Polymer Clay

If you remember as part of the Bead Soup Swap, my lovely partner Niky sent me some sculpey polymer clay to play with. Well I finally got it out and had a go. The clay is lovely to work with, but it has to be said that my first attempts were.... less than attractive !! However I thoroughly enjoyed making them.

I decided some research was in order, a short web search took me to the wonderful Polymer Clay Daily blog with its gorgeous eye candy, resulting in total inspiration, in fact probably over inspiration as I want to try everything ! I fell completely in love with Carol Simmons amazing kaleidoscope canes, bewitched as usual by details. So i decided that kaleidoscope canes seemed like a good place to start. So I found a tutorial and set off ..

Just really simple canes put together to form a rough triangle, then worked into a better triangle, then reduced into a cane.

Then made into 3 little kaleidoscope patterns, one for each point of the triangle.

Now I just have to work out something to do with them !! 

Spring Sunshine

It is gorgeous weather round here at the moment, we have been making the very most of it having dinner in the garden and even having the odd BBQ. Its been a great excuse to get the fire pit out as the evening cools off. I love fire, no shock there then from a lampworker, but I can sit and watch the flames for ages, and it appears, I take LOTS of photos of it !!!

It has been a great time for taking pictures in the garden at the moment, I am still hipstamatic obsessed and as my apple tree is in full blossom, giving me hope for more than two apples this year (it is only a baby tree!!) I have been taking photos of the blossom from bud to bloom.

Work ? Oh yes, Im working too, a little fragmentedly admittably having had the flame off and then been "up north' for a few days, but Im setting back into my routine now just in time for it to be disrupted with bank holidays. I have lots of ideas for new framed work that im gathering the components for and I have ideas for new beads too so I'll share those with you in due course. 

Fingers crossed for some gorgeous weather for the bank holiday weekends, I hope you have a great time whatever you do.

New Gardens

I have some new garden pieces I have been working on.

This one has a working title of "Stand Tall" -

And this one, Im thinking about adding some foliage in to it so its not quite complete, is called "Night Garden"

No, I have not vanished

off the end of the world never to be seen again !!

Sorry for my absence, I am having one of those argh-how-many-things-can-one-person-realistically-do-at-once times. The UK Flame Off is rapidly approaching with just one week to go and as usual Im sharing a stand with Sarah of Flame Force Five and Sabine of Little Castle Designs so Im busy busy busy making things to put on it !!

As well as the transfers, this year im going to be selling tool rolls for lampwork tools. I have really enjoyed working these out, having decided ages ago I wanted one for my tools for when I take them to classes and visiting friends, I have made a couple of changes to the initial design and I'm now really happy with it. The making has turned into a family affair as my mum has also been making them up for me to my design and I'm really excited about being able to offer them.

I also have work in the auction that the collective are holding to raise money for Japan following the earthquake and tsunami. I have a set of beads included and there are some gorgeous pieces on offer not just beads but textiles and jewellery too from amazing artists from around the world, including the pieces shown below by Lush Lampwork, Hattie Rae, Izzy of Flame and Glass, Joy Funnell, Lisa Pidgeon, C-Urchin, Jo of Daisychain Designs, Moogin Beads, and Mich Yasue as well as many more.

This weeks to-do list has also included beads for the website (I'm on it ladies, I promise), a couple of gallery orders and some tests for a new idea I have so I hope you will forgive me my lack of recent communications.

And the Winner is ....

No 7, NESS, Congratulations Ness !! Please email me so I can sort out your prize.

Thank you to everyone who took part in the survey, it is very interesting to look through the results, a quick summary of which -

Of the people who filled it in the majority are jewellery designers / makers, but from all different corners of the world which is amazing and fantastic (to me anyway !).

By far the most important thing for you in reading a blog was that you like the artists work, with good quality pictures and style of writing drawing for second place. 

Artists inspiration and the design process came up tops as the topics you were most interested in and Blue and Purple were far and away the most chosen favourite colours.

A big thank you again to everyone who took the time to do the survey and especially to those who left comments and questions which I look forward to answering soon ! 

You could WIN ... if you fill out the Survey

Ok, so gratuitously attention grabbing title !! The reason for this is I have noticed that following some of the recent events, blog hops etc round here, there has been quite an increase in the number of people reading and following the blog, thats so great, THANK YOU all !

As a result I have put a little  Online Survey together to get to know a bit more about who is reading the blog and the sort of thing that interests you.

Now I know not everyone is like me (I *love* surveys) and enjoys filling them out so I thought as an incentive we'd have a giveaway. To be in with a chance of winning it you need to fill out the survey (Its anonymous) then come back here and comment on this post to say that you have done so.

The prize will be your choice of either a set of beads and matching focal, or a Pendant and matching Earrings. I will keep the survey live until Sunday 20th March then on the Monday I will draw someones name to win from the people who have commented on this post.

The picture is some new beads, purely to have something pretty to look at, I will post a picture of the prizes next week when I have made them ;o) 

World Book Night

What a lucky girl am I ! You may have been hearing about World Book Day recently, or if you have been watching the TV this evening you may have come across World Book Night, an exciting and ambitious project to give away one million books.

Well I am very excited to say I am going to be getting one of those books, I will have a copy of Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell and with huge thanks to the lovely Mary Kent of Nemea Designs who is one of the people who was selected to be a "giver" and distribute copies of the book of her choice from those in the project.

Part of my excitement (other than new reading material to feed my book-worm habit) for this is that the books all have a unique identifying number on them, so that once I have read my copy I can pass it on to someone else to read who can log on the website that they have read it and then we can follow the journey of the book !! I think that is soooo cool. Once I have my book and have read and logged it I will share the number so you can follow it too.

If you want to get involved with this project then you can find all the info via the links above or register for World Book Night 2012 here.