Saturday Share - Polymer Clay Headpins

Recently, I was presented with the challenge of coming up with a headpin component that could be used as a functional embellishment to another flat component.  With our fearless leader, Jennifer Cameron's gorgeous glass headpins as inspiration, I decided to try my hand at polymer clay ones.

My finished pin bouquet!

I started by making balled headpins of 18g copper.  Then I formed small round balls of clay. Initially, I wanted to keep them round and embed the copper pin within the ball, but they kept getting way distorted and plus, I wanted to texturize the clay.  I opted to flatten the balls by pressing them into my rubber stamp, then pushing the headpin through the middle.

Raw clay with headpins, and little balls waiting to be smushed.

I questioned whether just baking them as is would be strong enough for functional use, so I added liquid clay between the pin and clay.

Translucent liquid clay around the base of the headpin.

I pushed the clay base up to the pin, then cleaned off the excess liquid clay.

I also added it to the back of the piece, trying to work it down in the crevice!

I let them dry overnight and then debated how I was going to color them.  I decided I wanted them to have an "old world" feel to them and the texture plate I had used reminded me of a damask-type pattern, so I opted to use Pearl-Ex powder before baking, which left them with an irridescent glow.

After baking, I sealed them with Varathane in a matte finish.  Success!

In a light bulb moment, I thought this design would be cool with translucent clay, and had recently acquired a few packages of  Pardo Translucent clay.  After I first started playing with polymer clay, I purchased a great tutorial by Ginger Davis Allman, of The Blue Bottle Tree, featuring faux glass effects and wanted to give it a try.

After tinting the base clay with various alchohol inks, I made my bases as before.

After adding liquid polymer and  Pearl-Ex, plus some additional texture.

These turned out just ok...not very translucent though.

These, however, turned to molten blobs!

Well, as you can see, I need to go back and figure out my baking time/temperature for these!  My hubby really liked these burned ones, though!  I definitely will be adding some of the original ones to my shop and will be playing with the translucent ones some more...stay tuned!

Thanks for stopping by!

Saturday Share...Lacy Copper Washers

Haven't done a Saturday Share post in a long while, so I thought I would come up with a quick one! You all know of my affinity toward copper washers.  I love them for their versatility and since every time I go to Harbor Freight, I buy a new box, I have lots of them!  A month or so ago, I was working on a project that can't be shared right now, but was using a needle-lace technique I love, when a light bulb went off and I decided to try these Lacy Copper Washers!

These loops aren't even...don't be like me!

Materials needed:

Copper Washers

24g copper wire (about 1 foot per washer)

steel block

texturing hammer

round nose pliers

hole punch or drill

Choose your desired size of copper washer. The thinner ones are easier to punch and don't take as much annealing!

Anneal thoroughly and texture as desired with your steel block and hammer.

Mark where you are going to punch holes.  Evenly spaced holes makes for consistent loops.

Punch or drill holes...make them large enough to accomodate at least 2 passes of wire.  These are actually pretty just like this!

Thread end of wire through the front, leaving a short tail.  This will be trimmed and tucked in later.

Wrap the wire around the edge of the punched hole.

Make a loop and thread the wire through the next hole in the opposite direction (from the back).

You can use your round nose pliers or a thick piece of wire to help keep the loops the same size.  Place the pliers in the loop against the metal and pull the wire tightly.

Continue until you have completed all the loops.  Trim the ends and press tightly to the metal.  File or sand any rough edges.

A cool variation...add a bead before threading the wire to create your loop!

There you go!  The possibilities are endless!  I think I am going to enamel some!  Stay tuned!

Saturday Share - Recycle, Re-Purpose, Re-Use!

If  you are like me... a jewelry designer, component maker, art bead hoarder, project procrastinator with lots of unfinished pieces, and on a bare-bones budget, you may find affordable storage to be a challenge.  I have lots and lots of bead boxes and shelving, but since my main studio is upstairs, and my family is downstairs (and I like to spend time with the fam), I do a lot of portable creating.  

