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After reading Maureen Carlson‘s Book – Fairies Gnomes and Trolls, I had to try to make a Fairy.
 Fairies Gnomes and Trolls by Maureen Carlson A couple of weeks ago I actually decided to have a go at trying to make the little one described in the book, but we had a bit of an issue with our Gas Supply and it got turned off. It’s a long story, and I am going to tell you about it anyway. We moved into our home in December 2008, the house was brand new and nobody had lived in it previously (we are renting). Anyway I rang up to get the gas connected as you do and signed up for a good deal including both gas and electricity with a guaranteed minimum of 25% green power and got a bonus 2yr subscription to Marie Claire magazine. Very exciting since its a magazine I actually think is worth reading! A few months later the magazine stopped coming and I rang our provider to query it and was told that they tried to connect my gas, but it didn’t work. Our gas was on, there was no problem with it, so I just sort of shrugged it off. At some point our landlord sent us a gas bill that was sent to him, I let him know I had signed up already and he shouldn’t receive any more and we paid that one. Never received another account. At one point we received an electricity account, thought it was a bit exorbitant and checked the metre and they had read our next door neighbours metre and we had our bill adjusted. The gas kept working and we kept not getting billed so I just forgot about it.
2 weeks ago my brother called from home because there was a tradesman at the house disconnecting the gas. He had looked up online and it’s illegal to disconnect gas without notice. I called again and was told by my provider that they tried a couple of times more to connect us but again got rejected, and I should call other providers to find out who has the account. So I called probably the biggest gas provider and low and behold they had an account linked to our metre number, it had not been paid after several notices had been sent and the line was disconnected. I couldn’t find out anything about the account because it was not in my name; I couldn’t connect the gas because this account existed and it was disconnected because that person hadn’t paid the account. So what had actually happened was that when we moved in, our neighbours did too. And they must have rang up to get connected before we did, didn’t quote their metre number just the street address, muts have given our address and got the gas signed up, so every time I and my provider tried to connect it it kept getting rejected because there was already an existing account holder who did not request a disconnection. Then my neighbours moved out and decided to not pay their last few bills, the notices were getting sent to them and our gas got disconnected. This happened on a Thursday I spoke to someone on Thursday they again tried to get my gas connected, because now it was disconnected but again got a rejection, this time the rejection was due to the account not being paid and being with their credit department. So… after the entire weekend without gas and a 2 hour phone call on Monday we finally got our gas reconnected and I had to do it with the provider I didn’t want because they had stuffed it up in the first place and it would have been too difficult to sort it out with my own provider.
 Polymer Clay Fairy Waiting for her Wings Anyway, how is this related to fairies and polymer clay? Well, because the gas was off we had no hot water and no stove top, and well I thought I would need to partial bake the clay while working on the fairy so I couldn’t use the oven and didn’t start it… Days later I found out that our oven is electric anyway, its only the stove top that is gas, so I could have worked on it anyway!?! Doh!Polymer Clay Fairy Waiting for her Wings It took me a couple of weeks to look at the book again and decide to play, so here is my Polymer Clay Fairy. She has been baked and Glazed and is just waiting on her wings. I have decided that instead of getting clay wings I will give her wire beaded wings – totally impractical for flying I know, but I am sure it will look good. Anyway, surely the flying is magic related right? so maybe the wings don’t need to be aerodynamic at all, maybe they just need to be wings?
She is made out yellow Mont Marte Make and Bake Clay, Black Mont Marte Make and Bake Clay, Sculpey III – White (3 parts) Mixed with Violet ( 1 part) and has a Sculpey Studio satin glaze.
 Polymer Clay Turtle Baked Ala Christi Friesen So here she is, my first Polymer Clay Turtle! She is made out of Mont Marte Make and Bake Clay and some Sculpey III and I brushed on a teeny amount of Pearlex Turquoise. Yesterday after work, I went to Selonj Beads for the first time, after viewing their stock online a few times. They have all of Christi Friesen‘s books and have also hosted workshops of hers, so they had a copy of the book I wanted and it was signed!!! yay! I also grabbed some micro beads (teeny teeny beads smaller than seed beads with no stringing hole, used for eyes in little figurines); 3 containers of Pearlex Mica Pigment Paints (Antique Silver, Turquoise and Antique Copper). Selonj beads was clean and well layed out and I will definitely go there again! They also had their latest newsletter on the counter and are expecting Christi to visit Adelaide and host a workshop in September next year (2011), hopefully I am not Friesen-ed out by then, it would be so awesome to meet and learn from her in person. Though, if you have read any other stuff about Christi I am sure you know her books and tutorials feel very personal anyway. She is highly entertaining in prose.
