ABS December – from rockpool to snowscape

Tags

art bead, creature bead, DEC ABS, focal bead, handmade bead, pendant, polymer clay, snowscape, Wassily Kandinsky

I love my creature beads, but sometimes they can be real divas to work with! Take for example “Rockpool Creature”…

I made this bead at the end of summer, and I pictured colourful corals in tropical rockpools. As I was getting it ready for listing in my shop, it kept insisting it was in fact this month’s ABS inspiration painting – Winter Landscape by Wassily Kandinsky.

Winter Landscape by Wassily Kandinsky, 1909
Oil on cardboard 75.5 cm × 97.5 cm

You start to feel silly arguing with a bead, so I gave in 🙂 I wired the bead with the yellows on the horizon brightening to white cloud above like the landscape. I added some dark blue wire to represent the bare trees (I think some of the shapes came from “Cannons“). Then I added some crystals and pale blue and purple icicle dangles.

This bead did NOT want to be a necklace. I think it really wanted to be an ornament but, as parents do, I thought it should work for a living. So it became a pendant (for now).

I wish you a very MERRY CHRISTMAS, and a new year full of unexpected treasures.

Giveaway – no joke!

Tags

beads, black and white, earring, giveaway, giveaway prize, pendant, polymer clay, red, silly joke

**Edit – entries now closed**

In my previous post I asked you to vote on what prize you’d want for a giveaway. Believe it or not, these items are all related. I started off with the silly joke “What’s black and white and red all over?” *

So without futher ado here are the contestants…

In third place was “Pendant”.

In second place was “Beads”.

Which means “Earrings” got the most votes and will be the giveaway prize.

I’ve used my handmade polymer clay beads and red crystals on black coated copper wire. The ear-wires are black niobium so they are hypo-allergenic.

Leave a comment here to win. Leave another comment if you ‘Like’ my facebook page. I’ll choose a random winner from all comments left before midnight (GMT) 20 November 2013. (International folks welcome.)

I’ll try to announce the winner next Friday. Good luck 🙂

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* What is black and white and read all over? A newspaper.

Choose your prize

Tags

beads, black and white, bracelet, earrings, fulgorine, giveaway, pendant, red

I’ll be doing a giveaway soon! Thanks for all the encouraging comments on my previous post. The important question is what would you like to win?

1. A set of beads
2. A pendant
3. A pair of earrings

Let me know in the comments. If you want to have another say in the matter comment on my facebook page. Majority wins with a random selection as a tiebreaker. Voting closes midnight GMT on Wednesday, 13 November.

This bracelet is almost, but not quite, related to the giveaway 😉

Come back next Friday and I should be ready to post the giveaway.

From Summer sunshine to Autumn leaves

Tags

Autumn, beads, fire, necklace, orange, pendant, polymer clay, red, yellow

Back in May I decided to make a necklace using a pendant I had made with a yellow flower. At the time I had hardly any yellow beads so I specially ordered a sunshine mix of yellows and oranges. I ended up with a lot of leftover beads, so I decided to bead a necklace for my Fire Moon pendant.

Fire Moon pendant, polymer clay and glass nuggets by Cate van Alphen

My first attempt was a multi-strand necklace with a beaded toggle. There was nothing wrong with the necklace, but it just didn’t suit the pendant.

So I tried again including burgundy ribbon and silk yarn and I was happier with the result.

I still had the first attempt necklace which now demanded a pendant, so I made a sheet of mokume gane to match the colours of the beads. I made several pendants (some still unfinished) until I settled on a large barrel bead pendant.

unfinished pendants

Barrel bead necklace

What I find interesting is that now that it’s October those sunshiny Summer yellows look like fiery Autumn foliage. It just shows what a different perspective can do. Lately my glass has been half empty – I’m trying to see it full again.

