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!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Always Seal Papers For Resin Embedding

Previously on Artfire: Published On: 07-26-2012

Here's a quick post to show what happens if you don't properly seal whatever paper you want to embed in resin with mod podge or glue layer of about 2-5 layers:




These aren't as bad as you could get, true, and I didn't do a whole lot of embellishments in them (thank goodness!!) but it is still a little sad to see the soaking. It's so bad, I almost wish it'd soaked through the whole thing because it'd just be that liiiiittle bit more, yeah? Oh well, lesson learned, and hopefully these plus all the other examples out there will remind you to completely seal whatever projects you work on!!

Accidental Camo Clay Pendants

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


I was perusing Pinterest and a ton of craft sites and blogs this past weekend and came across an awesome blog for a woman that does a lot of nifty things with clay and gave me an awesome inspiration to try something: a mica shift.

You can find her original blog and the particular post I'm referring to over here at :

Mica shift con estrellas : www.fimoland.com

Basically "Mica shift with stars" and with her pictures taken so well to demonstrate the technique along with my basic understanding of Spanish (I did take 5 years in school after all!), I was able to get the general idea of how she did it,... I think. Next time I should try with the powders that give you that mica shift effect properly.

Unfortunately, I think I should have actually used clay colors more like what she did, with the mica powders and/or shinier colors than what I have; which are drab, basic colors.

I got my colors out and conditioned them, ran them through my pasta machine at about setting 4 or 5 with the brown at level 9 as it was my base layer:



I then used my star cutters to get a few medium stars for each color (black, dark green and a maroon I made by mixing red and black) as well as a bunch of smaller stars in each color.

I didn't take the in-between step picture (sorry!) but I laid out the stars on the brown, overlapping each other here and there and proceeded to run the sheet through the pasta machine about 10-15 times to get them imbedded in the brown like  you see here. I then took 2 different sized oval cutters and started in on my sheet:



Once I figured I got as many as possible that would look good, I went ahead and laid them out to the side:



I realized at about this point, they weren't really looking like the mica shift pattern I'd been aiming for, but were now camo looking pendants! This just means that I'll be able to make a set of them (or even two, there's a lot!) and get them up on the site later.I then used the background clay to go through the machine again as it was just the brown and had hints of the other colors. After running through the machine, I saw that the brown had little bits of black that ended up looking sort of woodgrain! I cut out a number of small ovals and balled up the background clay from that. I ran it through the pasta machine another time with that bit and got the results you see below for the final count:



They went in the oven and I now have 8 large oval pendants, 24 small camo, 28 thicker brown with black woodgrain effect and 1 small green/black swirl from the leftover clay. One of these days I''' try to seal them in resin or varnish, or whatever it is you're supposed to use on clay.