After looking around for an affordable solution, I found that going through the recycling bin or the kitchen cupboards led to some great storage/organizing solutions, especially for the short term! I thought I would share a few with you today.  Pardon my mess;)

Above are plastic food trays in 2 different sizes.  These are so versatile and useful.  I have one that has scrap silver, one for scrap copper, some have unfinished projects, some just have odds & ends from cleaning up my work space.

Plastic trays from frozen entrees for kids are cool, since they have little compartments for several things.  Unfortunately, different types are different sizes so they don't stack.

These are some of my favorites..they are from Lunchables and they stack so nicely!  You can use these to separate different projects that might be in different stages of completion. I have quite the collection of these hiding here and there!

These are also from Lunchables, but a different type. Perfect for small collections or projects. Okay, don't judge...my 13yo really likes the pizza ones and you know how picky they can be sometimes!

Another favorite, water bottle caps.  Perfect for tiny beads that you don't want to get mixed up with everything...they are small enough to put into one of the above trays to add another level of separation!  I like adding one to my project trays to collect little wire snips, especially sterling!

Here we have the ultimate poor woman's organization tray...the styrofoam egg carton!  Again, totally stackable, perfect for when you are cleaning your area and are separating stuff.  I put these in a couple of drawers on my rolling work station in the kitchen.  Its always fun to pull them out and find little treasures you forgot you stashed there. Obviously, this is not for heavy beads, but once a tray gets bent or broken, just recycle it and eat some more eggs for the next tray!

Ferraro Roche, anyone?  No, not fine assorted chocolate confections...

The perfect little nooks for unfinished things, or little collections of beads you hope to work with, and bonus, there is a lid! This and the egg carton scenario were actually inspired by Heather Powers'  Muffin Tin Challenge, but I like to actually use my muffin tins for baking!

Hubby and I shop at Costco a lot and buying things in bulk leaves you with a lot of pretty sturdy boxes.  These 2 top my aforementioned rolling shelf and hold my tools.  The square box also has an anvil and a steel block that makes it heavy enough to stay put!

When I decided my post today was going to cover this topic, I polled my AJE teammates to see if they used any recycled or re-purposed items in their studio.

Lindsay loves using the plastic lids from Dannon yogurt cartons to keep those pesky tiny seed beads corraled.  After she is done, the lid is flexible enough to fold and pour the beads back in their bag without creating a mess!

Linda repurposes these little flexible silicone cups intended for cooking for tiny beads as well.

Linda also uses these adjustable spice racks for storing glazes.

Several folks like using inexpensive cookie sheets for beading - they stack nicely!

Jenny uses antique dishes and cigar boxes for all types of purposes in her studio.

Lesley likes to recycle these tubs that used to hold washing liquid tabs - perfect for 1 lb of clay!

How about you?  Do you have an interesting use in your studio for recycled or repurposed items?  We would love to hear!

Saturday Share - Abundance Earrings

Happy Saturday all!  My post today took a completely different turn from what I had planned, but that's okay ;)  I decided to tie this week in with my last post about wrapped loop links and created an earring design to share with you.

Copper, Czech glass, polymer clay charms (by me!) and sterling.

I named these "Abundance", because, well, just look at them! The colors are so rich and the dangles really make them....abundant!

The 3 czech glass beads are connected by wrapped loops, but with a bit of a twist.  I had been playing with a design that I hoped would be a bracelet, and I still am, but it is basically a zig-zag pattern with the loops on the outside, just perfect for adding dangles.

Back to the earrings...you will need:

Copper wire - I used 22g
   2-8 inch lengths for the wrapped loop section
   3-2 inch lengths for your dangles
Sterling wire - 20g, about 2.5 inches (or earwires of your choice)
Assortment of Czech glass beads. I used 3 for the base...2 6mm and 1 8mm, plus flowers and leaves for the dangles.
2 earring charms
round nose pliers
flush cutters
butane torch

Bend 1 of the 8 inch pieces of copper wire about an inch away from one end, connect to one of the charms and start a wrapped loop.

