Monthly All Girls Craft Group - May 2013

Again, a little late on this since we had May's craft day on 5/18/13, but here we go!! (I will try to get better and more prompt about posting these, I swear!)

First, we had Anne working on a necklace and earring set for her mother:

Isn't it pretty?! 

Chessire spent some more time getting her scrapbooking done... I envy her, I have 2 drawers full of stuff I need to get in my scrapbook for HIGH SCHOOL that I STILL haven't gotten to!! One of these days.... Hopefully I can get that done before getting married and having kids to scrapbook for. 

Next up, Michelle was working a little on her silver polymer clay flowers for an upcoming wedding. These guys keep getting better and better!! 

Airon brought out the perler beads once again and had some fun... Guys, this is only 1 of the 2 boxes we've acquired of these things, and the 2nd box is more overflowing than this one! Also, we have about a dozen pegboards to use too!! They're still not enough! lol

Here she is working on some hearts...or is she?

Iron, iron, and iron some more!

Final design to be shown below...

Anne got in on some of the perler bead action and made these guys for her daughter!

This guy got ironed just enough to give him some pretty funk-a-licious hair, don'tcha think!?

After my first attempt of making a felted bunny here, I decided to make another one except I did it more like the original tutorial and did a more 3-D head. I left the ears for this craft day but after making 1, I decided to see what it would look like on my fella:

 You guys, I was *this* close to leaving him like this! But I was talking into making another ear....

As you can see, I was also talked into making a little cut-out in his new ear as if he's had some "special" times.

 My next project was to follow this tutorial and decided to try my hand at a felted rattle ball:

 This thing is actually pretty awesome... It's soft, it has a small rattle in there and is just pretty neat to begin with. We didn't have any bells or plastic eggs, but Anne was kind enough to supply me with a plastic ball from a toy she'd gotten her daughter and I put some beads in there. I then wrapped a ball around that with some yarn she also was kind enough to bum me (double-sided tape was the best we had or could find in getting the darn yarn to stick to the plastic ball but it worked fantastically!). Then I just used some yellow, blue and purple felt to make the outside! Took me about 10-15 minutes I believe to make this and so wasn't really that hard at all! I might just make some more!

 Then I decided to make a free-form piece that I could maybe turn into a wrist cuff or just an embellishment for a purse or something for later...

Final result at the bottom of this post...

 Anne saw this felting thing and decided to get in on the fun there too!! 

She made the CA-YOOTEST bunny!!!

Then Mr Bunny wanted to sit on Airon's heart-petal flower!!!

Here are all the final pieces (with the exception of my first 2-D bunny in there too) that got made this craft day!!

How's about that for a craft day spread!! We didn't get in progress pics but the butterflies were also made by Airon for her nieces and the felted ball bead (above the fish) was made by Michelle when she decided to test out the felting craft too! Bottom right is the final product of my possible future wrist cuff. I played around with using random pieces of felt as well as getting longer, bigger pieces and doing things like the twisted swirl on the left in blue, the folded over twist in purple at the middle top and the thinner loop of yellow on the far right.


I am sooo excited for where these craft days are going!! They have mostly been small, but hey, that means we can play around a little more with each others crafts and we still have lots of fun! I can't wait for next month!!

Craft ya laters!!

Feature #3 for an Artfire Collection!!

Hey guys, I was featured in another collection on ArtFire!!

On the far right, top row, that's mine!! I did some polymer clay pieces a while back where I was trying to use various shades of brown and pieces to resemble faux woodgrain I made to make some steampunk-like pieces with clock parts. This was also towards the beginning of my using resin, so I tested using resin to encase them. This definitely was the best piece, but I never got around to making it anything ready-to-use unless someone buys it just to glue it on a bezel or something.

Anywho, just wanted to let ya'll know! :D

Craft ya laters!

Monthly All Girls Craft Group - April 2013

Hey guys! We actually had a pretty mild Craft Day in April as it seems it's just the 4 of us regularly showing with the exception of 1 guest along with my mom visiting for a couple hours, but not to make anything. I did get pictures of what we did get done however so...

First of all, this is a polymer clay brooch/hair-pin piece Michelle made to test the viability of use for bridesmaids in a wedding. The green is only tissue paper to hold up the petals during baking so imagine those gone, and the in center is a black button pressed in there.... Pretty awesome, don't you think?! We thought so!! Can't wait to see if she kept with this idea and made more! ;)


Leena was able to make a couple of pieces of jewelry I believe (pics to come soon!) but spent most of her time being an awesome hostess!!

Airon and I apparently decided it was time for more perler bead pieces!!

Mine

Airon's.. and no, the 'A' isn't for her, it's for a friend who's an Atlanta Braves fan :p

I know this isn't much to show for you guys, but it was a short and simple craft day for us. May's Craft Day should have a bit more going for it as attendance sounds much better this time (darn school and kid's schedules! :p)

Craft ya laters!!

