Polymer clay challenge week 36 – beads

Tags

2015PCchallenge, bead, bracelet, handmade bead, Indigo, polymer clay, wire

This week of my Polymer Clay Challenge it’s indigo beads so, technically, here is the bead I made. It’s a bit boring, but there is a little bit more to the story…

Polymer clay bead by Cate van Alphen

I wanted to make some compound beads to go with my compound focal from last week. I started off making a few test beads, which looked perfect for a bracelet. So I whipped up a toggle so I could finish that.

Polymer clay and lapis lazuli bracelet by Cate van Alphen

I made compound beads by joining my double-sided disk beads together with liquid polymer clay onto wire. I’m still fascinated by the way the colours hide depending on the angle of the bead. These are now part of a half-made necklace. I need some more spacer beads to finish it, but I haven’t been able to make them yet.

Indigo stack beads by Cate van Alphen

I didn’t think sticking beads together with liquid polymer counted much towards the challenge, and I’d run out of time, but I still had the clay from the hole of the toggle. I pierced a hole and shaped the sides slightly, so I have officially made one bead for the challenge this week!

Polymer clay and wire toggle by Cate van Alphen

Big box, little box

Tags

art charm, Art Charm Swap, moving house, wire

Where have I been this summer?

At the start of July we began buying a house, with an expected completion date sometime in August. So we enthusiastically began packing up our stuff, including all my beads. By September (when the solicitors were NEARLY finished doing their checks) my husband was made redundant. It looks like he will be getting a new job imminently, so things will be staying in their boxes while we plan our next move.

I did at least unpack my wire so that I could complete my charms for Jen Cameron’s Art Charm swap. Here they are all ready to cross the Atlantic:

But what’s inside?

Aha! For that you will need to come back on the 14th November 2014. See you then.

Earrings are like a box of chocolates

Tags

beads, colour, ear-wire, earrings, fulgorine, lampwork beads, pink wire, shop, tassel, wire, wire wrap, yellow beads

I have been making a lot of earrings lately. I have a tiny window of time in the evenings after baby has gone to sleep (IF she goes to sleep quickly) and it is really satisfying to be able to complete a project in that time. I have discovered that making earrings is like a box of chocolates – you never know what you’re going to get, and you can’t stop after one. I’ll show you what I mean with some (clumsily) edited images as I didn’t take photos along the way.

First I made a pair of earrings using lampwork beads on dark pink coloured wire. I framed the focal beads with baby pink seed beads, which I also added to a pink niobium ear-wire. I love using niobium ear-wires because they come in different colours and they have the bonus of being hypo-allergenic.

This time the colour of the niobium ear-wire worried me as it didn’t quite match the wire I had used to wrap the beads – it was more of a dusty purple pink and looked a bit dull in comparison to the wire. As there were touches of silver visible in the lampwork bead I changed the ear-wires to titanium.

I liked the combination of the pink seed beads with a pair of white beads that had orange and yellow speckles. I decided if I was adding pink, I’d really pink it up, so I used super bright pink wire. I had planned to frame the focal bead with the pink seed beads, but while I was wrapping the beads I decided that the yellow beads looked better on the pink wire. I added a tassel of bead charms (including pink) to the bottom of the earrings to link with the pink beads on the ear-wires.

Now the pink beads didn’t look right on the ear-wires since I had framed the focal beads with yellow beads. Therefore I made some new ear-wires with yellow beads on instead.

The dusty pink colour of the ear-wire still didn’t look right to me so I changed the ear-wires again. This time I used purple ear-wires (the brightness levels matched) with a coil of the pink wire I had used to wrap the beads.

Now if you’ve been keeping track you will realise I had two pairs of unused pink ear-wires (one with pink beads and another with yellow). So I made another two pairs of earrings…

The tassel on the long earrings went through a few iterations before I was happy, but the earrings with the yellow, purple and clear rectangle came together on the first try. And that’s how one pair of earrings became four.

Here are some of the other earrings I am in the process of listing in my shops – Zibbet (listings are in USD) and Folksy (listings are in GBP).

Green Lentils

Tags

bead, bracelet, green, lentil bead, lentil beads, polymer clay, ruffles, scarf, swirl, turquoise, wire

Recently I made this bracelet of green polymer clay lentil beads to match a ruffled scarf I had knitted. It’s really quite satisfying to be able to make beads that exactly match the colour you want.

For tips on drilling lentil beads and links to tutorials, see my earlier post.

June ABS Challenge and Frida Kahlo

Tags

52 earrings, earrings, miscarriage, pendant, polymer clay, spiral, van alphen, wire

Again this month’s ABS challenge piece cross-pollinated with this week’s 52 Earrings theme – Frida Kahlo. When she was young Frida was in a tram crash which left her in constant pain and unable to have children. This particularly affected me as last weekend I had a miscarriage myself – I was only 8 weeks pregnant so it was not as bad as Frida’s experience, but it did mean when I saw this month’s inspiration piece I saw emptiness and loneliness.