 Christi Friesen Under the Sea Sculpture Series 3 So I bought a copy of Under The Sea you can purchase signed copies direct from Christi and she also has a deal if you purchase all of the series in one go. I peaked inside a few times on the way home (at red lights ok?!) and read it cover to cover when I got home. The book is sized between an A5 and A4 and has 47 pages, it feels a bit like a good magazine quality wise, but its not about what the book looks like in this case, it’s about what’s inside it. [Well actually most good books are!]
I made my first turtle today. Her name is “Christi Turtlington” what do you think?
 Polymer Clay Turtle UnBaked Ala Christi Friesen  Polymer Clay Turtle Baked Ala Christi Friesen “Christi Turtlington” is about 2 inches (5cm) from nose to end of her rear flippers. She has two rows of seed beads on her shell and blue wooden beads for eyes. She was a lot of fun to make and I am looking forward to making lots of friends for her to hang out with!
She still has to have patina added but for some reason (well ok I know the reason) I can’t find my paints…. Reason – I have been living here for 18 months and still have not unpacked properly 
So I was going to update my previous post with more photos, but thought I would add a new post instead. (If you missed part 1 you can have a read here
 Polymer Clay Warring State Beads Glazed So from Left to Right
The big spheres have an approximate tip of horn to tip of horn diameter of 2.8cm (just a smidge over an inch)
The discs have an approximate diameter of 2cm
The teeny spheres have an approximate diameter of 1.5cm
 Polymer Clay Warring State Beads Glazed This photo has a closer view of the disc shaped beads and the smaller spheres.
Like I said in my previous post, you can get hold of the Tutorial for making these warring state beads in polymer clay from Kalmbach Publishers for $3.95. The tutorial was written by Lura Hatcher and is well written and easy to follow.
 Polymer Clay Warring State Beads Before baking I’m not sure I am doing myself any favours putting photos in here at this scale!
Anyway, I have never done lampworking, but have always thought that warring state beads were pretty cool. What the? you say? Well I didn’t realise what they were called either! but if you want to know why here is a WikiPedia Article on them . I thought it would talk about something metaphorical relating the colours on the ‘horns’ to states or something, but they are just basically named that because of the name of the era they started being produced in… Cool name though. They are also referred to as eye beads, so maybe the term ‘horn’ used to refer to the concentric circle thingamabobs is a misnomer? Should we be calling them eye stems?
Any hoo, so I found a tutorial at Kalmbach Publishers for purchase written by Lura Hatcher for purchase for $3.95 and well I wanted to know how to make warring state beads in polymer clay instead of using lampwork, so I got it. It’s a well written easy to follow tutorial, but from looking at the bead and figuring out how you would go about it, that is pretty much it, so if you want to guess at it, go ahead. Otherwise get the tutorial, or email me and I can give you a breakdown on how they are done…
They are quite pleasing when they start coming together and for someone with hints of OCD (especially in relation to symmetry) they are quite therapeutic even, if you don’t like production style work that takes a while and requires patience before you can see the final product then it’s not for you.
Things to watch for:
Materials I used:
- 1 pack of Sculpey III Black (56g)
- about 1/2 a stick of 3 colours of Mont Marte Make and Bake Clay (they look like the size of crayons) ~ about 6g per colour
- 3/4 of a pack of translucent Sculpey III
- for each colour I mixed 2 parts Sculpey III Translucent with 1 part Colour (about a quarter of the 56g block for each colour – I used 3 and had left over colours)
What I ended up with:
- 14 Large circle beads with 4 Large Horns (4 circles each), 8 Smaller Horns (3 circles each) and 16 spots (yellow in photos above)
- 11 Medium disc beads with 4 horns (3 circles each)
- 9 Small circle Beads with 8 spots and 16 horns (2 circles)
I continued with this post here if you are interested 
Well… I am kind of disappointed with the final outcomes of some of my first experiments. I mean, why don’t they look as awesome as the professionals’ look?! Hmm! When will mine look that good?!
