Halloween Pumpkins

Tags

Halloween, jack-o-lantern, lantern, mixed media, polymer clay, pumpkin

I’m not a massive fan of Halloween (I don’t like the idea of teaching kids to ask for sweeties), but my children are. Last year my daughter insisted on keeping a small squash on her windowsill until it decayed. This year, after months of nagging, I decided to make something more permanent from polymer clay.

They are hollow led tea light holders with jack-o-lantern faces. I used sketches by the children as inspiration. I tried to keep the lively wobbles from the drawings but I did need to make the edges a bit more simple.

These are mixed media. I started with a layer of gum tape paper mache, foil armatures to build up the bulges on the pumpkin, plaster bandages to give a rigid surface and finally an outer layer of polymer clay.

These took about three days to make, with drying times, and figuring out how to make the lids. Maybe by next Halloween I’ll have made a tutorial to share with you.

Just to make them extra cheesy, I used glow-in-the-dark polymer clay to outline the features.

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I finished a… thing

Tags

abstract art, bead, freeform beading, handmade, mixed media, polymer clay

A few years ago I made a Bead Habitat. You may have noticed that all the pictures are fairly tightly cropped. This is because I hadn’t finished the edges.

I had intended to frame it as a picture to go on the wall, but my mother objected, saying that it was too tactile for that and needed to be explored closely rather than hung from a wall. After that it got buried under all the debris on my beading table.

As part of my recent tidying, I came across it again, and decided to finish it. I’ve done a bead edging and a backing fabric to hide my workings. I had to try really hard not to embellish the back too!

I’m not entirely sure what it is. It’s a kind of sculptural, 3D painting, abstract, mini landscape, ornament… thing. It’s purely decorative and quite small, so I’m thinking of it as “coffee table jewellery”.

It’s a mixed media piece including some of my polymer clay beads and components, silk covered wire, embroidery and glass beads on fabric.

Let me know what you think it is. Sometimes feel that I don’t make these things, I’m just there when it happens. 🙂

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 😉