Crystals

I had so much fun playing with clay the other day that I decided to do it again today.

I've been thinking a lot about Christmas gifts for this year. I typically make something for my loved ones, be it a cross-stitched design, magnets, something sewn, or a necklace. Last year, however, I don't think I made a damn thing. And that's upsetting to me. I like giving handmade gifts as I think they're more personal than just buying items off a wish list. (Granted, at least with a wish list you *know* the person who made the list actually wants what that person would get. Hand-made things may be made from love, most of the time they're not very useful. Though, knowing this doesn't stop me from forcing my homemade crafts onto people. Sorry. :))

So, I want to do a lot of clay work. Not that I'd necessarily sculpt things for people this year (lord knows I'll need a LOT more practice before I go and hand out my little sculptures), but I just want to get to know polymer clay a bit better so I have it open as an option if I decide to go crazy and make, say 50 of Wol down there and give him to everyone I know. Knowing me, I'd probably change him up a bit and make him obnoxious colors too just so I could see that quizical look on everyone's face as they open up a teeny box and find an itty bitty hot pink owl blankly staring back at them.

Anyway...

I thought I'd play a bit with translucent clay and colored pearl clay today. I had this idea to make blue crystals. I used a bit too much Blue Pearl, so they turned out a lot darker than I'd intended. And translucent is a bit of a misnomer as the clearest the translucent clay gets on it's own is about as clear as watered down milk. I also mixed a little bit of ultra fine glitter (because I'm a girl, and it's all about shiny) into two of them (the smallest crystal shaped one and the ball).

"A ball?" you ask? Why yes. After making the first three crystals, I had this epiphany that since how I shaped the crystals was by shaving off the sides, I could potentially keep making crystals for all eternity with this itty bitty bit of clay and I just couldn't do it! So I rolled it up and decided crystals could be ball-shaped too. (Yes, I also know that ball-shaped should be cylindrical, I just kinda like saying 'ball' ^.^)

So here they are.

Before cooking in the oven:


And a very, very blurry after oven/sanding/polishing:

Don't judge my photography... I used my phone to take the pictures and the light in my apartment is incredibly crappy.

What you can't see in the pics (apart from sharp edges) is the depth and shimmer they have. I can't wait to try this again with a little less blue and maybe a little more glitter - the glittered crystal looks cool because I added the glitter in a sizable chunk and didn't mix it very well so there are some ribbons of shiny shimmer.

Learning, gotta love it!

Nada

I polished up my little birdie, but other than that, I spent my day on my couch under a blanket with my cat thinking she'd died and gone to lap-land.

No pictures either. Just picture the little owl below a bit more shiny.

See you tomorrow.

Wise

Like much of the country, I've been sitting and watching the election coverage all night -- watching the USA make history. I am, in a word, overjoyed.

Listening to Barack Obama speak, I can't help but feel hope for the next four years.

During the last couple hours as I sat in my living room listening and watching as the states' votes got tallied, I got out a stash of polymer clay and started to play with a ball of it. I'd had this idea in my head of making a little figurine of sorts but, having never really sculpt a thing in my life, I wasn't quite sure how to go about it. So, I did what I usually do - look up references (in this case pictures) and then discard them as I make my own way to do something.

I just took him/her out of the oven, so s/he hasn't been sanded or polished yet (I think I'll actually do that tomorrow because my pillow has started to shout my name {sick feeling yesterday has turned into a full blown cold today [which always makes me wonder where all that crap that comes out of your nose comes from]}), so please don't be too hard on him/her! S/He has some wrinkles that will be softened tomorrow.

Sadly, I haven't named him/her yet (obviously, as the little guy/girl is still being called as such), so if you have any suggestions, I'm open to suggestions!

Front:


Back (with a dime for reference):


And a really fuzzy close-up (I really need to break out my camera manual and figure out how to manually focus):


This was a lot of fun to do, and I can totally see making more little sculptures! I might even venture into using multiple colors!

Bracelet

I was plumb out of inspiration today.

I know, right? Just three days into November, and I'm already hurting for ideas?

Well, not to give excuses, but I had a really busy day at work today (which means no time to daydream about projects), hardly any sleep the night before (which means my brain was already addled more than usual), and I do believe I'm coming down with a cold (which, of course, means all I want to do is crawl into bed). So yeah. Creativity? Not so much.

