What a wonderful start to the New Year

I woke up this morning, and is my habit, I checked my emails first thing.  There were sure a lot of them. And they were not all spam for once.  I started reading those from my friends and guildies, and OMG! ... could what they are saying be true??? I hoped over to PCD and there they were. I had made earrings using a tut written by Christi at River Valley Designs and they were featured on Cynthia's post today!  She also gave a shout out to all who participated in weekly challenges this past year. And a link to the 52 earrings in a year Flickr group. If you like earrings, check it out.  So many talented people contributed ... it is chalked full of inspiration.

   I am still in a mild state of disbelief.

   It is rather a coincidence that this should happen today as I fell asleep last night reading about Cynthia in the latest PC book to hit the stands, "Polymer Clay Master Class".   Maybe I am still dreaming .... 

 

  Polymer every week

by CYNTHIA TINAPPLE on JANUARY 2, 2013

You can sense both the relief and the pride in the end-of-year posts from polymer artists who persisted through one of the 52-week challenges. These Rocky Path earrings are from JuLee Wolfe who chronicles her challenge on Pinterest. Here’s more of her work on Flickr.

Hats off to those who completed the difficult task of producing and uploading new artwork each week in 2012. You can see how their skills got better and how concepts were refined and rethought as the work progressed. They are an inspiration to the rest of us as we launch into a new year with high hopes of improving our art.

Here’s the earring group’s page. A new Brooch-A-Day group is forming here. Let me know if you know of other challenges starting up.

Goal Accomplished (kinda)

I had made a resolution at the start of last year to write something in my blog at least once a week.  To facilitate that goal, I joined the Flickr Group "52 Earrings in one Year" started by Anke Humpert of Anart Island Studios.  While did not  accomplish the goal of posting every week ... I sorta did it in clumps.... I feel good that I finished all 52 pairs by December 31st.
   I just realized it has been a whole month since my last post ... whoa, really ... what the heck was I doing all that time"  No new beads to speak of ... my shoulders are the latest part of my body to start to go.  Cranking the pasta machine is right out for now, at least till my physical therapy starts to show better results. I did get a change to dig around in my stash and find some beads I made earlier this year that I worked up in the last few weeks
  So, tonight I posted my last earring pairs to the group.  I had a lot of fun doing it and got a ton of inspiration from the others who posted to this Flickr group.  I discovered new artists  (not just polymer)  and blogs to follow.  Started pinning a lot at Pinterest.  I can (and have) spend hours there just jumping from one board to another - talk about inspiration!.
    Here are the last 4 earrings from the Challenge.
    The first pair of beads I made up were made from the Texture Tut I got from Lydia at Diva Designs.  They are named after Bette Davis ... the bumps remind me of her famous line  "Fasten your seat belts, it's going to be a bumpy ride".

Bette Dee 

 These beads were made by coloring a base white bead with Pan Pastel Chalks. I made a whole set of these to make into a necklace, but haven't got around to that yet.

JW Patches

 Several of the blogs that I visited off the Flickr earring group do asymmetrical challenges. It is hard for my scientific mind to let go and not strive for absolute symmetry.  This is my attempt at it. It really bothers me that they are not the same length.  This is something that I hope to overcome.  I am currently working on an asymmetrical necklace to help this process along.

1 Pod ... 2 Peas

 My last pair for this challenge were made with a short band of scrap clay left over from another project. It was too colorful to wad up and use as bead guts .. there is no such thing as wasted clay

The Golden Band

Next post will hopefully be my further trials with asymmetry.

Where did the year go??

 As usual, I am running behind posting my projects.  I'll blame it on the holidays this time, and the Artisan show.  After all there is nothing wrong with ME...

It is hard to believe that it is almost December. This year just flew by.  Isn't it strange how time speeds up the older one gets?  I remember as a child, how impatient I was waiting for Christmas.  Seemed like it would never arrive.  Now I just turn around, and it is almost upon us.
   And speaking of remembering my childhood, I found these dragonfly beads at the Blue Iris going out of business sale (heavy sigh).  They remind me swimming in the lake near the home I grew up in. Dragonflies were everywhere.  I would lay on the raft a short distance from the shore and watch them hovering over the water.  I was fascinated even then. The earrings I made from these beads are week 48 of the 52 earrings project.

Lakeside Dream Earrings

   As mentioned several posts ago, I purchased River Valley's wonderful Rocky Path tut.  I have been having a lot of fun trying different color combos.  One important tip I must pass on, if you are considering the tut or already have it ... it really pays to follow the directions.  I thought I would try a different texture than the one recommended.  After all, it looked *almost* the same.  While I don't totally dislike the results, they don't have the depth that can be achieved if the right texture is used, as you can see.

Following instructions 

Going down the wrong path

I have also been spending time reorganizing my studio (gasp!).  I would be a top contender for the messy studio award. I do love the surprises that come with the periodic cleaning.  I find beads that I made a last year or the year before that, that I totally forgot about.  It is like receiving an early birthday gift.  So I made these beads (only two of each so I MUST have been thinking earrings when I made them) into earrings for the 52 earrings project.