ABS inspiration painting
“Nighthawks” (1942) by Edward Hopper

“Henry Ford Hospital” (1932) by Frida Kahlo

The focal bead is polymer clay inspired by the architecture of the curved diner window and the view through the window to the street behind. It is open and empty. The wire spirals are links of DNA chains – broken and missing. The ribbon is blood.

“Gone” by Cate van Alphen

Matching earrings

I didn’t actually want a memento of the miscarriage, but this is what came to me. “Playing with polymer” (as I call it) is keeping me distracted, so I’m not about to tell the muse to go away and come back with something better. Perhaps when I am ready, I will dismantle it.

80s Remake

Tags

52 earrings, 80s, bead, earring, polymer clay, wire

If Hollywood can do it, so can I… For this week’s 52 Earrings challenge I have remade a pair of earrings I originally made for an 80s fancy dress party. I made the earrings to co-ordinate with a top I had, and while I was pleased with the pattern on the oversized disks the design had a major flaw which I only noticed when I saw pictures of the party…

The disks were attached to the earwires with thread through a loop of black seed beads and a pink polymer bead. The problem was that they kept rotating and facing the wrong way.

My solution was to make a new disk with an earing post embedded in it and link the two with wire. Hopefully this will prevent the 360° rotation.

I actually started this remake back in week 14 (it’s now week 22) with pink dots and wire, which really didn’t work for these earrings at all and became a separate pair. It’s taken me this long to get black wire and try again.

Charming: Making weakness an asset

Tags

beads, glass charms, orphan bead, polymer clay, stemmed glass, unique, wine charm, wine glass charm, wire, zibbet

I have a real problem with production work – I start off intending to make 50 beads for a necklace and after I have made 4 or so I get bored and start to wonder what they would look like as cubes or with yellow polka dots. This results in a lot of orphan beads which, until now, I haven’t known quite what to do with.

Recognizing my weakness I tried to think where one-off unique beads would be an asset rather than something slightly awkward, and it came to me – wine glass charms! The whole point of them is that each one should be different. Suddenly it felt like my wayward sons, whom I love dearly, but just didn’t know what to do with anymore, had gone off to the colonies and made good (I have been watching a lot of period drama recently!).

Making these got rather addictive, so now I have a shiny new Wine Charm section in my Zibbet shop.

Cheers!

Bead Side Salad Reveal

Tags

52 earrings, bead salad, beads, earring, lampwork beads, necklace, polymer clay, polymer clay beads, wire

I set myself a challenge to use beads my mom had given me and post my results on 3 March. I wanted to achieve two things: firstly to make something with a definite focal, and secondly to have an interesting clasp. This is what I started out with:

I made a pair of simple earrings by way of a warm up and as part of my 52 earrings challenge.

Next I decided to focus on the focal. I stacked the two lampwork beads together, and gave them a belt of silver glass beads around the middle. I had a vague idea of making it into a sort of tassel pendant, but it lacked punch. So I framed this with the two large oval beads with the idea of making it into a bracelet. I used wire to make a rigid curved oval and had a chain running from each corner. Now while I loved the focal this proved hopeless as a bracelet – the weight of the glass beads meant it instantly slipped to the underside of the wrist when worn.

So off with the chain, and because I am moving house* I discovered an old (broken) hair clip while unpacking. The broken hair clip was a kind of filigree nest to go over a bun with a stick to hold it in place. Some of the filigree had broken off from the nest but the stick was still fine and matched beautifully – magically my failed bracelet focal was the perfect hair clip.

After this success I knew I wanted to make a pair of matching earrings. While making the hair clip I hadn’t had a clear picture of what I wanted to do and it had almost seemed to make itself, the opposite was true for the earrings. I knew exactly what I wanted (i.e. Art Deco Chinoiserie Lace) and it took many iterations of making, undoing and remaking to get something like what I had in mind. (There were many variations that looked like dreadlocks or spider’s legs!) I ended up making polymer clay beads to match the black oval ones in the hair clip and actually only ended up using the red beads from the original bead salad.

My next challenge was to make a pretty clasp. It would have been easier to make a toggle using polymer clay, but I was determined to use some of the salad beads. Again I struggled with this for a while until the coloured wire I had ordered arrived. Suddenly by using pink wire the green bead and wire toggle was pretty, the lampwork beads with pink flowers suddenly matched and their black cores made a link to the lava beads.

And my baby daughter thinks the toggle is delicious!

---

*Moving house is also why these pictures are poor – I haven’t got my usual photography setup available (it’s 300 miles away).