Done!

When making canes, you're supposed to cut off the ends because they've already "leeched" or distorted, or they aren't the flat surfaces a lot of people like to use for their jewelry or crafts. But for some reason, I loved the ends of the canes I've been doing and wanted to incorporate them into the gifts I am planning to make :D

Here are some of my finished projects! I'm giving these away to family and friends for the holidays :) Made with a whole lotta love <3

Epic fail on the VW!

I've been practicing a lot on clay lately and I've been trying out canes and the millefiori technique. There's a lot of tutorials online so I figured, how hard could it be?
My boyfriend's Volkswagen Christmas party is a couple of weeks away so I thought (insert lightbulb here) "I could make canes of the VW logo, stick 'em on keychains and he could give them out as gifts to his friends!" And so...

That's what the logo should look like.

Now, I started on the canes - I conditioned, cut, reduced and it just wasn't working!

I was getting so frustrated because I was wasting so much clay since I was using whole blocks for the cane! And I kept trying and trying :(

I finally had to call it quits at 4 in the morning! 
I had to send a 'distress message' to purpleluggage.multiply.com who very kindly gave me tips on what I could be doing wrong - it could be that the clay was too soft OR you're supposed to wait after making the cane before reducing & I didn't do this!
>Sigh< I can't believe I lost a lot of sleep (and clay) over this project ;( Will clay another day.

Silk test

My emulsion is about to expire plus I'm worried that I might forget the steps which is why, late one night, I decided to do some silk screen printing. I have to test the 2011 calendar I asked my sister to make since I'm planning to give this to friends anyway for Christmas :)


Anyway, the whole process from making the screen to exposing to printing is quite laborious. I might have exposed it too long though because April looks good...

But June looks terrible... :(

After applying photo hardener...

I did a test print...

And I'm pretty happy with the result! :-)


I have to cut my exposure time from 3 mins to 2 mins (my reflectorized lightbox has four 20-watt lights) and I must buy more paint then I'll be ready to print some more :D

I See Yellow

My boyfriend wanted me to make him a clay magnet of his beetle, he even drew the design for me and I just sort of copied it with my left-over clay from the workshop. Its huge for a ref magnet hahaha! But I did better than I expected :)

I also practiced what we learned the other day.

I need to work on my hearts though :s

But not bad, not bad at all haha.


Must buy more tools and texture sheets! Stamps and some mica powder! Oh and lots more clay! And sculpting tools...Uh-oh 8-)