Monthly All Girls Craft Group - January 2013

Yesterday was the first monthly all girls craft group we had and it was soooo much fun!!! And from what I heard from the ladies, everyone had a blast! This will definitely have to turn into a regular thing! ;)

We had it at my bff's house and had 2 long tables and 1 card table set up... There were 9 of us total, and everyone pretty much had their own things going on from playing with clay to learn new techniques...

I love all the pieces she made!! Especially the first attempt at the faux knit technique!! Isn't it fantastic?! And that owl is just so cute!!!

There was some work done with perler beads:

Scrapbooking was getting done. Yay for getting baby books worked on!!:

There was teaching even when Airon wanted to learn crocheting from Sarah since neither one of us can figure out how to get past that first chain stitch row!! (She's gonna have to teach me that later ;)):

And of course, like any good woman now-a-days, we can multi-task!!:

Airon ironing her perler bead flowers while having a beer. Definitely my kind of crafting!! ;)

Here's the few things I managed to get done myself. The left shows the 2 handwarmers/wrist wrests for using a mouse and the right picture shows the hand stitch closing. The pink was first so a little messy, but I feel the white is a little less conspicuous.

The next 2 pictures are the corners of the neckwarmer/wrist wrest for using a keyboard. I decided to try an all-around stitch so I could make it look a little more professional and to also not have to hand stitch the open end closed!! What do you think?? Can you tell that's what I did? ;)

 I did get a bunch of other pieces cut to just sit down and sew/fill later, so that's good at least.

With me trying to get some of my scraps used up, the other thing I decided to do when I couldn't cut the bigger pieces anymore is to cut 3" squares and set them aside so when I've got a good supply of those, I can make a sort of patchwork piece to cut other patterns out of for other projects. I'm actually a little excited to do that and see what it looks like and what I can make out of it... ;)

All in all though, this is definitely going to have be a regular thing!! Thanks to everyone who came out and hope to see you next time as well as some new faces!!

Polymer clay pendants using various canes

Previously on Artfire: Published On: 10-01-2012

Here are some sneak peaks at things I've been working on lately to give you an idea of what could be coming to the store soon!!




The above were made with a kaleidoscope cane.
This is my first brain cane!!



Made using a checkerboard cane!

These were made using a mokume gane technique! The first picture is skins that will be used for accent beads and above are focals made from the original block of clay.
This one is my favorite so far!! I used my brain cane to make a pendant, gave it a backing layer to thicken it up, put my own clay frame around it and put a top of there with a hole so you don't need an additional bezel or hole put in it!! Now to polish it up a bit and/or varnish it up... although I might dome it with resin instead...


All of these were made with polymer clay and have yet to be finished, just wanted to give you guys an idea of what should be showing up in the store at some point!!

Clay techniques - rolled cane and faux woodgrain

Previously on Artfire: Published On: 09-11-2012 

I was reading through one of my clay bead making books and finally got some inspiration after not having any for so long!! Look what I made!!!



These are my faux woodgrain with brown, metallic gold and gold.


This is my new purple, blue, pink and black cane!!

Wheeeeeee!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

First Attempt at Clay Scales

Previously on Artfire: Published On: 07-24-2012

I have been thinking it'd be neat to try to make a clay dragon statue lately... so I tried to start one last night:




I'm actually pretty happy with how it looks so far!! Can't wait to get back home and start working some more! Also, I have to create more body clay to get the legs attached and start thinking about the head? We'll see how it turns out... ;)

Skinner Blend Method - Pink, white, blue and silver

Previously on Artfire: Published On: 07-16-2012

I have had my pasta machine for playing with clay for about as long as I've had all my clay but had yet to properly do the Skinner Blend method to get a really good color shift going...until yesterday!


Colors used : pink, blue and white


This is after about 7 or 8 runs through the pasta machine.


This is after about 15 or so runs through the pasta machine.


All done!!!

I brought out all my cutters and wanted to do a good variety of shapes:





The 2 ovals missing were pieces that stuck in the cutter at first so I set them aside on my silicone baking mat.

As you can see, I did a good deal of cutting, as well as using my zig-zag blade and getting a few strips in the middle.



Look at all the awesome pieces I got!!! Most were from the original strip of blended clay, but a few I got from using silver with glitter as a base (for the broken hearts and the circles with swapped flower inserts) and then I used the silver for its own pieces bc it got a little blue and pink on the edges and when I ran through the pasta machine to ready for more backs, I saw the pink and blue stripes in there and couldn't resist them being their own pieces!

The butterflies on the bottom left as well as the squares were used with the silver base and broken pieces from the original rollout and pieces of the zig-zag cuts I'd made and then rolled into the silver using the pasta machine.

The top left section has a few free-form cuts I made just to see what they'd look like.


Junk pieces on silver.

Swapped flower inserts.

Friendship heart necklace pendants.
Ice cream cones and free-form.
More free-form.
Totally outrageous Jem earring pieces? ;)


Regular cuttings.
Kind of weathered looking pieces I might put floating sand/beach related floaters in under resin coating?

I can't wait to get some of these framed/sealed in resin, some maybe with a layer of filler as if they were in a bezel!!