Icy Blue Earrings

This month’s We’re All Ears challenge on Earrings Everyday goes a bit meta – it is inspired by another contest! 🙂 The original contest was Circles are the New Triangles, and was hosted by Spoonflower (where you can create custom-designed textiles – oooh!) Erin at Earrings Everyday rightly thought that the designs are fun inspirations for some earrings.

One of the designs caught my eye, since I’d bought a white dress with blue prints recently. It was one of those happy times when I instantly knew which inspired elements my earrings would contain – circles! triangles! fabric! white! blue! – and which technique I’d want to use – antiquing! Though the concept for these earrings is icy blue, looking at the results, I feel like there’s a bit of spring hiding in them too.

I began by rolling out a sheet of white Premo! at medium thickness, and poked pits into it in circular patterns. I then cut out triangular shapes for the focal beads, cut out arcs from their tops, smoothened the edges and faces, and baked them.

Now for the antiquing. I smeared slightly thinned blue acrylic paint on the beads and into their recesses, and after a while, wiped it off from the raised surfaces. I repeated the process once more, and lightly sanded the surfaces to remove unwanted paint. I then drilled two holes each along the top arc.

The beads were now ready for a thin coat of Vintaj glaze, and I left them to dry overnight since it was already pretty late in the day.

The next morning, I added a small jump ring to each of the holes, and connected them to a larger jump ring so it nestles in the top arc of each bead. I also added an earring finding to each of the larger jump rings.

For additional interest, I cut strips from some spare threadbare blue/green fabric, and used a lark’s head knot to tie each strip at the intersection of jump ring and earring finding. I dabbed E6000 at the back of each knot to secure it, and snipped away the ends a bit more.

I totally love this pair, and it’s a perfect fit for my dress.

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Don’t forget to check out entries from the other participants by heading over to the reveal at Earrings Everyday!

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Simple/Elaborate | ABS Challenge

The folks at Art Bead Scene Studio have extended their July challenge into August, and as a result, there’s no August picture. However, a while ago, they’d published their intended set of pictures for the whole year. Since I’m already done with July, I thought I’d try my hand at August from that earlier set, though I have no idea of the painting’s history. (That would have been an interesting read.)

August’s picture is of a woman bedecked with jewelry. What caught my eye was how each component in the adornments was pretty simple, but all put together, the effect is that of showy elaborateness. Now that’s a good idea to work on!

I didn’t want to go too simple, though, so for my beads, I thought of trying out a polymer clay technique that’s still a bit of a challenge to me – the Sutton Slice. The basic premise is to (a) press well-conditioned clay onto a texture sheet, (b) slice away all the clay that is not in the recesses of the sheet so you’re left with a clay pattern in the recesses, (c) press a clay sheet of a different color onto this clay so that the clay pattern sticks to this sheet, (d) admire your textured pattern. The process went much better this time – at least the slicing did – which I’m incredibly happy about. It did take me a while, though.

I flattened the texture just a little bit, and made barrel beads with this sheet. The pattern cracked (as expected) while I curved the sheet to form the beads, and that gives a weathered effect.

After baking the beads, I applied a couple of layers of Vintaj Glaze onto them. When I’d experimented with this glaze last time, it’d turned a bit tacky, but that didn’t seem to be the case this time. Maybe it’s because I applied thinner layers now and waited a longer time between layers? More experiments are needed for this one.

For the earrings, I’d thought of using a couple of glass beads that I own, but they didn’t fit the clay beads. After a lot of trial and error, I zeroed in on some metal components, including wire. Just some tweaks to the components – bead caps facing outward vs. inward makes a lot of difference, and so does the addition of a basic spiral of wire – did justice to my idea of simple contributing to elaborate.

That’s it! How do you like the earrings?

Helical Key Fob

This month’s Art Elements challenge has the theme of Seed Pods, and is hosted by Jen Cameron. When I signed up for the challenge, I didn’t really have any idea of what I would make, but soon after, I was reminded of seed pods from my school days. On our way to school and back, we would come across these helical seed pods strewn all around. I don’t see them anywhere these days, and I still don’t know what kind of trees they were from. I thought it would be awesome if I could represent them.

Research using the vague terms I could think of didn’t turn up anything useful, and anyway, I don’t think I even remember those seed pods that well, so I eventually ditched the research and focused on the artistic. That’s when the Cellini Spiral sprung to mind. I’ve admired the effortless gorgeousness of this stitch but had never worked on it myself. After trying and discarding a few color combinations, I ended up with a viable one – I just love these colors!

The Cellini Spiral stitch itself is easy to learn because it’s essentially a tubular peyote stitch, but the constant color change requires some attention, so it’s probably not TV stitching. 🙂 Mistakes are really easy to undo, though.