So, after sitting and looking at all my craft supplies for over an hour with no ideas springing from my head, I went rummaging through some of my jewelry books.

I have a very limited supply of wire at the moment as I've been hesitant to buy more (what with silver prices going through the roof), so if I was going to do a wire jewelry project tonight, it needed to be a small one.

In Contemporary Bead & Wire Jewelry, I found a bangle bracelet that I figured would be not too difficult and something I could wear.

My supplies:

metal block
jewelers hammer
round nose pliers
10-11 small beads of your choosing
I used 2 gauges of wire - one thin enough to slide small beads onto (I'm guessing about a 22) and one thick enough to hold it's shape with minimal work hardening (about an 18?).

**Let me use this as an opportunity to tell you how important it is to mark your baggies with your various gauges of wire in it. I ended up holding up my SIX bags of wire and comparing them to figure out which one was which. I do not recommend it.**

The project actually called for 3 gauges of wire (the thickest for the frame, the thinnest for the beads, and the middle to wrap around the entire bracelet again to finish it off), but I didn't have enough of the middle length to make it all the way around, so I stopped at 2. It would probably look a bit more polished with 3, but eh.

I apologize for the blurriness of the photos. I could not get them to come in focus in the dark rooms of my apartment.

The front:


The back:

And now, I'm off to bed.

Good night!

Bronzed Leaf

I went to a bead show about six months ago and spent a good two hours walking up and down the aisles of vendors, looking for that special something to inspire my creativity. I'd been in a rut for a few months - hadn't made one single necklace, and I thought if I could just find a pretty pendant or handful of gorgeous beads I could break out and start creating again.

So I walked, and I walked. I looked and I looked. I noted things that I wanted to go back and look at again before I picked what it was I was going to purchase. This girl doesn't take purchasing things lightly... unless, of course, the items are on sale. Then she can't seem to not buy them. I have three new pairs of shoes I bought yesterday to attest to that. The kicker? Only one pair of them fit me properly. But hey! They were all half off! Store closing sales are the best. For the store.

Anyway, one of the pendants that really caught my eye was at a fairly small booth with no one looking at the pieces. An elderly man sat behind the table with his middle-aged son - I have a tendency to find out these details. Hey, I'm nosey, what can I say?

The son explained to me that the pendants I was looking at were actual leaves that had been preserved in various metals. They were all truly stunning. Fragile looking, lacy metallic veins. Absolutely gorgeous. I took about 10 minutes to find the one I purchased, and now that I look around my place, I can't find the little informational sheet that it came with so I have no idea what type of leaf it is...

I'd been trying to figure out exactly what I was going to do with it for months. Hell, even today with my focus squarely placed on it, it still took me hours to make a decision.

I forgot to take a 'before' picture, but here's a list of the things I used:
black coated copper wire (22 gauge)
Soft Flex beading wire
copper colored seed beads
metallic leaf
round nosed pliers
jewelry jig (for making the designs - I'd never used one before as I'd always just done the bending by hand... I have to say the jig really cuts down on time!)

The result:


My bust in the above picture is a bit on the tiny side, so here's a picture of it on to give a bit of scale to the thing.

Over all, I'm pretty pleased with the way it turned out. I think the one thing I'd do differently next time is add a bit more of the copper seed beads (they're only holding the loops together for the smaller wire) to add a bit more color.

This project took me about 4 hours from start to finish.

Autumn

So, I was thinking to myself today, "Self, are we going to do NaBloPoMo this year?" And then I walked up the street, saw the changing colors, and thought, "what the hell?" (Not that the walking or the colors had anything to do with my decision... Like many of my thoughts, this one happened completely randomly.) So, here I am. Posting.

I'm doing things a bit differently this year, however. I had decided sometime in October that I was going to use the month of November as my creative month. I know I shouldn't just limit my creativity to one month, but everyone's gotta start somewhere, am I right?

Enter: Zee Creates.

I'll be posting my crafty endeavours here. Please feel free to comment, give advice (because most of the time, I have no idea what I'm doing), or just say hi. I'm hoping this month will get my ass in gear and get some of these ideas I've had floating around in my addled brain actual form.

30 days starts now!