Making more Polymer Clay Beads

Hi just a quick post to show you some of my very recent makes with some polymer clay beads I have been making.

Here are the beads fresh from the oven.

And here are some pieces I have made so far, I think there is nothing nicer than being able to make your own beads and then make something which is truly unique with them.

Neapolitan Chunky Necklace

Even though I made these beads myself I do really love how they turned out, especially the cream beads with the flower detail, I surprised myself, problem is can I part with them?

Neapolitan Chunky necklace v2 with pink agate beads

I was trying to get a slightly different look with this necklace above, even though it is made with the same beads.  At first I was going to make it up as a longer necklace with silver plated tubes between the beads, but I then noticed how well these pink agate beads went with my beads and the design totally changed.

Neapolitan Flower Pendant Necklace on a silver plated chain

Leftover clay and a few slices of the flowers which were left made up this pendant.  Another I’m really pleased with, I’ve also applied flowers to the back, so if it flips round you won’t notice.

Navy & Grey Chunky Necklace v3

This is the third chunky navy and grey necklace, made with all the blue clay I had left.  Similar to the last one (in my last post) but with silver plated spacers added this time and slightly longer.

I hope you like?

Have a great day.

Linda x

PS.  For those who visit my blog on a regular basis you may have noticed that the layout has changed.  The reason for this, is that I’ve never really been happy with how my blog looked before, for one I couldn’t get a pull down menu for my jewellery and I didn’t really like the colour palette.  So I thought it was time for a change.  I’ve gone for something a bit simpler this time in appearance, its not perfect  yet, but its getting there.   What do you think?

Large Navy Beads

Yes strange title I know, but have you ever tried looking for very large beads and in particular navy coloured beads?  It’s not something I had ever thought about before because to be honest navy is not one of my favourite colours for jewellery, yes a navy jacket or a pair of trousers but jewellery no.

This came about because after seeing the polymer clay necklace I made which was in my last post, a lady contacted me and asked if I would be able to make a similar necklace but in navy and grey as she wanted it to match a dress she had bought. My first thought was can I actually get navy and grey clay?  Well in Fimo soft you can get a light grey but you can’t get navy, the closest you can get is Windsor, so that is what I bought, hoping when I varnished it, it might be OK.

She asked for a chunky beaded necklace that was mainly navy but included some grey. Now my first mistake, was not taking a deposit, those who do commissions all the time, will say that’s the first thing you should ask for, but I saw making the beads as a challenge and forgot all about the business side of things. I even said if you don’t like it when it’s made don’t worry about it.

So 2 days later, yes it took that long to make the beads, cook them, varnish them and then design and make up the necklace, I emailed a picture to the lady.  Within an hour I had a message back saying it wasn’t really what she had in mind.  Oh! What do I do with it now?

One of the first things I did was go and talk to some friends on a beading and jewellery page, who shouted at me for not taking a deposit.  But this is also when I discovered that it’s quite rare to find good navy coloured beads and very large ones especially, I hadn’t thought about it before, although come to think of it you can usually only buy large acrylic beads. The largest beads I made were about 2.5cm’s in size and it turned out to be quite a weighty piece.

They asked me to post a picture out of interest (the page is strictly no selling) but within a few minutes someone wanted to buy it and I’m pleased to say it is now safely with its new owner and they love it.  They also wanted to know if I sold my beads, I’ve never really considered doing this.

To finish off my little story the lady I originally made the necklace for later that same day contacted me again and said she had changed her mind and wanted to buy it.

A lesson for me about taking deposits but also a lesson for the buyer too, don’t make decisions too quickly.

With my left over beads I made this other necklace, which is still available.

And I have since made a new batch of beads! Oh what shall I make?

Take care.

Linda x

My earth/vintage colour jewellery showcase

Hi there, one of my favourite colours to work with is purple but just recently I seem to have been making quite a bit of jewellery with more earthy/vintage tones.  I say vintage because a Facebook group page I have joined, currently has a vintage colour pallet challenge to help us find our mojo, (we all seem to be struggling at the moment).  We can make anything as long as we use these colours.

As I don’t normally work with these colours I had to have a good look at the beads and supplies I already had and I finally came up with this cuff bracelet.

Then this sparked a thought in my head, “Why don’t I make some beads, in these colours?”  So that is what I did.  Out came the polymer clay again and  I had lots of fun experimenting with the extruder and making beads and pendants.

My first piece I left the beads un-varnished as I liked the earthy natural look, what do you think?

Then I made these donut pendants, which I did varnish, (I’m definitely keeping one of these for myself).

And lastly I made this necklace with varnished beads and copper spacer beads.

These are the other pieces I have made over the last few weeks and it was only when I had them all piled up together I realised they shared a similar colour palette or blended nicely together.

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What do you think?

Bye for now.

Linda x

Making Polymer Clay Beads

We have just had a bank holiday weekend here in the UK and for a change the sun was shining, but instead of making the most of it, guess what I was doing?  Making beads from polymer clay!  Yes I woke up on Monday morning with an idea for beads in my head. So out came my extruder, cutters, pasta machine and clay.

I can’t believe how easy these are to make especially with having the extruder, if you don’t have one of these and like playing with polymer clay you must get one.

