Hello all! I am so excited to share with you my trials and tribulations for this month's AJE CoM.
I was picked as a special guest this month and I received in the mail the most adorable hand blown miniature glass cabochons. They were made by Sue Kennedy of SueBeads. My 3 pieces are: 2 hearts and one star.
I was sooo excited to get started! I Googled and Pinned some ideas and narrowed down the medium I would use to polymer clay. I have worked with polymer half a dozen times... Luckily for me, once was with Heather Powers of Humblebeads and another time was with Andrew Thornton. So, I had a basic idea what I was doing. In my mind I wanted to combine these elements ...
So I headed to Allegory Gallery and had a Clay Date with Laurel. I made a Skinner Blend with one part transparent clay (I did not think this through). Transparent clay is not the same consistency as other polymer clay colors. So this did not work out as well as planned, but I kept going, made a cane, sliced away and covered a heart shape.
I did a little tweaking and fixing then I baked it. And baked it, and baked it, and baked it. It never seemed to get hard and the transparency never seemed to be transparent!!! Well, I got frustrated, and forgot about it, and it overcooked.
Here's my sad example of overcooked polymer clay with transparent in the mix which turns to blaa.
Well, I couldn't very well turn this in as a project! My two teachers for this medium would be appalled, I would be ousted from the blogosphere, and never asked to play again at AJE! So I popped the hearts off and threw the clay away.
Time For A Do Over!
The 'Polymer Clay Incident' all took place two days after getting the cabs, so I knew I had enough time to rethink my project. That's when I started carrying the cutie cabs around with me, I would put them in my pockets for inspiration... until I almost fed them to my dogs! (They got mixed up with treats in my pocket!)
Then I put them in a safe place, out of harms way, and promptly forgot where I put them. Fast forward to two days till due date...
I have now decided I would try Soutache! I have never tried this medium before. I don't seed bead let alone bead embroidery, I'm afraid of it. But this didn't look too hard! (Hahaha!) I picked an inspiration photo and set to work...
How fun does that look! Awesome right? I could do this! Off to Joann Fabrics! Thank goodness the clerk knew what I was looking for, because the soutache was in the last row in the bottom shelf in a random stuff box! And all they had was yellow and silver. Oh well, I could work with that, I grabbed some cuplink chain and was outta there!
And In case you can't tell from the above picture, there are glue strings mixed with invisible thread all over the front of my pendant. Because, yes, I did get the thread stuck in a loop and I'm afraid to cut any strings for fear the whole thing falls apart. Also, there may be blood drops from me stabbing myself in the finger 17 thousand times. Damn, Andrew is always right!
But it worked out in the end! I had fun! I learned a new skill!
I hope you enjoyed my adventures! Stay tuned for more, or look back to previous blog posts!
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