New Polymer Clay Ring Bowls
I have been practising the intricate kaleidoscope cane I learnt on the workshop with Sarah Shriver recently. I have used some of them to make little polymer clay ring bowls. You may remember the one I made for my sisters birthday last year – you can see it here. I have some new bowls and they will be available for sale this weekend at the Southbank Bristol Arts Trail. I will be in the Southville Centre in the Beauly Room from 11am – 6pm tomorrow and Sunday. I also made one with a red flowers from a cane I reduced to many different...
read moreSouthbank Bristol Arts Trail coming soon
I am busy making some new jewellery for the Southbank Bristol Arts Trail on the 18/19th May. I will be in the Southville Centre along with plenty of other talented artists including Emily Ketteringham who designed the brilliant posters. If you are local to Bristol do come along and say ‘Hi!’ I am going to be doing a little market research over the weekend and will draw one of the participants at random to win a Cara Jane prize to say thank you! I have recently finished a couple of the pieces I started in pre/post Synergy workshops...
read moreSarah Shriver workshops
Recently I was lucky enough to attend some workshops with Sarah Shriver organised by the London Polymer Clay Group. It was a real treat as I have admired Sarah’s work for many years. On Saturday we learnt how to make Intricate Kaleidoscope canes. They are very intricate but Sarah did a great job of teaching how to make these magical canes. Here’s the canes I made I am very pleased with them! They were made from Kato polyclay On Sunday we made big beads. The process is complex and rather involved but produces...
read moreSynergy 3 – Wonderful!
I am just back from Atlanta where I have been attending the IPCA conference – Synergy 3. It was wonderful!!! The seminars were excellent. I have many new ideas to take on board. My head is still rather muddled from the travel and tiredness (didn’t sleep a lot whilst I was away for many reasons – excitement, noise, different time zones, parties….) but I shall sit down and read through my notes again in the next few days. My work was already heading in a slightly different direction through the course I was taking on...
read moreDemonstrating at the NEC
As you are probably aware I am a huge fan of Kato polyclay so I was over the moon when I was asked if I could demonstrate with it at the Craft, Hobby and Stitch International trade show at the NEC last weekend. I spent 2 whole days showing people the magic that is polymer clay – I can’t think of anything better to do (well apart from spending 2 days being shown how to do new things with polymer clay!). I was amazed at how many people in the craft industry hadn’t even heard of polymer clay before! Here I am in the Decoman...
read moreBlue Thing a Days – Delft inspired cane
It’s all been a bit rushed this week but I have managed to make some canes for my Thing a Day Challenge. I chose blue as a theme as the lovely Sarah of Beadscrumptious was challenging herself to create something blue this week too. Here’s the canes I’ve made over the last few days – inspired by my recent trip to Delft! Day 1 I made a fairly simple flower cane with a crinkly centre Day 2 I made what I call a flourish – the bits you get at the corners or the sides of the main delft pattern – or on the corner...
read morePolymer Clay turtle for my challenges…
For my Thing a Day challenge and also my personal challenge to actually use my books and tutorials I made a turtle today.Father Christmas brought me the Christi Friesen ‘Under the Sea’ book this year so I decided to try a turtle. I like the way Christi does these ‘beyond projects’ books: there’s a whole heap of ideas to help you customise your own creations. I’m tired today so didn’t want to get too adventurous so mainly followed the turtle that Christi made in the book. I didn’t happen to have...
read moreLatest workshop dates and Thing a Day starts!
I have several introduction to polymer clay workshops in Bristol throughout Feb- April. You will find details on my diary page and also in my facebook page events. There will also be a few intermediate level workshops – if you are interested in those please get in touch! I also have couple of instore demonstrations at Hobbycraft Bristol, there you can see me make some polymer clay canes and I will have a small selection of my work available to buy. It’s a great chance to come and ask me any questions you have about polymer clay...
read moreUsing tutorials/books week 2 – Donna Kato
One of my favourite polymer clay books is Dona Kato’s – The Art of Polymer Clay Millefiori Techniques. I have always admired the Translucent Overlay Beads featured in the book, as has my friend Hannah so this week we decided to try them out together.We both made a couple of canes from the selection Donna suggests and put them together. The instructions are pretty clear and as all the canes themselves are reasonably simple we had no trouble making the canes. We made coloured translucent clay by adding Kato concentrates to...
read moreUsing tutorials/books week 1
I randomly picked a publication from my bookshelf to try out something new (my new year challenge – to use the wonderful resources sat under my nose!) and picked the magazine From Polymer to Art – Orange. A quick flick through and I chose to try out a project by Fabi. Her pendant in the magazine was orange and green – not really my colours so I changed the colours to some more ‘me’ ones from some left over clay I had from other projects. I understand it’s difficult explaining projects fully for magazines as...
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