So far (well just as an aside I need to tell you that my 11 month old niece plays on my keyboard a lot and at the moment I can’t use the “v” key so every time you see it I have had to paste it and well since the shortcut key is to paste is also ctrl+”v” that is proving slightly difficult… I wouldn’t change it for the world but if you notice missing letters in any kind of pattern, that is probably why!) I have made a few things. Most of them have been photographed and you can see them in the gallery in this post – I just figured out how to add that plugin to my post so look at it
Item 1 The Polymer Clay Owl
I put up a photo of him in a previous entry. He was made out of Mont Marte Make and Bake Clay. I took about 10 days to bake him so he has lost some of his little embellishments and his wing cracked a bit. I used 2 black seed beads for his eyes and he was made using a Free Tutorial available on Christi Friesen’s Web Site.
Item 2 The Polymer Clay Lily
 Polymer Clay Lily
I made the lily using Sculpey III polymer clay mostly white mixed with a little violet. I used the detailed photographed and well written tutorial by Pedro Ramirez available on his blog here. I did not do the painting steps and did not use the colour suggested, I used a wire instead of a needle tool and because of the macro function [insert appropriate cuss word here] you can see in detail how I messed it up. Tee hee.
But considering the flower measures less than an inch at its widest point I think I did ok. It looks better from a distance… ha ha. Pedro’s looks brilliant from any distance. I didn’t get a chance to bake the lily because one of the petals snapped off after standing for a few days. So that gives me an excuse to make a new one then.
Item 3 The Swirly Dooflicky Thing
So I had some of this pretty lilac-ey pink clay left after attempting the lily and I wanted to play some more. So you know fancying myself to be the world’s next Christi Friesen (sorry Christi…)
I started to make some swirlies and dots and poked seed beads in them and this is what happened. I still have a few thousand to make before I make anything decent, but for now this was quite ok for a mess around.
Item 4 The Peacock Necklace
 Polymer Clay Peacock Necklace I think I may be starting to use Christi‘s name in vain, but I really got very inspired to start playing with polymer clay after I visited her website and the sites of those who were working on her workshops or tutorials or doing Christi Friesen inspired work.
As well as the projects, workshops, books and tutorials available for free (and to purchase) on Christi’s site, there is this free tutorial to make an awesomely designed Polymer Clay and Bead Mixed Media art jewellery necklace at the Firemountain Gems site. [I also found some for sale at the Kalmbach Bookstore site, they publish Bead and Button, Art Jewelry(sic) and Bead Style and Christi has been featured in them]. I wanted to do this with what I had on hand and discovered that a lot of my beads are plastic, I wasn’t sure if they would melt when I baked the clay, so I tried to use all glass beads. I didn’t have the same or similar ones to what Christi used in the tutorial so I improvised. I also chose lighter colours in the clay (especially the brown and now not so sure I like it). I used some glass cats eye gems, rose quartz and amethyst chips, some glass leaves and flowers. The wire dangly bits will have things strung onto them when completing the project so that is why they are there.
One thing I found fabulous about this project, I am not an accomplished wire worker and you get to cover up stuff ups with the clay. What I learned:
- pale brown ‘branches’ do not look good
- if you concentrate too hard on making one bit of a bead like you want, you have inadvertently squished something you concentrated on earlier
- Wires, pliers and frustration do not play nicely with fingers
- when Christi says “Be very careful not to put any pressure on the bead or it will crack” … be very careful not to put pressure on the bead or it will crack!
- If there are bubbles in the glaze when you paint it on, it will stay there not magically vanish when it dries
The photo here is after baking and glazing and the one in the gallery below is of the raw clay.
Other Items
 Polymer Clay Rabbit and Strawberry Charm after Baking and Glazing In addition to the above, I made a Polymer Clay Rose, using the Fry Rose Tutorial by Sukaiburu Chan on Deviant Art, photo in gallery below. I made a little dolly, she is also in the gallery and is what I am going to be concentrating on making with less dirt and fingerprints and all that in the clay. I made a little rabbit from another Deviant Art Tutorial by Shiritsu, and also a little strawberry… all by myself for a change.
Short Cut to Links Used in this Post:
Christi Friesen’s Web Site
Pedro Ramirez’s Polymer Clay Creations – How to Make a Polymer Clay Flower Lily
Peacock Pizzazz Free Tutorial from Firemountain Gems, designed by Christi Friesen
Kalmbach Bookstore
Tutorial for making a Polymer Clay Rose by Sukaiburu Chan
Little Polymer Clay Rabbit Tutorial by Shiritsu
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Blurbie Thing Hi, I'm Quanita, Q for short and this is my space... Qspace
30-something - IT Geek - totally neurotic - In an wonderful relationship with a cool cable guy - Aunty to Charlotte Rose (and another niece coming in August 2012!) - introverted extrovert - Gen X - Arty Crafty
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July 19, 2010, at 1:12 pm
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