Add one of the 6mm beads and wrap the second side, but don't cut the wire!  Here is how we are going to make the zig-zag.  

Put an 8mm bead on the wire and repeat the wrapped loop process as above...don't cut the wire!  Repeat again, and add the 2nd 6mm bead.  When you finish this loop you can cut.

I don't have photos of the next steps, sorry, I was in a hurry to get done!

With your pliers, straighten your loops so the are nice and flat and everything hangs right.

Using a butane torch, ball 1 end on 2 of the short pieces of copper wire.  These will be to dangle your flowers.  Connect to the earring base on one of the side loops via wrapped loop.

Connect the leaves in the same way...since the hole is horizontal, thread the wire through, and  bend it up and create the wrapped loop much in the same way as wrapping a briolette.

For the little tendril at the top, ball both ends of your remaining 2 pieces of wire with your torch.  Make sure the balls are sized so at least one end will fit through the top wrapped loop.

Fold the wire over and twist once.  Put your round nose pliers just behind the balled end and curl the wire around, repeat.

Use the sterling wire to make your earwires, and attach, or use earwires of your choice.  

Now, repeat for the 2nd earring, but reverse the layout of the dangles.

There you have it!  Fun, colorful, joyful earrings!  The design possibilities with these are pretty much endless...use gemstone briolettes instead of charms...keep the zig-zag going and make shoulder dusters...so many choices!  I hope you will give it a try and I would love to see your creations!

Saturday Share - Playing with Precious Metal Clay

If someone asked me to choose one new jewelry medium to learn, no matter what the expense, it would be a toss up, I think between lampworking and precious metal clay...both require extensive tools, kilns, materials.  Since I torch-fire enamel,  I happen to have some of the supplies needed for lampwork...torch, mandrels, glass rods, but no kiln.  I took a class ages ago and pick a glass rod up occasionally when I am sitting at my enameling station and make the odd bead here and there.  But since I have no kiln, it really isn't feasible for me to invest much time in that.

I figured precious metal clay would be out of the question as well, but, lo and behold I discovered PMC3, which can be cured with a torch...no kiln!

I wanted to try it, but it took some gumption!  This stuff is not cheap.  I finally dove in after getting a newsletter from a site that was offering a free texture sheet with any purchase.  I splurged on a 16g package..not the smallest, but definitely not a huge amount!

The meager contents - 16g

After receiving it and before playing, I watched a few You Tube videos to make sure I had the rules down...keep your clay well covered so that it doesn't dry out, make sure to keep all your tiny scraps. So, I got all my stuff together, made do with what I didn't have and held my breath!

I chose a small mold I had made for my polymer clay and made 2 small pieces.  Boy, this stuff is sticky...I know there is a special cream to keep it from sticking to your hands....if I keep at it, I will have to get some.  I used just a tad of olive oil like the videos suggested.  I went ahead and put small holes in the pieces, them left them to dry.

Here they are all dried out...now is the time to sand them or clean them up in any way.

Since these pieces were small, they didn't take very long to sinter at all.  The binder burns off really quickly, then you need to hold the piece at a glowing pink, but not glassy, for about 2 minutes.  After that, quench in cold water.  The pieces will be a matte, white color at this point, but after buffing/polishing with a brass brush, this is what you will get:

 Bright and Shiny!

After LOS...cool!

I thought they turned out great, so I decided to make some more!  Using some more molds I bought for polymer clay, and did small layered pieces.  

After drying and about to be torched!

All cleaned up and patina'ed!

After the patina, I put them in the tumbler for about an hour, which really softened the edges a bit and and enhanced the design.

These 4 pieces took about 2/3 of that chunk of clay shown earlier, so that amount is just enough for someone to decide it really isn't the medium for them, or really open new doors for a designer.  In my case, I was really happy with how these turned out and want to buy more clay so I can play some more, at least until something new catches my fancy!

Go play!

Melissa Meman

Melismatic Art Jewelry

Art. Life. Love.