Valentines Day

Its that time of year, time for heart pendants, heart bracelets, heart rings, etc. But I think a heart necklace or bracelet is great any time of year. I don't think it should only be for Valentines Day. I enjoy making heart shaped pendants and bracelets.

Hope everyone has a Happy Valentines Day.

Molds - CaBezels

Over the years I usually did hand drawn shapes for pendants. Many times I used cookie cutters as well. When the internet got more popular it introduced different places to buy molds and shapes to make pendant designs a lot easier and quicker.

I became an online shopping junkie. I found alot of wonderful websites for the polymer clay crafter. Way too many to name them all.

One day while I was looking for some supplies I came across Shades of Clay.  On it was an instructional video for CaBezel's. I was intrigued. I saw one of the molds and a bunch of ideas started popping into my head for their uses. So I purchased some. My favorite one was the lemon egg cabezel.

I had a blast with it. I sent an email to the lady responsible for making them, Wendy Orlowski, a very sweet person. Her ideas for making these molds was wonderful, and I thought I would let her know. I found them easy to work with, and I believe the potential for them is boundless.

I got the notion to make a brooch with some turquoise I had mixed up.

Then I tried a necklace with the brooch.

 Of course these were just ideas I played with. Next time I will try making the bezel frame a silver color or just stipple some silver gilders paste instead of just leaving it plain black. I will try more with these shapes and the others I purchased as well and see what else I can come up with. Maybe I might come up with more designs.

Beginnings with clay.

I started my journey with polymer clay many years ago (over 20 years) by chance.
It started when my daughters were quite young and I thought I would make them a Victorian dollhouse. I purchased some blueprints through a woodworking magazine and went to work. I worked on it for 6 weeks every chance I got so it would be ready to put under the Christmas tree.

Christmas morning there sat this dollhouse, and I was excited about how they would react. I watched them look it over, touch it, and the first thing I heard was "where are the people?"  Great ! I went through sleep deprivation, almost lost digits due to construction mishaps to get this done and I had forgotten the most important thing, the family to reside in this house.

I lived in a rural community in Arizona at the time, online shopping was not an option because there was none. So a friend of mine was taking a trip to Tucson which was 95 miles from where we lived and she asked if I wanted to go.

The search was on. After finding a few places and the cost to outfit both my daughters with their "people" wishes was a little too much for what I wanted to spend.  I ended up in a hobby shop where this man after listening to what I was in search of handed me a small block of Fimo clay. He did not know if it would sell or not, thought he would give it a try. He told us he had heard it was something doll makers used. It was supposed to be sturdy and would last a long time. I took the Fimo home and went to work.

Mind you, I was raised in a home where I was taught things my mother thought girls should know, sewing, knitting, crocheting, etc. so what could be hard about making people. I had taken art in school, did paintings, drawings and was fortunate enough to have some of my art accepted in the Phoenix Civic Art Museum.

Well was I ever wrong. Human anatomy was never my strong point, these dolls looked like Freddy Kruger. So I rolled up my messes to find that if you rolled a couple of colors together and made them into little round different shaped balls they were great looking beads. So the journey began...............