Zuleykha's polymer clay

Wednesday, 22 July 2009

Strawberry jewellery

Little stamped strawberry beads:

In reality these are very lovely beads, looking very juicy and nice to touch. :))

A sheep bracelet made on order

This is a butterfly wing cane I've made and I was very happy with :)) But the actual butterfly cane didn't come out too well, I think I've made a butterfly body too big. I've decided to turn an unlucky butterfly cane into caleidoscope canes. And I love the results! :))
The actual canes:

Bracelets:

Dremel workstation

I just wanted to show my latest very handy purchase - Dremel workstation.
To insert your Dremel tool into its holder, you have to remove the cover from the tip of a tool.

Then fix it well in a holder of a workstation.

To insert a drill bit into the tool I normally hold a tool at an angle. With the tool fixed at the angle you can also polish your beads without holding a heavy Dremel.

I've got some clamp pliers to hold beads while drilling them. I still need to stick some rubber to the insides of the pliers, so they didn't scratch the surface of my beads.

You have to lower the drill bit into the bead VERY slowly,especcially at near the exit from the bead. Otherwise you will end up with a massive hole at the side of the bead where drill bit comes out of it. Like this :))

The other way to avoid ruining your bead, you can drill it to the middle from one side of the bead, then turn the bead upside down, and drill it to the middle from the opposite side.

New necklaces

I've made these beads ages ago, but only recently I found some time to drill holes in them.

Detailed photos. Which ones do you like the most?
1 и 2

3 и 4

5 и 6

7 и 8

Tuesday, 7 July 2009

Millefiori landscape

This was an interesting order I received a few weeks ago. I was asked to make a picture out of clay, which would have a blue sky and tulips in it. The size of a picture is 23 x 28 cm. It was a bit hard to make such a large background with a colour gradient, which eventually caught a few air bubbles, although I tried my best to avoid them. Luckily I was able to sand those bumps off.
I quite enjoyed making tulips :)

Enlarging holes in beads without a drill

You can make holes in baked beads larger even if you don't have an electric drill.
Make a pilot thin hole in a bead before baking it. Then enlarge the hole gradually going from smaller to larger drilling bits.
To make it easier to hold a drilling bit, you can fix it in a craft knife instead of a blade; I managed to hold it on its own.
There is just one tip on this technique: after a few experiments I figured out that if you push a drilling bit through the whole bead at once, 4 of 5 beads will crack :)) You have to remove extra clay from inside the bead in small portions. You drill into a bead to a small distance, take out a drilling bit, shake off the clay dust. Then drill a little further into the bead, again take out a drilling bit and shake off the clay. Go this way to the middle of the bead, then do the same going into the bead from the opposite side of a hole.

Report on first outing :))

I am very slow in filling in my English blog at the moment, but I promise to get better in it :))
So there it was, our first craft market, as a group (Newcastle Craft mafia), and my first craft market ever.
First of all, I enjoyed the event very much! I've spent an evening among crafty and totally amazing people :)
The place was a bit quiet :) The market has been held in the backyard of "Art Works galleries", about 6 or 7 stalls were out, most of which were taken by our group. There were a lot more sellers than buyers :))) Still I managed to sell two bracelets and three penguin badges, which I think is a huge success :)))
In the following photo there are 3-4 buyers, the rest are sellers and their friends :)