Kicking my own butt back into gear...

Wow, I can't believe it's been almost a year since I posted!! Granted I had a bit of an excuse for a good part of the year...my second child was born on April 4th and the last weeks of my pregnancy were very difficult...and then there was the newborn craziness!

But no more excuses. My "newborn" is now 9 months old and my 2 1/2 year old spends 2 days a week at daycare so it's time to start kicking my own butt to get creating again.

Not that I've been totally unproductive. I managed to make a few sales through my Etsy shop, fill a couple of wholesale jewelry orders and acquire a new addiction.

Yep, that's right...polymer clay and jewelry just weren't enough apparently. My oldest son has very sensitive skin and both of us struggle with eczema so I started doing research into skincare and discovered the addiction of making my own bath and body products. I've dabbled in just about everything...lotions, bath bombs (bomb being the operative word here), roll-on perfumes, whipped butters, lotion bars, lip balms...and soap. Ah, glorious soap! The magic of mixing a caustic substance (lye) with various oils and butters and fragrances and producing a lovely, mild, fabulous smelling bar of soap!

"My name is Karen and I'm a soaping addict." I honestly never thought that making soap of all things would occupy my mind (and my paypal account) the way it has. But I am now planning my 42nd, that's right, 42nd batch of soap. And I love every second of it!

But now that I have a bit more time on my hands and I've od'ed on soaping (and my house smells FANTASTIC from all the batches of soap curing in various places! lol!) I'm revisiting my old loves of polymer clay and jewelry making and so I am reviving my blog.

I've joined the Year of Jewelry 2009 project hosted by the Creative Wire Jewelry forum and I'm organizing and preparing my claying supplies for future creative pursuits so you can expect to see at least one post a week from me for at least the next year. Just don't be surprised to see the occasional batch of soap popping in to visit as well! ;)

Time to close with a pic of what kept me so busy for the last year...and they were worth every second of it!

Gecko Switchplate now on Etsy

I've had a few people tell me that I should list my gecko switchplate on Etsy, so today I caved in and listed it:

http://www.etsy.com/view_listing.php?listing_id=8921965

I was reluctant because I thought $25 might be more than anyone would want to pay for a switchplate. But quite a bit of work goes into sculpting the gecko so I couldn't really afford to list it for anything less.

Ah well, we'll see what happens. :)

Gorgeous Polymer Clay Jewelry!

I just ran into some gorgeous work by goodrun08 via Lisa Clarke's Polka Dot Creations blog and was completely blown away!

Her jewelry is elegant, sophisticated and flawlessly finished. If you haven't seen goodrun08's work I highly recommend that you check it out!

Here's a sample to whet your appetite! :D

Switchplates!

I've been playing a lot with toner and laser copier transfers and I'm very happy with the results I'm getting!  I was inspired to give them a try by Donna Kato's new book "The Art of Polymer Clay: Creative Surface Effects".  If you haven't had a chance to look at this book I highly recommend it...it's full of fantastic ideas!

Click on any of the pics below to see the full sized image. (I hope!! lol)

This first switchplate is a black and white toner transfer of bamboo onto a pearl/white clay blend.  After transferring, I colored portions of the image with an ochre colored chalk and baked the transfer.  After baking, I painted the entire switchplate with a very thin wash of green Pinata ink.  I'm really happy with how this one turned out and it actually sold within an hour of listing in my Etsy store!





This next switchplate was also a black and white transfer to pearl/white clay that I then colored after baking with various colors of Pinata alcohol inks. This one has me interested in exploring more watercolor type techniques using the alcohol inks on baked and unbaked clay.





This switchplate is actually a Christmas gift for my niece Megan (yes, I know it's January...extenuating circumstances haven't allowed us to get together for Christmas yet). She has been taking piano lessons for years so I used a black and white toner transfer of the musical score for "Greensleeves" and then colored the raw clay with chalks in the colors of orange, pink and lime green. Apparently, those are the colors of her newly painted bedroom. ;)





This next switchplate was my first successful attempt at a color laser transfer. I learned a lot with this one...so much ink makes the transfer become sticky VERY quickly while the paper is being removed and the ink smudged a bit when I was shaping the transferred clay on the switchplate. It was actually a happy accident however as the smudged bits actually enhance the design!





