Faux Lampwork Tube Beads - All Polymer Clay

I've always had a fascination for glass beads, especially the fancy handmade lampwork ones....they are just so yummy.  There's something about them that just makes you want to run your fingers all over them.  Maybe that's why I love creating little arty beads and maybe that's why I love my beads shiny!!  So in my never ending quest to create a faux lampwork/glass bead, I played and came up with something I was really happy with.  I had lots of failures today but ended up with a shape I really liked and a surface design I was happy with too.  I also played with lots of different surface treatments on these beads as well.

Huge thanks to Sage for the lovely gift of powders a few years back....they are brilliant.

Womens Week Yalgoo

As part of "Womens Week" in Yalgoo I was contracted to run a day session of beading with the ladies.  These women haven't done anything much in the way of beading so I took lots of shiny, scrumptious beads with me, some simple findings and lots of memory wire and stretch elastic and showed them how to make some very simple jewellery pieces.  After a lovely welcome and smoking ceremony the beading started and once they started....there was no stopping them.  I'm sure we have some beading converts in this lot...and not surprisingly, their colour and design skills were exceptional, even though our projects were quite simple.  Yalgoo has a population of about 100 and to have close to 20 women throughout the day, of all ages was incredible.  I reconnected with some lovely ladies and had such a wonderful day.  

I must say huge thanks to Sheree Wallis for organising me to come and be part of Womens Week...it was just amazing.

Polymer Care Project with Mullewa Students

What an amazing project this was to be part of - something I'll remember for a while that's for sure.  I was lucky enough to be involved in a unique project with the students of Mullewa creating a range of polymer clay projects.  The polymer clay portion of the class was then complemented with a chat from other associations to further "get the message across".  The young students (as shown in the pic below) created cute little polymer clay dogs and then a couple of members from the Dog Shelter came in to talk about how to look after your pet dogs.  I even made little dog leads for them and they turned out so cute, the kids just loved them.

Mid primary age students created hearts and then had a talk on bullying and feeling safe.  We also had a group of students who created image transfer beads with a picture they had to bring along that made them feel happy.  They then had a talk on what makes them happy, bullying, feeling safe etc. We had a total of 14 of the senior students attend which was just amazing.  They created "tattoo" beads and were exceptional.  Sometimes it can be difficult to hold their attention but we managed through the magic of polymer clay.

For me, this was one of the happiest weeks ever.....I simply loved working with these kids.  There are many issues these children have to deal with and to be able to bring a little bit of fun and joy into their lives is pure heaven.

Thanks to everyone involved..  Special thanks to Faye at the City of Greater Geraldton Mullewa District Office for organising such an amazing project and I must say a special thanks to Katherine and Faye for being such a wonderful helpers for the week.


 

Tina's Crackles - A Tutorial Review

I received a lovely email from Tina Holden quite a while ago now asking if I was interested in having a play around with her Crackle Tutorial.  I do love Tina's work so jumped at the chance.  So first up I must thank Tina for gifting the tutorial to me - it really is a good one.  

The tutorial calls for some very unique products but they are easily found and you probably have them in your home already and of course, they are very inexpensive.  Now the crackle that's achieved in this tutorial has lots of variations and unfortunately I ran out of time to try them all but what I did manage to get done, I was really pleased with.  Please keep in mind the resulting crackle is created on a veneer of clay or a flat sheet.  This is where the experimenting came in for me.  I don't normally create flat pieces...I love to make 3d shapes or beads so I was excited to find the veneer handles being shaped beautifully.  It also takes a liquid clay coating beautifully so I was very happy with that.  Let's have a look at some of the pics.

The above 3 examples are all a result of following the instructions exactly.

I had a play around with Tina's technique and tweaked it a little to create some different veneers that I just love....a reverse silkscreen.

I tired first on a relatively flat surface to see how the veneer would handle the manipulation.  It went beautifully.

I then tried wrapping the veneer to create beads and again, it worked beautifully.

and some silver lined cone beads....just for fun.

I love the different crackles you can achieve with this technique and found it easy and very informative.  Thanks Tina.

Here's the link to Tina's tutorial

https://www.etsy.com/listing/95684760/flexible-crackle-techniques-for-polymer