The 2nd Annual Challenge of Colour Blog Hop!

The wonderful Erin of Treasures Found is hosting this brilliant Blog Hop.

I have never taken part in one before, so decided that it would be fun to have a go and hopefully meet some new people, find some new blogs and generally just feast my eyes on wonderful colourful creations! Not to mention, stretch myself to make something in colours chosen for me!!


I chose Teal, simply because it is always the colour that draws me when I am creating, and this is the palate that Erin chose for me from the fantastic Jessica Colaluca of Design Seeds.


















Well, what beautiful colours!! Right up my street!



So after mixing all my colours to as near as I could get to the palate, I got busy!!

Here is my Necklace. My photos are showing the teal as much more blue than green, but honestly is isn't!!!






I made a Leaf cane, using all the colours and then decorated beads using the cane and some little graphic dots of colour in just three of the colours. Hope you like it!!

Thank you Erin for hosting such a brilliant challenge. I was thrilled to take part.

Pippa

p.s. I have tried so hard to cut and paste all the participants links onto here, but for some reason, it just will not work - so please, to view pop over to Erin's blog, they are all listed there!

Getting Busy for Christmas

I've been busily making stock for all the Christmas Fairs that are coming up. I have 6 between now and Christmas Eve, so you can imagine what my clay table looks like!!

Here are some of the things I have been working on:


Firstly something with no polymer at all! A Bling Ring with 35 Swarovski Crystals - I need to make some more of these, this one sold straight away!














Lots and lots of leafy Bookmarks.













Kaleidoscope Pendant in gorgeous deep purple and white.

















Stud Earrings - at last I have figured out a way to make these that is really strong - I always worry that they might break, being so little.















And lastly some lovely ear wires that I got from Ruth and Andy Harrison of A & R Jewellery on Etsy. They are so beautifully made, I added some Mokume Gane Style beads. Simple, to show off the wires!













Are you really busy? I would love to see what you are making for Christmas - leave me a comment so I can come and see!

Have a great week
Pippa

Crackle Beads Revisited

You may remember from a post back in January that I purchased a wonderful Tutorial by Naftali on how to crackle with polymer clay.

It has been a little while, but I decided to make some more crackle beads on Sunday.

I was somewhat hindered by the fact that I do not have the tutorial any more - we had some trouble with an infected PC a few months ago and unfortunately it wiped all my emails from before April - and guess who had not saved the tutorial and backed it up? Yes that would be me!

So after a couple of false starts, several cups of coffee to try and engage my memory banks and one memorable mess up with using Liquid Polymer Clay instead of what I should have been using (if you want to know then you need to go here to Naftali and buy her wonderful tutorial, I can highly recommend it!), which turned out to be very messy indeed, I finally remembered what I was supposed to do.

Here are the results - I am really pleased with how they turned out! Oh yes - there was also an incident with overenthusiastic sanding and ruining not only one, but two pendants, think I would have learned by now wouldn't you!!

Oh well - as my friend Lisa told me - it is called the "Learning Process" - thanks Lisa!

Well - back to the clay table - hope you are all having a good week!

Pippa

ABS Challenge November

Here is my entry for the Art Bead Scene Challenge for November.

This is only the second time I have entered the challenge and the first time was so long ago that this feels like the first!! The painting Madonna Pietra degli Scrovigni by Marie Spartali Stillman is so beautiful. It is not very often that I am inspired to make something immediately like this, but I am so glad I had a go.

The lady is surrounded by leaves in the painting and I decided to surround by beads with leaves in the same gorgeous muted shades.

I have had a lot of fun doing this. If you fancy entering this months challenge then pop over to ABS and have a go! Here is the link : http://artbeadscene.blogspot.com/ Good Luck!

Pumpkin Beads

A brilliant tutorial by Roberta Mohar was featured on Polymer Clay Daily a little while ago to create these lovely pumpkin beads. I had a go this week and was delighted with the results!

These were going to be a necklace first off, but Katie decided they should be a bracelet!! I think she just wanted the bracelet for herself!!!!

These have been fun to do and I will certainly be doing some more in different colours.

It is half term here in the UK - so not a lot of beading is getting done, but we are having fun, walking, baking and generally gathering our strength for the Christmas Term ahead.

Hope you are all having a great week too. Pippa x

A Busy Morning

I made lots of heart pendants today. My stock is so low that I was getting a little embarrassed hanging the few that I had on my display last Saturday. It look very sad!

So today I made some Mica Shift Hearts with a triple layer. They look quite cool I think! I tried the new Peacock Pearl by Premo, but was very disappointed with the chatoyancy effect. Not enough Mica in the mix. I do love the colour though. So I had to add lots of Pearl to get a better effect.



















This chocolate brown mix turned out brilliantly - it was even easy to photograph!



















Next I made a couple of swirls - again I am seriously low on stock, but they are not my favourite thing to made, so I keep putting them off, you can see that I only managed a few before I moved on to making some Bakewell Butterfly Beads - they are the ones that look like feathered icing that you get on Bakewell Tarts (here in the UK) or a little like the patterns on butterfly wings.

So now I need to do loads of sanding with my micro mesh and then buff them up ready to be assembled tomorrow. Hopefully I can gets some photos up then for you to see.

Hope you are having a productive day too.

Pippa

Bead Table Wednesday

I have been looking for a long time at the wonderful array of beads in the Bead Table Wednesday Flickr group and have decided to join in the fun.

Basically every Wednesday, we share a photo of what is on our bead table. Fun right? Lots of lovely beads to admire, covet and generally drool over!! So here is my first offering:

A mass of leaves all ready to be made into my signature bookmarks, some little raspberry coloured berry beads and some Drum Beads, inspired by the Wonderful Klew (aka Karen Lewis). I have been having some fun this week! Need to finish buffing some of them and then get them made up into items of gorgeousness!!

Hope you are having fun with your bead table today - do tell, leave me a comment and I would love to pop by and have a look at what you are up to today!

Pippa x