purple, violet

I have now finished my polymer clay focal beads for week 39 of my Spectrum Year (see the WIP in my previous post). The beads are thick slices of stylised flower cane. I drilled two parallel holes so they could either be used double stranded in something like a bracelet, or if only one hole was used for a necklace it would be off centre so the beads would not flip over.

Flower cane bead by Cate van Alphen

They are a bit clumsy in comparison to what I had imagined. My slicing is still not very accurate – the lines framing the picture are wobbly and the bead slices themselves are not very straight or even. I think I could do with a cane slicer 😉

Flower cane beads by Cate van Alphen

I suspect they would be improved with some sanding, but it will probably be ages before I get round to doing that. They are an inch square so they count as focal beads by my definition 🙂

Polymer clay focal bead by Cate van Alphen

P.S. The flower background is actually pale dove grey, not just poorly exposed photography.

Polymer clay challenge week 39 – WIP

Tags

2015PCchallenge, flower cane, fold bead, headpin, polymer clay

I’ve had to settle for a work in progress this week of my Polymer Clay Challenge. I was supposed to be making a focal using my new violet colour palette, but I got a bit waylaid.

Cat Therien’s frangipani cane

Every time I start a new colour palette, I think I should make a cane that I can use throughout the weeks that follow, but I’ve never managed to do it. After watching Cat Therien’s frangipani cane tutorial on the Virtual Retreat, I was REALLY itchy to make a flower cane.

I decided to start by mixing up decent quantities of polymer clay, since it’s really annoying to run out of a colour part way through a cane. Then I realised my work board was pretty clogged up with sheets of veneer from previous palettes and other scraps of clay. So I decided to use up some of the left overs.

Indigo mokume gane beads by Cate van Alphen

I made fold beads, and pillowed headpins. There are still some pieces of green kaleidoscope veneer that I haven’t used yet, and I want to do some sanding to finish them off.

Blue kaleidoscope cane headpins by Cate van Alphen

Finally I started to measure out my colours and when I got to the last one, magenta, I discovered that I didn’t have a lot of it left. This was a bit of a problem since all the colours in the palette use it (yes even the grey green)! I had to start the colour measuring all over again to make smaller quantities (I decided to keep the larger quantities I had already measured aside to finish when my new magenta polymer clay arrives). In the end, I managed to mix a little of each colour, but by this point I only had time to make two petals for my flower cane.

Flower cane WIP

So although I have made some things with polymer clay this week, my official target is still a WIP.