Since none of my bead caps seemed to really suit this piece, I ended up using a 16-gauge wire for the finishing. I strung the wire through the length of the helix tube and formed the ends. (This wire was so hard to work with!) I also made a jump ring for some extra swing. Now that’s a key fob I totally adore!

So it looks like this project wasn’t about technique-oriented challenges for me, but it makes up for that with the happiness it brought. Thank you, Jen, for the chance to channel a tiny piece of the past into the present. 🙂

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This is a blog hop, so please check out the insanely creative ideas from the other guests and the AE team!

Guests: Tammy • Raven • Alysen • Anita (You are here) • Cat • Kimberly • Rozantia • Sarajo • Divya • Caroline • Catherine • Kathy • Jill • Norma
AE Team: Claire • Caroline • Lesley • Niky • Laney • Susan • Marsha • Jenny • Cathy • Jen

Inspired by Iced Tea | We’re All Ears Challenge

The folks at Earrings Everyday host a themed monthly challenge – We’re All Ears – with a reveal and blog hop on the third Friday of the month. For July, we get to be inspired by our favorite summer drink! Doesn’t that sound like fun! 🙂

It’s pretty difficult to think of a summer drink when it’s rainy and chilly here in Bangalore 😉 but while I sipped hot tea one cold afternoon, its sister, the iced tea, came to mind. What’s not to like about a refreshing drink that readily accepts different flavors being blended in, and still maintains its inherent ‘tea-ness’ underneath!

I thought I could use the dregs from my tea for a pair of paper-based earrings… (Let the creativity flow!) And this was the result –

The pattern

I spread the dregs on a piece of paper, then quickly removed them. I then reduced the amount of dregs, then re-spread them again on the paper for a longer while, and removed them again. I repeated the reduce + re-spread + remove process a couple more times to get a pattern of smaller, darker brown specks over larger, lighter brown ones.

The beads

I cut out long right angled triangle paper strips, and made conical paper beads by rolling the strips around a thin piece of wire, using glue on the paper during the rolling to ensure the beads don’t unravel. These form the bead bases.

I then cut a couple of squarish shapes from the tea-patterned paper, ensuring that they are slightly larger than the length of the paper beads. I draped each square over a paper bead, retaining the same conical shape – but looser, like a slightly oversized dress – and made them stay put that way using glue.

I used a couple of layers of Mod Podge for some gloss, which I then reduced by lightly rubbing the beads with some fine sandpaper. Then I squished the base of these tea-patterned cones a bit, and twisted them. Ah now that’s a look I like!

The assembly

For each earring, I strung a dark brown bead through a long gold-colored head pin, then added the paper bead, and made an eye hole at the top, to which I attached an earring finding. For more interest, I added tiny pre-wired black loreal seed beads to a jump ring and attached it to the earring finding.

Yeah! I totally love this earring pair – simple, light and pretty. 🙂

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This is a blog hop, so please check out what the other participants have made by heading over to the reveal at Earrings Everyday.

Inspired Art Deco Earrings

The folks at Art Bead Scene Studio feature beautiful artwork every month, and invite their readers to create art beads, and art-bead-incorporating jewelry, inspired by this artwork. July’s inspiration is Art forms in Nature, Plate 85, Ascidiae, by Ernst Haeckel.

Haeckel’s work was interesting indeed, and what blew me away was his incredibly stylized representations of animals – instant inspiration, indeed! Some stamps from my stash quickly came to mind, and in the end, I picked a filigree motif stamp to create art deco style earrings.

I mixed blue-green polymer clay since the beautiful sea creatures in the picture were inspiring as well. The beads themselves are simple stamped beads, with chalks and Perfect Pearls added in on some areas to accentuate the motif. I baked the beads on a curved surface to dome them slightly. During the bake, one of the beads chipped – I have no idea how – and later, I had to stick it back on using TLS and rebake the beads. All’s well in the end, though.

I debated about adding some gloss, or even a subtle shine, to the beads, but nothing really felt right, so finally, I just left them as is. The rest of the process involved incorporating some glass beads on wire to turn the clay beads into earrings.

So that’s my quick, inspired earring pair!

Stitch Marker Case | Art Elements Challenge

The team at Art Elements hosts themed monthly challenges, which involve a reveal and blog hop at the end of the month. The theme for June is Sunflowers, picked by Sue.

I read the theme announcement, and recalled this small, cubic container that I’ve appropriated for storing my stitch markers. I’ve always wanted to decorate it using polymer clay – nothing elaborate, just a background layer and a button each in the middle of its visible faces. I imagined sunflowers as the buttons, and decided to go ahead. For a project that I wanted to make for so long, I ran into quite a lot of unexpected turns, and the results were not what I expected. I’m still wondering if I can make some modifications, so this project is still a WIP.