    

Going Green

Week 46 were made with the only pair of green beads I made using the texture tutorial from Lynda at Diva Designs.  I don't remember if I added mica powder to the clay. I kinda looks like I did.  I have started to write stuff in a journal now, so that I can refer back.  Amazing how long it took me to figure out that this was a good idea.

    Week 47 earrings ...  I vaguely remember these. I was experimenting with adding inclusions to clay.  These are spacers attached to the base bead with little balls of clay. I have no idea why I abandoned this line of clay play. I will have to work more with this idea.

  

Round Peg,  Round Hole

   

Artisan Show Finds

As usual, I spent more than I made at our annual Artisan's Show.  This year it was so hard not to buy out the shop... there were so many lovely and unique pieces to be drooled over.

The first pieces I am going to share are ones I found at  my NWPCG mate Nan's booth.  She made some very eclectic pieces that really fit into my wild side. So hard to choose, so I got several pairs.

Feed the wild side as much as possible

Dawn Grey  came to our Clay Camp last May and it was one of her first experiences with this wonderful medium.  She is really blooming, and is very creative. I couldn't resist this piece. She incorporated a real shell into this lovely seaside homage.  Dawn told me the shell was grey until she put the resin on it, and then the colors just popped.

Keep Clam.

Laura of Bauble d'art was also new to our show.  She makes lovely jewelery from glass beads rather than polymer, but we don't hold that against her (LOL).  I fell in love with these beads and just had to have them. She thinks she has a focal at home, so I am hoping that I will get a necklace to match.

It was sooooo hard to decide which work of nature I wanted from Blessings in Nature.  Kyndahl has developed a techique that showcases flora and fona and all that is beautiful in nature. I finally decided that I wanted something really unique, so chose this gorgeous pendant.  Can you guess what the material she used was? If you like this piece, she has just opened an Etsy shop Blessings in Nature.  

Did you guess that I was
Snake Skin?

Julia Wolf Miller of White Dog Studio is a wonderful Glass fusing artist.  She painstaking draws out these beautiful designs with tiny pieces of glass called frit. She says many of her pieces go through 4 to 5 firings.  This delightful fellow is one of her Bird Totem Series.  He makes me smile.

Pardon my fingers. I wanted you

all to see how pretty he is with

the light shinning through

I got this wonderful Mokume Gane pendant from my Guildie Liz at Clay Camp.  At the time, she did not have any earrings to match, so it has been living in my jewelery box, with no where to go.  I was hoping that since it is one of Liz's favority color combos, she would someday use it again and I would be able to complete my set.

 She didn't let me down!  I was able to pick up these babies to match.

And I saved my favorite till last.  Liz has just quit her soul sucking job and is going to try to focus on her jewelery design business.  I am wishing her all the luck in the world, as she is so talented (and a great, fun person to boot).  I fell in love with these earrings at first sight and grabbed them up before anyone else could see them. She designed, etched and punched out the copper circles. I think the only thing she did not personally make on these earrings were the ear wires.

A Rocky Path

I finally broke down and bought something off of Etsy.  I have been purposely avoiding it for years.  Not because I don't like it ... heaven forbid.  It is the fear that I will go CRAZY and buy every thing in sight once I discover how easy it is.
    It is taking  lot of restraint to be good ... there are so many interesting items to be had just with a quick click of the mouse.
    I have been able to limit myself so far to a pair of earrings and beads from Lynda at Diva Designs.  I have been following her work for years now.  She was the first follower on my blog when I started it almost two years ago now.  I have purchased several of her very well written tuts in the past, but used a check rather than signing into Esty.  Now that she is a full time designer, it turned out to be better for her monetarily if I went through Esty, so now I have an account. .. so many shiny things.... opps... getting off topic
   This leads me to another Esty purchase I made last week.  One of my flickr contacts is River Valley Designs, and one of the techniques she uses and has written a tut on, is called Rocky Path. I have long admired pieces that she and others have made using Rocky Path and tried to figure it out on my own, with limited success.  So I finally broke down and purchased it. I am in love ... it is a playful technique and I love the serendipity of it - you can't predict exactly what is going to happen.  I love surprises.
   I have made two earring sets so far and would make more today, but I must get ready for the Artisan Show this weekend.

Using Yellows and Orange Inks

Pinks and Yellows

 

Where I will be this weekend

If you are in the neighborhood, stop by and say hi.

And the winner is

As promised, tonight is the time I announce who is the winner of my little giveaway.
Listed in order of reply

1.  Backstory Beads
2. Cassi Renee
3. Davinia
4. Fresh Baked Design

And the winner is ....... Drum roll, please ......

True Random Number GeneratorMin:Max:Result:1

So, Backstory Beads (sorry could not find your aka name on your blog), please contact me with your snail mail and your orange beads (so appropriate for the Holiday) will be heading your way.

   My email is polymerpenguin@gmail.com.