ABS Challenge September

Tags

art bead, Autumn, beads, doughnut pendant, necklace, painting, pendant, polymer clay, SEP ABS, silk ribbon, silk yarn

This month’s Art Bead Scene challenge painting is Autumn by Alphonse Mucha. I made a hollow doughnut pendant using colours from the painting and a floral pattern to convey the bountiful atmosphere of the painting. Here is a video demo of me making the polymer clay pendant.

Autumn from “The Seasons (series)”, 1896
Alphonse Mucha
Oil on Panel

The first thing that caught my eye in the painting was her beautiful tendrils of red hair. I used a mix of red silk yarn, ombre silk ribbon and strands of beads to represent this and the maturing foliage.

Voilà – Autumn on a string. Or should a say many strings? 🙂

ABS May challenge

Tags

ABS May, ambrosius bosschaert, bead, flower, flower beads, handmade, necklace, pendant, polymer clay, seed beads, yellow

This month I have managed to be organised enough to complete an entry for the ABS monthly challenge in time. With a new baby I don’t have much time for making beads, but I thought the pendant I made previously was appropriate with its sunny yellow flower and the brass frame which echoes the window in the inspiration painting.

Vaas met bloemen in een venster / Vase with Flowers in a Window, 1620
Ambrosius Bosschaert the Elder
Oil on Copper, 64cm x 46 cm

I used brass coloured metal flower beads and multiple strands of mixed yellow seed beads to complete the necklace.

New improved doughnut recipe

Tags

doughnut, hollow, pendant, polymer clay, tutorial

This gallery contains 17 photos.

I have made some modifications to my original hollow doughnut tutorial which I think makes the process easier (and the …

Continue reading →

New year, new shop

Tags

bead, earring, new stuff, pendant, polymer clay, shop, stock

I have been working on a new and improved hollow doughnut recipe, but unfortunately part way through I realised that there is a flaw in my method. While I’m still working on that, I have decided to open a new online shop on Folksy. For the moment I will also keep my Zibbet shop open, but I’m not sure if I will be able to make enough stock to fill two shops when the baby arrives.

I still have more listings to add to both shops (I only get time to add a couple every day), but here’s some of the new stuff so far:

My first polymer

Tags

buttons, cane, gradient, kaleidoscope, pendant, polymer clay, reducing

I’ve just been invited to a new Flickr group, Your No.1, sharing the first things we made in polymer clay. I thought I’d show them here too. I started off fairly reasonably with something simple – buttons to match a multicoloured cardigan I was knitting.

Success! I managed to get the colours matching pretty well and they are not too mutant either (I did make a mold off an existing button to get them all consistent).

Then I got more ambitious and decided to make a complex kaleidoscope cane… less successfully.

The main error with this cane was that I didn’t cut the ends off after reducing. I added scrap to the ends which got sucked into the centre of the flower cane as it reduced so when I cut it to make the kaleidoscope repeat I ended up using bad cane throughout. (Also note the poor photo taken in direct sunlight).

This detail image shows more clearly the problem. There are supposed to be two flower canes surrounded by concentric circles mirrored along the yellow diagonal. The lower flower has a blob of scrap obscuring half of it and the top one has almost completely disappeared and is mysteriously much smaller.

I do like the colours in this one so perhaps I should see if I can make something similar again. Hopefully my skills have improved a bit since 2009.

Bead Soup Sent

Tags

bead, Bead Soup Blog Party, focal bead, mokume gane, painting, pendant, polymer clay, wire toggle

The Bead Soup I sent to my partner Dorota has arrived safely in Poland. Here is a look at what I sent.

I made all the beads in polymer clay, and the toggles from wire. At the back are some green wire beads which started out as contrasting components to the polymer beads, but I couldn’t stop making and with the addition of a clasp it became a bracelet.

In other news I have started a new group on Flickr for Polymer clay painting. This is for polymer clay being used as a painting medium (not polymer clay that has been painted). This is following the fun I had doing my Latvia painting using polymer clay. I’d like to do more paintings, and at the moment it takes a bit of looking to find other examples of artists painting with polymer clay.