Beaux Bangles with Carol Blackburn

I was lucky enough to attend a workshop with the lovely Carol Blackburn yesterday. The workshop was organised by Clectic Events (Rebecca Thickbroom) so I knew it would be well organised, and indeed it was! It was great to spend time with so many lovely people. To catch up with some people I now consider old friends and to meet some new friends too! And even better I get to see a lot of them again this Sunday at the London Polymer Clay Group Meeting .

I haven't got long to write this post as I am preparing for my husbands 40th birthday on Thursday (i.e. making all the stuff I meant to make for him weeks ago but...) so I shall show you what I made (quickly snapped photos too - sorry).

I made 2 bangles in the workshop, although I had to finish bits of both of them at home today.

The first bangle I made I used Fimo, as the workshop was being sponsored by them and we had been given some blocks. I used to work with Fimo soft until they reformulated it and it became too soft for my liking, then I swapped to Kato and have never looked back. I have sanded it  but it doesn't feel as nice as the Kato and I found it too sticky and squishy when I was working with it. It does smell better though! I really like one part of the bangle - this bit here

it's a neat looking pattern and I like the spread of colours. And I really don't like this bit

it looks kind of smeared and messy and the colours don't work. The structure of it is good and sturdy and I like the technique Carol showed us.

The stripy one  is a lot more chunky than the first one and has a core of sculpey ultralight (thanks Toni for providing it!) so it isn't much heavier. It was the first time I have worked with sculpey ultra light, and possibly the last, it's like marshmallow! The rest of the bangle is made with Kato clay. It needed more sanding at the middle stage really but I rushed it as I wanted to get it covered in the class so the outer profile is a little lumpy and bumpy and not the best shape. It's quite a striking piece of jewellery though and you don't see the lumps and bumps.

I've done some more baking experiments (which I will report when I have a moment) so I hope with my new knowledge from Carol's workshop and my experiments I can make strong skinny bangles too. Can't wait to try out some more big bangles but it will have to wait, birthdays and then school holidays - hmm perhaps my children would like to make some too! My 6 year old son loves to make jewellery for his girlfriends, will have to find a child size bangle form!

The Ripple Effect is another Carol Blackburn/Celctic Events workshop happening in London on the 21st August. I can't make that one unfortunately but I've seen the sample pieces and they look great!

Blogger down - lost post - bangle problems

I guess many of you bloggers know that blogger has been down for a while (since last night for me in the UK). It made me realise that I have no other record of the information in my blog as I wanted to check back on my - things I want to make post to remind me and couldn't access it. Can you back up blogs? Must investigate.

Also I wrote a long wordy post on bangle problems - blogger has probably chosen not to publish it cause it was too long and boring! I will try and summarise it this time round.

I have trouble making solid polymer clay bangles, the often seem to break easily. At first they seemed to break at the join so I now add a bit of polypaste and make sure I smooth the seams carefully. That solved the popping at the seams but now means they break elsewhere instead! See evidence below

 These were made from very well conditioned Kato scrap clay extruded through the largest makins D shape die (about 8mm wide and about 5mm at it's thickest). Joined carefully with some polypaste, baked on an empty coke can at 150 oC (300F) for 40 mins. They broke when I was carefully sliding them from the coke can, the first break was not at the join. Glad they broke then rather than after I had taken the time to cover them  I suppose!

This bangle is made from a sausage of well conditioned Kato clay joined carefully with some polypaste in the join, covered with a decorated sheet of cane slices, baked on an empty coke can at 150oC for 1 hour. It looked fine and felt strong so I wore it for a morning. All good until I decided to sand it. Almost the minute I started gently sanding with my soft micromesh cloth draped over my fingers it broke. It is quite skinny, about 8mm in diameter, like some others I have been wearing which are fine - here's a post about them.

So where am I going wrong with them? My husband has a feeling that baking them for a long time they are strong but brittle and I should under cure them rather than cure them for longer so they are more ductile, less brittle. I was about to start some baking trials for different times when I came across a post from Tony Aquino on the Kato Polyclay Facebook page stating that the higher the cure temperature the stronger the clay will be. I will try and test some different temperatures too. What I need for bangles is something with a little flex I guess. I've had a few suggestions from clever people at the PCC Forum to try out. I will report back with anything I find out, but please leave a comment or mail me if you have any ideas I could try to make bangles that don't break!

thanks

Cara

Latest jewellery - and it's all for me!

I haven't had any new jewellery for myself for a while now, I was busy making sale stock and completing orders. So far this year things have been quieter so finally made myself some new things. Here's some of them

3 blue and white skinny bangles. I am road testing these to see how they strong they are. Baked them extra long to try and make sure they were strong!

Blue and white oval cabochon pendant, I do love this simple blue and white flower cane. This is the second batch of the cane I've made and I can see I will be making more.

The blue and white colours are also the colour palette for this week in the Flickr Colour Palette a Week group - do come and join in with whatever medium you craft in.

Hollow beads made using the technique I learnt on Christine Dumont's Hollow Bead Workshop. She is just about to start an online workshop for these beads so follow the link and check it out.

Hollow beads strung as a necklace


I've more to show you tomorrow. Hope you all have a great weekend
Cara

Busy polymer clay day for all the family

We have been busy playing with polymer clay for a lot of this afternoon (me with my bad foot up on a chair and lots of pain killers). Here are some things we made

James made an X wing (from star wars)

Daisy made a spoon, I gave her the bits she is too young(not quite 4) to be making roses on her own, yet....

I made my first kalidescope cane which was originally going to cover a

base to hold some pens for gifts but I had the wrong type and they melted in the oven so I changed to making  teaspoons and used a few slices of the cane to made a bead just because and off course the cane end tortoises I now always make. See polymer passions blog  for details of how to make them.  

Here is one of the 'filament wound' spoons I made as a gift for some people I used to work with 'filament winding' . It is a composite materials manufacturing technique where you wind carbon fibre around a steel madrel to make a carbon fibre tube. This is made from fine extruded black polymer clay (fimo in this case) wrapped round a teaspoon handle that had been coated in a layer of black fimo. I think this effect would be good using some colours so I will try it out another day.

I also  made a rather large bangle! I bought the tutorial from Tonjas Treasures but hadn't printed it out so tried it from memory having read it once. Being on crutches I formed it round a glass on the table which was to hand as I can't just rumage around like I would normally. I don't have any texture plates so must get round to making some to do this next time.