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Ornaments Redux
I had a fun run of ornament making classes with the whole range of clay folks in town. Grade 1 through adults showed up for classes this fall and we made ornaments. These are from my last adult class...
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A Beady Ah-Ha!
When I made this necklace, I needed to figure out a way to get the flowers to sit flat and not dangle around like they do for most of the pieces I make with this type of bead. I still wanted to be able...
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Six Beads
Years ago I wrote a post about what you could make with one ounce of polymer clay canes to illustrate that it didn’t take much of an expensive supply to do fabulous things. I guess this would be a...
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Tweaking The Studio
I am a messy person. Sometimes this gets in the way of actually getting things done and I get frustrated. Over the years I’ve picked up tools and tricks for keeping the chaos to manageable levels....
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Play With Canes
These are the picture steps on how to make a small sculpted bead from a cane slice. I use backgroundless canes for most of the beads I do like this but this method works for the canes that need...
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Using Tulip Beads
When I looked up what people were making with tulip beads I found lots of lovely tulip earrings with brass and painted brass beads. Most of them had the little tulip bead hanging down so I figured I...
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Covering Eggs in Polymer Clay
Covering anything that doesn’t run away in polymer clay is pretty much a clayer’s mandate. December of 2009 I made a tutorial for covering round ornaments to get a different sort of look – as well as a...
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Colour Chips Redux
Six, almost seven now, years ago I remember making my colour chips. I found the post on here when I finally buckled down and put up the pages with my recipes but I made the chips six months before...
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Make a Valentine’s Day Magnet
I demo’d a little heart magnet craft last week at the Maker’s Meeting. And promptly forgot to actually take photos of what everyone else made. Plus it was the coldest day of the year so we had sort of...
View ArticleThe Canada Flag Cane
Since I had all the notes and doodles in my files I figured I’d put this up – I have photos to edit, somewhere, but here’s the start: Flag Tutorial It made the little splat styled flags here. They’ll...
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DIY Bracelet Display
I’m a big fan of DIY. Part of that is because you get neato, original results. Part of that is because the price is often right. My show displays are what I like to call a charming mix of store bought...
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Adding an Even Background to Your Canes
I make a lot of canes to use in layered designs for beads, vases and so on. Most of those have backgrounds – often translucent in my case. On one hand, you want a good background because it keeps the...
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Scrap Clay Remix
This is the part where I wonder what the heck I got into. There’s a post on my blog from years ago titled 10 lbs of scrap clay. And it’s got stuff all neatly rolled into thick sheets and tucked into a...
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Making Baseball Canes and Slice Beads
Let me preface this with: I am no sort of sports person. I initially made baseball beads because a customer wanted some. This tends to be the reason I make a lot of the stuff that wanders off from...
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Canada Day is Coming Right Up
I made cute little flag beads a bit ago and figured I would write up the process and point it. I did a much looser version years ago but did a more fleshed out one and loaded it up today. Have fun,...
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Good Habits, Not Perfect Ones
Developing good habits makes life run so much more smoothly. Bad habits – combined with random poor choices – makes everything much less easy. Doing good work makes life simpler because you don’t need...
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Spirals With Scrap Clay
After a season of classes, craft shows and making beads and canes for sale in my Etsy shop… I have a lot of scrap clay. I’ve gotten better about how it gets used and keeping it separated in rough...
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Week 6: A Valentine’s Day Photo Holder
Here’s a simple project that uses scrap clay, a little wire or a paperclip, and either a little red, white, and pink clay or some acrylic craft paint. 1) Partially unbend and kink the end of a...
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Reclaim Your Clay
Having now done some pottery I understand the difference between the bucket for reclaiming your earth clays and the polymer clay version. Last year or the year before I broke down and set up plastic...
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Skinner Blends and Videos
Outside of crafting I do a fair amount of technical work – computer stuff, coding, some car electronics, amateur radio – and the last bit I’ve gotten back into doing web development and some graphics...
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