I had such great plans. I cleared my schedule to play in my studio last night with polymer clay. I had such high hopes. I was going to make some awesome beads and pendents and they were just going to be amazing. I was going to document the whole thing and show you the mind blowing things I made.
Well, after three hours, this was my progress:
I salvaged what I could, I’m not sure what I’ll do with them, but I’ll think of something. If anything, my first experience reminder.
Haha! So it goes. I’m good at just building things, but I was trying to learn some new techniques and it was just bad. I showed jason one of my beads and he was like “well, it’s pretty good for a first try” with a like “oh” look on his face. I was like “that was my 3rd try! Ahhh!” Oh, it’s so funny now, but it was so frustrating last night. I know some of you may say, “but they look okay, those little jelly roll ones aren’t so bad.” The thing is, I was trying to make these:
What cute little beads and they remind me of temari balls.
Well, since I can’t show you the awesome things I made last night and how I made them so great, I’m going to show you what others have made and how they are so great as well as give some links to polymer clay tutorials.
Look at all these amazing examples of what polymer clay should be! Lovely.
Starting from the top left clockwise:
Julie Space, Quay&Co, Elena Design Bead, Sky Blue Bunny, Blood Tear (I love those little sushi!!!), Aslan Crafts (I think these would make such a pretty necklace), and this awesome Quilt Shop made of polymer clay (via CRAFT).
And if you want to play with polymer clay, you should check out these sites:
A neat travel sized water color set.
The last four links are via CRAFTzine.
Polymer Clay Web – I liked this site the best, it seems like it has a lot of good information, especially if you are just getting started.
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So what happened to all the clay I used up?
Haha. I mixed it up and it did turn out a really nice shade of blue. At least when you botch something with polymer clay, you can always use it for something else.
I’ll try again tonight. I think I might be more of a carved pendent kind of girl :) I do want to try to make myself some little mini donut stitch markers. Maybe a little set of acorns with a squirrel for gpf too! I know I can model things and carve things. It’s just the cane mixing to make little designs with the clay that eludes me. I’ll get a handle on it eventually. Like everything else I do, I have to try it about one million times and then I “get it” and I take off with it running.
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Oh so I have some bad news, and I have some good news.
The bad news first. I accidentally marked the last 25 comments as spam! I’m still not sure how it happened because I was in the “moderation” section, but really I must not have been and that’s probably how it happened. Anyway, so they are gone and I’m so sorry. I love getting comments and to think I deleted them all for good off the blog makes me really sad. I’ll be more careful next time.
edited in (Thursday 7:29pm):: I did a whole lot of looking around and fussing around and learned that in the new version of wordpress there is no way to retrieve spam :( Then I looked around and around and found this. It explained exactly what to do to get my comments back. And so I followed it, installed the Akismet which is included in the plug in section of wp, and now all of the last 25 comments are back where they should be! Hooray!
Now for the good news! It’s been so hard to keep mum about this one too! And since April I have had to. I have a tutorial in CRAFT: 08! If you have a subscription you might have seen it already (p 58), but if you don’t, it goes on the news stands August 5th. They have info up on their blog (they even spelled my name right!) now, and even a preview of the zine too, so I thought it would be okay for me to gush about it, just a little bit. I’ll gush more soon though, after all, this is my first in print tutorial ever. I have a surprise for you coming up, maybe friday, definitely by Monday’s post.
More good news! I’m updating the shop a bit tonight so it will be all ready and updated by tomorrow morning.
And even more good news. If you are an rss feeder you might not have seen this, but I re-did the blog a bit and have a new banner and have re-arranged things a little bit. There is also a new page that’s all about Craft Leftovers Monthly and I updated the About page. I’m going to add a “how you can support Craft Leftovers” page soon (by monday) and it will have more than just giving me money or buying things from the shop (both great forms of support I can’t deny it) or leaving comments (moral support is more supportive than you may realize). I’ll post a link to it in Monday’s post. So if you are an rss feed person (I know I sure am) come to the blog and let me know what you think of the new banner.
See you all on Friday! I have a pattern ready! Yeah for patterns again!
Keep it Crafty Folks!
++ Kristin Roach ++
Oh can I relate!! When learning how to make polymer clay beads I got so frustrated trying to make the things in books! There are just so many steps that get left out of books because of space.
It looks like from your pictures, the clay was probably too soft and that it needs to be leached out to get the results they did in the book.
On my blog I can help you solve these types of problems so you don’t have to make the same mistakes I did.
Once you learn a few easy tricks you’ll have more success and then your husband will say, “You made those?! You should sell them!”
I was psyched to see your article in Craft! I’ve never tried weaving (other than those woven paper placemats we made in grade school) but it seems so much more accessible to me since I read the issue. Love the new look of the site, too!
Hi Kristin!
Great site, I’m so glad I found you – your web page is going into Google Reader right now. I love all things crafty (although I’m all thumbs, myself :)
And thank you for linking to my page (“Recovering a comment marked as spam in WordPress”). I had a terrible time retrieving a nice comment someone had left for me; the existing documentation was scanty, and I got so frustrated I wrote my own. Glad it helped you too!
Cheers,
Angie