Polymer Clay Play Day

 A friend of mine came round yesterday to be introduced to the joys that are creating with polymer clay.  Eventually, she wants to use polymer clay for sculpture, but as an introduction, we made canes and turned them into pendants.  We made bull's eye canes, flower canes, spiral canes, kaleidoscope canes and stained glass canes.  She had a go with the extruder too and investigated foil and stamps with mica powder.  Above are some of her pendants - I really liked all the greeny blues she used.

Here are my creations. I tried to make myself use different colours from the ones I would naturally choose and used the bright lime green colour, 'wasabi'. However, we both discovered that despite the bright colour,  it is actually a versatile shade and will work with a variety of other colours.  The cane I used for the pendants on the right I christened my 'rhubarb' cane as the colours really reminded me of a stick of rhubarb!

Here's a close up (it is a little blurry, but you get the idea) - well, I think the colours look very rhubarby!  All in all, a very productive day was spent and I think my friend may well be at the start of an obsession (sorry about that!)

Polymer clay with alcohol ink and stamps experiments (and news of a giveaway at millefeuilles.blogspot)

 Here are my latest designs using polymer clay, stamps and mica powder.  However, these are a little more special because...

...they have interesting things on the back!  I used alcohol inks to make the marbled backgrounds and then stamped with pigment ink once the alcohol ink had dried a little.

 I tried other base colours and textured stamps to see what the effect would be...

 ...and made the backs more interesting, using stamps and the alcohol ink.  I was really pleased with how these turned out and have ordered some more alcohol inks in blues and yellows to play with too.  I need to finish these by sanding down the rough bits and then giving them a coat of varnish (matt or gloss - haven't decided yet).  I can see I shall be doing a lot more experimenting...

On a completely unrelated subject, Stephanie, over at millefeuilles is having a very special giveaway.  She creates the most beautiful hares, rabbits and mice using vintage French fabrics and her own beautiful and delicate embroidery.  I am in awe of her workmanship.  The exciting thing is that you could win one of her beautiful creations - this meadow hare (she has given permission for her photos to be used).

Isn't she gorgeous?  If you don't win (and I think there will be many, many entrants!), you can also commission her to create a special one-off hare/rabbit/mouse for you.
Have a lovely weekend.