Possible next step: mute the background a bit so it doesn’t overwhelm the sunflower buttons

I started out with the background, deciding to play with alcohol inks again. I drizzled some inks on a long strip of white Premo! clay (this goes around the body of the case), and spritzed it with alcohol, both when wet, and after a while when it dried up a bit. The pattern didn’t quite turn out like I expected it would, but I decided to use the strip. I followed the same process with a square sheet of clay for the lid.

For the sunflowers, I wanted to use different yellow clays from my stash. I used a mold to make flowers with each of the yellows, vertically sliced each flower into 5 roughly equally-wide pieces, then swapped pieces between different flowers. Now each flower has stripes of slightly varying yellows, and I like this look. (The flowers look a bit wan now on the bright background. In hindsight, I should’ve lightened the background – maybe by covering it with a layer of white-tinted-translucent clay? But well…)

Meanwhile, I realized too late that the case is not all metal like I’d somehow always thought it was. (Weird how we sometimes don’t notice things right in front of us.) Only the lid is metal, and the rest of the body is plastic – unbakeable, sigh. Should I try a different material? I didn’t really want to. I remembered reading about some polymer clay artists getting around this problem, making their plastic container bases withstand the baking by filling them up with water to the brim. (I should’ve tested this out before I covered it with clay, but well… :))

* I finally found the water tip, demonstrated (with pictures) by Garie Sim.

I put things together, covering the case with the background sheets, and adhering the flowers using a bit of liquid clay. The flowers still fell down or slid down a bit though, so I used a heat gun to bake them slightly and keep them in place. I burned one of the flowers in the process, but then thought “why not?” and burned the rest in a controlled manner. I’d originally thought of antiquing to highlight the texture of the flowers, but this works too!

Then came the baking, with the case filled to the brim with water. I don’t think I’ve ever been so anxious and uncertain since my first ever polyclay bake. I’m happy to report that the water-filling tip was a great one! The case is completely undamaged, and the clay still fits the case well.

All things considered, I’m amazed that this project was at least this successful – there were way too many go-with-the-flow moments with this one – and as always, I definitely learned something new. Thank you, Sue, for the inspiration that finally got me working on this long overdue item from my list! I hope I finish it to my satisfaction soon.

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Since this is a blog hop, I hope you check out what the AE team and the other guests have made for this challenge!
Guests: Alysen • Anita (you are here) • Cat • Divya • Jill • Kathy • Linda • Linda • Mischelle • Norma • Raven • Sarajo • Tammy
AE Team: Caroline • Cathy • Claire • Jenny • Laney • Lesley • Sue

Kaleidoscopic Earrings

Sometimes, an idea strikes you, and regardless of whether you know how to execute it or not, it persists. That’s just what happened this month when a concept for a pair of earrings popped into my mind, which would work for not one but two challenges! I didn’t know if it would work out, but I did know I had to try. So these are the earrings I made using polymer clay, and they’re mostly true to how I envisioned them in my mind. That means happy times!

This project also marks my attempting canes after a long hiatus from when I tested the caning waters. I used simple colors and simple patterns for the cane – nothing too ambitious until I get better at it. 😉 The cane turned out pretty usable, but there’s some distortion from the reduction, and I’ll need to figure out how to avoid that. The slicing also resulted in some distortion, and I learned later that I should let it cool well before I start slicing. (Lesson to remember for the future.)

As for the making of the beads – I tried out a different hollow bead concept since I knew I was going to use cane slices on the bead. I covered large, metallic beads in brown-black Premo clay – also ensuring that I poked holes in the clay to match the ones in the underlying beads. I baked the beads, and then sliced them into hemispheres so I could remove the metallic beads. I then used some liquid Sculpey to adhere the halves back together, also sticking the cane slices in a kaleidoscopic pattern along the join using more liquid clay. Another round of baking, and the beads were done!

Well not fully done, of course. I wanted to glaze them, and tried out some Vintaj Glaze for the first time. I loved it when I initially applied it, but after a day or two, I find that it’s a bit sticky, so I guess it’s not viable.

Anyway, continuing with the earrings – now I only had to add in other beads into the mix. I used beads and headpins to make simple embellishments revolving around the color scheme of the focal beads, put them all together, and voila! we have super-lightweight earrings.

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With these earrings, I’m participating in these challenges –

• Art Bead Scene Studio’s June monthly challenge, which features an oil painting, Les Ibis, by Jean Metzinger. Jean’s role in Cubism inspired me to go with the cane-based concept, and the colors and the nature theme definitely contributed.

• Earrings Everyday’s We’re All Ears challenge, which features Kaleidoscopes as the inspiration for June. And who hasn’t been mesmerized by those? 🙂 I used mirroring of cane slices for the pattern on the beads, inspired by those in kaleidoscopes. I’m also pretty excited since it’s my first time participating in this challenge! 🙂 This is a blog hop, so do check out the entries from other participants by clicking on the Linky Tools link below.

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