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....

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...