Blue summer pendant

Tags

blue, pendant, polymer clay, virtual retreat

It’s been a while since I last wrote a blog. I have been making things, but I have also been doing some rearranging (my time, my room and my photography), so it hasn’t filtered through to the blog yet. The Art Fair went well, so I have been making more jewellery featuring my Spectrum Palettes. Here’s a pendant I made in my Blue colours.

The design is from a tutorial on the 2017 Polymer Clay Adventure by Elena Marunich. It’s pretty big so it’s quite a statement piece.

I have been experimenting with different backgrounds in my photos (trying both more texture and pure white product shots). You can see more examples of my experiments on my Patreon post.

Easter Egg 2017

Tags

Easter Egg, fairy garden, mushroom house, polymer clay

Every year I try to make some (or one) polymer clay easter eggs. I started this one on Good Friday and I finished on Easter Monday.

Really? It took that much time? It looks pretty simple to me. Yes indeed! But inside there’s a…

…tiny Fairy Garden. The lid is lined with purple velvet and studded with little silver beads to look like the night sky. Irritatingly I had to do this twice because the first time the velvet was too thick and the lid wouldn’t close. Luckily I found out before the glue had fully dried.

The idea was inspired by Lisa Loria’s Fairy Garden Ring tutorial on Polymer Clay Adventure. As you can see I got pretty carried away with the detail.

Here’s a picture to give some scale. The whole egg is about the size of a hen’s egg.

Before I forget

Tags

art bead, cabochon, earrings, mica powder, polymer clay

I made another pair of forget-me-not earrings that I kept aside for a separate blog. And here’s why…

Forget-me-not earrings by Cate van Alphen

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I have made a Patreon page. It’s a site for creators to find sponsors in order to spend more energy on creating and less time worrying about how to pay the bills. As part of making my page I clarified some goals for myself: I want to use more art beads (made by other artists) and I want to make more tutorials.

I planned for the earrings above to incorporate both goals. I’ve got the art beads: I made the ivory coloured floral disks from polymer clay and the blue ceramic beads are by Jenny Gholson-Morris. But the tutorial part: not so much.

Making a video tutorial is proving more time-consuming than anticipated – I’m struggling to get footage that is in shot and in focus. Oh, right! This is why I set up the Patreon page in the first place – because at the moment I haven’t got much time for figuring this out. So until I can make a full tutorial, here’s a little tip.

Faux concrete cabochon by Cate van Alphen

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I made this cabochon as a way to use up the scraps from making carved beads. The muse wanted a matt concrete effect. My logical brain tells me this is to contrast with the shiny fragments. I wanted something more interesting so I drew in some scrolls and dots. I thought it still needed some subtle pep so I mixed green iridescent mica powder with a drop of water to paint into the dents. This caused the water (and mica) to puddle in the indentations and not all over the surface of the piece. I did the same thing for the petals of the flowers on the earrings.

I used Perfect Pearls for this technique as it has a built-in resin and I painted it onto uncured polymer clay. It didn’t seem to stick as well when painted onto baked clay.

By the way, if you would like to sponsor me, you can start from $1 a month and change your mind any time you like.

 

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

New vessel – Interconnectedness

Tags

ArtVessel, flower, pen jar, polymer clay, pretty, white poppy

Here is my latest vessel. I made it as a birthday gift, so I had to wait before showing it on my blog. It’s a large glass jar covered with mixed media, decorated with polymer clay, intended to be used for storing pens.

Interconnectedness by Cate van Alphen

I don’t always have a title for my work, but while I was making this the phrase “the interconnectedness of all things” kept repeating in my head. I wasn’t even watching Dirk Gently at the time.

I’ve included a few of my white poppies in the design. And the pink flowers are just for prettiness (and to add a some colour).

Wire crochet earrings

Tags

earrings, giveaway, jewellery, polymer clay, wire crochet

This year I signed up for the Polymer Clay Adventure. I’m generally not very good at following a tutorial literally, but I thought this year it would be a good exercise to try a run through at least once.

The first tutorial I had a go at was a combination of polymer clay beads (by Kira Slye) and wire crochet (by Yoola). I almost managed to make something similar.

Earrings by Cate van Alphen

I used carved beads (from another of the retreat tutorials) for these earrings. I didn’t have gold hooks so I made some spirals that I attached to steel studs. I thought the focal beads were a bit too chunky so I added another bead to give the earrings more length.

I also made a pendant with a stamp textured bead. When I made this bead I thought the edges were a bit fat so I pinched them and added a slight wave. Some of the purple coating had cracked off the wire by the time I worked the bottom row, but I thought it picked up the gold mica on the bead quite nicely so I still used it.

I made another pair of carved beads, this time in silver, since I thought the first ones were a bit fat. I included some black beads in the wire crochet but they are a bit too similar to the bead colour and don’t really stand out.

By the time I got to the next silver carved bead my fingers were objecting to the crochet (I think my wire is too hard) so I decided to weave a little cap instead. I also scribbled in some scratches. This is purely for textural effect and is in no way related to the fact that the bead got scratched while I was working on the wire weaving. 😉

I also made a pair of purple beads similar to Kira’s, but I haven’t yet decided what to do with them.

