My new beads

I have bought these metallic open flower charms a while ago, planning to fill them with polymer clay, but then I forgot about them. A wonderful work by shimshoni reminded me of my flower frames, and soon I came up with these flower charms:

I am not sure yet, which way to use them, as a necklace or as a bracelet. I have tried to take pictures of different ways of using them :)


Here you can see that they are like little padded cushions :) They are very pleasant to touch :)))
I took photos when making one of those charms, so if you like you can find a little tutorial below :)

I prepared a millefiori sheet and a few open flower charms. I have bought these charms on eBay, I can even give a link

Place flower frames on the sheet of clay. One of the frames will remain in the charm, the other one is only used temporarily.
Press frames into clay, using your roller.
Cut out the excess of clay around the flower frames.
Lift clay and frame off the working surface.
Carefully stretch the clay sheet, so it becomes raised over the metallic frame. Keep an eye on the edges of clay sheet, don't let them pop out of the frame. Donna Kato taught us this thick at the Polymer Play Days last summer :)
The other side of a sheet. То, что получилось с изнаночной стороны.
Cut off the excess clay.
Two parts of the flower are ready.
To make a flower puffy, you have to place a piece of scrap clay inside it.
Put scrap clay on one half of a flower.
Take the second half of a flower out of the second frame.
Put it on top of the scrap clay.
Now pinch the edges of a flower, hiding the ugly inner sides of flower parts under the metallic frame. You can use a toothpick to push the most stubborn bits inside.
The clay has to slightly overlap with a metallic frame from both side of a flower. This way the frame will not come off the flower after baking.
Here is the resulting puffy flower charm.
I smoothed the surface of charms with corn starch. It removes fingerprints and makes it easier to sand charms after baking.
All charms - baked, sanded and glazed :)
I also have round open charms in my stash, I will definitely try to work them out in the same way. They are a lot smaller than these flower charms, I still did not come up with a pattern for such the small circles.

PS. Sorry for such a long post, I hope you liked it :)

Thimbles

I have not been maintaining my English blog for awhile, but I am back now! :))) Happy New Year everyone, may all your wishes come true in 2010!

I have been busy with Christmas markets all December, and did not have time to make something new. A friend of mine asked me to make some thimbles for her, I made a few, and then realized, that I can not stop making them! :))

Here is my collection of 10 thimbles, and I don't think they are the last ones yet.

All together:


And separately. Little frogs:
Sheep, sunflowers and poppies:

And all sorts of flowers:


Thimbles were made for decorative purposes only, I am afraid they can not be used as they are supposed to be used :)))

Fruity hearts

Nothing special, just my favorite fruit canes. Shaped into hearts this time :)

An opportunity for european clayers

A great opportunity to get published in the album which will be sent to USA to the Synergy II Conference (a place I only can dream of going to for now :) ). Check out for details in Anke's blog.
Anke is writing that they will select a good number of people, so I think I will give it a try. I just need to take a few good pictures of my works :)

Spring in autumn :))

I have not been doing much in the past few weeks. All I made is assembling this necklace and earrings. They were made on order following my flower bracelets.


That's me trying out new accessories:

Black and white bracelet and flower beads tutorial

We'll be making black and white flower beads like these:


The technique I am going to demonstrate below, has been created by Israeli artist Edit Zoota. Make sure to check out her Flickr album and Etsy shop! Edit generously shared her genious idea with the whole world. For me (and, I think, for other caners as well) this discovery has the same importance as Judith Skinner's technique of making colour blends using pasta machine.
It is a long process, so arm yourself with patience :) You need a lot of patience when making canes. To make a neat cane you have to pay a lot of attention to each detail, do everything without a hurry, smoothen every bit of a cane...

First of all we'll make a flower cane. Cut your petal cane into a few pieces. 5 or 6 is optimum for this method. More petals will make it difficult to remove background without distorting a cane.

Roll out a medium thick sheet of dough. Wrap it around the cane.

Next we'll fill our cane with a background. It is a very important step, because the shape of your cane depends on the accuracy of your background. Since you are going to remove background you cane use just a scrap clay for it. I use this particular piece of scrap clay for background for the third time already, so it is a great economy. Make a triangular cane out of your scrap clay and fill the space between the petals. To avoid your petals getting a square shape after reducing make sure that you put enough background between petals. See how I add another layer of scrap clay on top of the triangular cane between the petals, so that the height of the background between the petals is the same as the petals.

Cover petals with clay and put a final layer around the whole cane. There is no need to save on background clay here :)

Reduce and cut the cane. I've made a few canes of different size.

Clay does not stick to the dough, that is why you can easily remove it. Remove all of the background and putt your canes and used scrap clay in cold water. Leave pieces to soak for a few hours. Three hours is normally sufficient to dissolve most of the dough.

Be very careful whem you take canes out of the water. At this moment clay is very sensitive to your finger, so be sure to hold your cane very lightly, do not rub the surface of clay with your fingers.
Here you can see, that there is some dough left between the petals. You can brush it off with an artist's soft brush. Keep dipping your cane and a brush constantly into the water.

You can remove the most stubborn dough with a needle. Very lightly, without pressing, pass your needle between the petals, releasing the dough, then wash it off, using a brush.
Leave you canes and cleaned scrap clay to dry for a few hours. Overnight, perhaps.

Now the cane is ready to be used. Cut off a few slices of it. I used embossing tools and Sculpey tools for shaping my flowers. Although, I guess, you could use thick knitting needles for this as well.

With your fingers smooth the edges of petals of your flower. Shape the slice cane into a flower as you can see it on the picture below:

Then the usual - bake, sand (no picture there :)) ), glaze and make into a jewellery.


You don't have to shape cane slices into flowers, they are just the same pretty as the simple flat slices:

That's all from me :) This post was written with a big gratitude to Edit Zoota. Edit, thank you for your discovery and for your generousity!

Flower bracelets

The revolutionary Edit Zoota's technique of making backgroundless canes opened plenty new horizons for me and other caners :) One of my results of using this technique you have already seen in this holly leaves bracelet. This week I have been making backgroundless flower canes. They resulted in many bracelets :)) I only wanted to make two or three, but, as always, I got carried away, and I think that I will have about 15 bracelets eventually :)))
Bracelets all together:

And bracelets individually. Which one do you like the most? :)))
1

2

3

4

5

6

7

At the moment I am working on black and white flowers, taking pictures of the process at the same time. So tomorrow or a day after tomorrow I will show you the whole process of making canes with Edit Zoota's method (I asked Edit for permission :)) ) and making flowers from canes slices :) Stay tuned! :))