Now I’m not sure if this post should be a ‘look what I made’ or ‘this is how I did it’.  I know I get lots of views and searches for polymer clay jewellery etc and views from people looking how to make polymer clay items.  So I think I will try a bit of both, ie. I will keep the ‘how I did it’ very simple.

What you need:

Extruder (I use a Makins)

Pasta Machine or Rolling Pin

1-1.5cm round cutter

Polymer Clay

Cutting Blade

Cocktail Stick

1) Select a few different/complimentary colours of polymer clay, I used Pink, Purple, Silver, White and Black.  Then condition each color of clay (ie. squeeze it, squash it, roll it, feed it through a pasta machine, anything to make it soft).

2) Once conditioned, put each piece of clay through the pasta machine on setting 4, or roll with a rolling-pin until it’s about 2mm thick.

3) Using the round cutter, cut as many circles from each piece of clay as you can.

4) Now using all the clay circles stack them together in whatever colour pattern you want. I made a couple of stacks of about 24-30 circles.  The colours on the outside will be your main colour. Roll the stacks gently to make sure the clay sticks together.

5) Now place the clay in the extruder (as per its instructions) and extrude the clay out through the end.

6) You should now have a long piece of clay that you can thinly slice into (1-2mm) pieces.

This is what it looks like when cut

7) I would suggest at this point that you go and wash your hands, to remove any clay colouring from your hands.

8) Now you need to condition some white clay (or whatever colour you want to use as your bead base).  Once you have done this, roll it out into a long sausage shape and cut into equal sections depending on the size of beads you want to make.  I made different sizes.

9) Roll each piece into a ball between your hands.  Now it’s time to add the extruded slices onto the ball, it’s entirely up to you how many you use or how close you do this.  Once you are happy with this, roll it again gently between your hands, maintaining its roundness.  The slices will become part of the ball.

10)  All you need to do now is to make a centre hole, using a cocktail stick or other tool for doing this.

11) Once you have made all your beads, bake them in the oven (as per the clays instructions).

12) When they have all cooled I always like to coat my beads in gloss varnish, I think it helps protect them and gives them a lovely glossy look.

Just a few of the beads I made, the rest are in the necklace above.

I hope you didn’t find that complicated, I always welcome, questions, feedback or comments.

Have a good week.

Linda x

How many ways to make a goddess bracelet?

If you already make jewellery, you may have heard of the Goddess bracelet.  For those that just like buying jewellery it is a double stranded beaded bracelet with rings separating each bead, which then gives it a lovely wavy pattern.

They are fairly simple to make and if you are interested in making one, here is a very good tutorial provided by The Gossiping Goddess , who I think may have invented this bracelet, but don’t quote me on that!

The thing with these bracelets, once you know the simple technique you can then start experimenting with different beads, patterns, materials that you can thread the beads onto, as long as you can thread the cord through the beads (cotton cord, tigertail, leather, suede, elastic, ribbon, even embroidery thread), the possibilities are endless and you can make a lovely unique bracelet and no jewellery making tools are required.

Take a look at these examples, provided by either myself and a fellow jewellery making friend.

Made by Itsmebeads Jewellery

Link to Itsmebeads Jewellery HERE.

Made by Itsmebeads Jewellery

The First Goddess Bracelet I made!

Pearl Goddess Bracelet (Made by me)

This one was made with elastic (Made by me)

Go on give it a try.

Bye for now.

Linda x

Bird Watch again!

For the last week or so, I have had a noisy little bird sitting in the tree outside my window, which I have now identified as a Goldfinch, a very pretty bird with a red, black & white head and yellow, black and white flecks on its wings.  I have since discovered that a pair of them have nested in the bush right outside my front door!

I don’t know if you remember last year I mentioned we had a pair of long tail tits nesting in our hedge at the front and I had a very traumatic day when their 3 babies fledged, two landing straight onto the ground and one deciding my husbands car windscreen looked like a good place to hide.  The reason I say traumatic a neighbours cat also spotted them!  There was me at 7am in my pj’s dashing out of the house to chase the cat away, pick the birds up and put them back in the hedge, you can imagine I spent most of the morning doing this until finally I got 2 of them to fly off into the trees and safety from the cat, but the third was a lot more trouble and didn’t seem ready to fly at all.  Eventually I put it in a bush in the wooded area where the other 2 had flown to, but I have no idea if it survived, I like to think that it did.

Long tail tit Fledgling (sorry not very clear)

Hiding in the car

The Guilty party!

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So I am dreading having to do the same with baby goldfinches!  For some reason because they nest in our garden we feel very protective of them.  I’ll keep you posted.

I am sorry for the randomness of my posts recently, I will get back to jewellery soon, promise!

Have a great day.

Linda x

Just About Beads

Reblogged from The Crafty Network:

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An unusual post for me here on The Crafty Network, as this post is all about Beads.  I think many of you know that I personally make jewellery, although I did have a dabble last year in mixed media design too, but I much prefer playing with beads.

Yesterday I visited the Up North Bead Fair, the first of their events this year which is held at Haydock Park Racecourse. 

Read more… 644 more words

Rather than re-writing this post which I wrote for The Crafty Network about The Up North Bead Fair, I thought it would be much easier to just reblog it. Lx