I still had another niece and a nephew to make switchplates for and this next one was the one I made for my 5 year old niece Madison. I had a bit of a hard time coming up with a design for her and finally decided on this one...because what little girl doesn't like purple, pink and hearts right? :D





And last but not least, this switchplate is for my 8 year old nephew Mark. Mark is very much into animals, especially reptiles and also very knowledgeable so I had to make sure that the lizard I made was modelled after a real lizard! This is a Gold Dust Day Gecko and I sculpted it out of glow in the dark clay for extra coolness. :D The colors that you see are chalks applied before baking with the exception of the orange spots which are dots of orange Pinata ink. He really does glow in the dark too!









That's enough for one post! I have other things I've been working on, including experiments with a shimmering watercolor based spray called Radiant Rain...but that will have to wait until the next post! :D

Catching up!

My goodness, I can't believe it's been more than a month since I last posted! The time really flies by during the holidays doesn't it?

We had a great time over Christmas with my husband's family...lots of good food and fun! Daniel enjoyed Christmas more this year than last, but he still wasn't really interested in opening the gifts...but at least this time he didn't cry each time we opened one for him!

Hubby just started a new job that involved becoming incorporated as well, so things were pretty crazy for a while there with paperwork, phone calls, etc. He just left this morning to work in Saskatoon for a week (sniff!) so it will be just Daniel and I for the next seven days. I suspect I'll be doing a lot of claying to make the time fly!

I have several new switchplates and toner transfers to show...I promise I'll get those pictures up this afternoon!

(See I told you two posts in one day wasn't going to get to be a habit! lol!)

Adventures with the Pasta Machine

Haven't had much time to clay the last few days. I am working on something, but since it's a Christmas present I can't exactly post it on my blog. ;)

Anyway, I've noticed over the last few days that there was a gap between the ends of the rollers and the side of the pasta machine on the right hand side. I tried squeezing the sides of the pasta machine towards each other and the gap narrowed so I knew there was a problem somewhere inside. Sooo...since the poor thing has desperately been needing a cleaning for quite some time, I decided to bite the bullet and take it apart.

I learned how to take apart a pm for cleaning a few years ago from Desiree's website www.desiredcreations.com so I took the sides off and removed the scraper bars to clean them. It was at this point that I realized there was a rattling noise coming from the OTHER side of the pm; the side that holds the thickness dial...the side that I've never opened. And try as I might, I could NOT get the darn side open!

In desperation, I turned to Desiree's website again, hoping against hope that there might be something that would help me and low and behold I found this! http://www.desiredcreations.com/howTo_TLAdvPQueenMaint.htm It told me exactly how to take off that side, but I couldn't get the darn dial cap off to undo the one vital nut! It took 4 screwdrivers, a mini prybar, a hammer and a jewelry saw to beat my way through! Once there, I was able to replace the loose nut and now my old pm is as good as new!

I also took this opportunity to dig up a pasta machine that my stepdad found for me at an auction a few years ago and clean that one thoroughly as well.

Now I actually have TWO working pasta machines! Yay! Um...just need to find a spot for both of them. :)

Wow, two posts in one day! Don't worry, it won't last. ;)

I was inspired by the photos from a recent bookmark swap by the Israeli Polymer Clay Guild and decided to try making some bookmarks myself. I wanted them to be very thin, which meant using a strong, flexible clay so I got out the Premo.

I have also been wanting to try the faux ivory technique published by Jane Zhao in PolymerCafe (sorry, can't remember which issue!) so I decided to combine the two.

I decided plain black wasn't interesting enough for the backing sheet so I crackled a sheet of gold leaf over the black and then placed my faux ivory (backed with white so the black wouldn't show through the translucent stripes) on the leafed clay. I cut a generous border around the faux ivory, but I liked how the bottom of the black clay looked right out of the pasta machine and so I didn't trim that side. I then stamped my ivory with my oak leaf stamp inked with the Carmel ink pad, cut the hole for the tassel with a straw and baked the whole shebang.

It looked pretty good out of the oven (pretty good for a first try that is!) and I figured I'd better spray it with Flecto to protect the gold leaf. Unfortunately, the ink blurred when I sprayed it, so back to the drawing board! I'm pretty happy with the way the rest of it turned out though.



I also tried coating my maple leaf stamp with brilliant gold PearlEx and stamping that on a scrap of faux ivory that I had, but that didn't work out the greatest. The gold just doesn't show up well at all...maybe copper?



Almost forgot to say that the black backing sheet was run through on #6 on my pm (thinnest setting) and the faux ivory was run through at #5 (next thinnest). So the result is a pretty thin, flexible, yet strong bookmark. Still needs some testing to make sure that it sits well in a book...hmm...I DO have some new clay books on the way! ;)

So, I think there are possibilities here...back to experimenting!