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Giveaway

If you’d like any (or all) of the pendants and you are willing to pay for the postage*, pop a comment here on my blog before the end of January. If more than one person wants a pendant I’ll do a random selection.

*Shipping is from England (95p to UK, £3.15 to US addresses).

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Last vessel of 2016, probably finished

Tags

ArtVessel, frog, nature, polymer clay, vase, white poppy

I decided to spend the time between Christmas and New Year tidying up my studio in preparation for new projects. After a couple of days I couldn’t stand the accusing stare from the glass cabochons of my unfinished vessel, so I decided that finishing off a project counted as tidying. I was determined to finish it before the new year.

Frogs and Flowers Vase by Cate van Alphen

I started this vessel back in June where it stalled until October. After several days’ work and a few days into 2017 I think I’m finally finished, or maybe I’ve just had enough. Because I spent a long time on this project, here is a proportional number of photographs.

Frogs and Flowers Vase by Cate van Alphen

Frogs and Flowers Vase by Cate van Alphen

Frogs and Flowers Vase by Cate van Alphen

Here is a photograph of the effect I was aiming for.

I wanted to suggest a rich ecosystem of plants and creatures, although not literally current earth species. I’m not looking at it too closely in case I find more bald spots that need filling. I haven’t decided yet if I should antique it or not (currently I quite like the bright colours of the polymer clay).

As you can see from the detail shot above, I included a leftover white poppy (and made a few more), and some little frogs like the ones I made for the Art Charm Swap.

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Looking back at 2016

Tags

2016PCchallenge, ArtVessel, polymer clay

For 2016 I challenged myself to make a vessel each week. This did not go according to plan, as you can see by the 19 (not 52) thumbnails below.

The first problem was that it often took more than one week to complete a project and it began to feel like a failure if I didn’t manage to finish in time for my blog post. The longer a project took to finish, the harder it was to continue working on it. I still have an incomplete vase/sculpture looming at me from the shelf.

Grotto Bottle WIP by Cate van Alphen

Another problem I had was that my definition was quite broad so it took me some time each week to decide what to work on. (As opposed to my successful 2015 challenge where each week was more defined e.g. week 10 – yellow beads).

My definition of a vessel includes anything rigid you can put something into; so in addition to the obvious bowls, bottles and vases I hope to include decorative boxes, miniature teapots, inros, lockets or even poison rings.

Finally, I chose the challenge because it was difficult. I have a collection of glass jars that I hoard because it seems a shame to throw them away, but I never seem to get round to decorating them. I had hoped that after forcing myself to make a few it would become easier and enjoyable. After all, back in 2012 making earrings was pretty terrifying but I joined in with the 52 Earrings challenge and I have since made hundreds of earrings. Unfortunately for the amount of time I have to clay at the moment this was just too far out of my comfort zone, and I ended up not making anything at all.

One thing I was really pleased about making this year was another polymer clay painting.

“The Road Home” by Cate van Alphen

 It is a 10cm x 10cm tile that I  made for the FIMO 50 World Project which brought together work by hundreds of artists from around the world. Unfortunately I wasn’t able to see the real thing, but I think I can spot my painting there on the globe.

Christmas ornament 2016

Tags

2016PCchallenge, christmas ornament, ornament, polymer clay, yule

I’ve had disappointingly little time for polymer clay recently, but I have managed to make an ornament for Christmas. I started off with a ready-made paper mache egg that I painted with gold acrylic paint and decorated with polymer clay and crystals.

You may be wondering why I have made a tree in a bushfire, but that’s not entirely what I was thinking. I wanted to make something that was specific to Christmas without the common images that you buy in the shops, so I tried to think on a more elemental level.

Firstly I think all the sparkles and lights at Christmas are to remind us that even though it’s mid-winter the summer sun will come back again. So I made my egg gold because the solstice is about the sun.

On the base of the egg I have made the sun from polymer clay. It’s on the base of the egg to show that the sun is on the other side of the world bringing summer to the Southern Hemisphere. I grew up in South Africa, and I still have family there so I think about this every year.

The tree has no leaves to show it’s winter.

The crystals represent snow (because it’s winter), and the stars in the sky on the longest night. They are also there because I believe that at Christmas you can never have enough bling.

Unfortunately the crystals I used are not very good quality. I do have better ones, but I couldn’t find them. I think I imagined the egg made from real gold and diamonds, but I haven’t got the skills or budget to make it that way (this year  😉 ).

Polymer clay challenge – week 45

Tags

2016PCchallenge, earrings, flower power, polymer clay, vintage

I have been a little waylaid from my polymer clay so I’ve pretty much lost track of the 2016 Polymer Clay Challenge. Since it has been a while since I last blogged, here is some of the jewellery I recently made inspired by the broken teacup I previously wrote about.

Long shard earrings by Cate van Alphen

Teacup shard pendant by Cate van Alphen

I finished some earrings and a pendant using the shards I wrote about in week 36.

Flower earrings by Cate van Alphen

I also made some earrings to go with the necklace that I made in week 38 using canes inspired by the flower power pattern on the vintage teacup.

And since I had some canes already made, I made more earrings.