More Petal Capped Beads

I have been really enjoying designing and making my new range of Flower and Petal Capped Beads. Even better, is that you all seem to love them too!

I have just finished another couple of sets and have put them up on Etsy today.

My inspiration came from this beautiful palate by Design Seeds. I have a look everyday to see what is new and always love the wonderful pictures and the breakdown of colours is just begging to be mixed in polymer!

So here are my new sets. Gerbera Petals and Spring Time Blue.

The colours are fresh and calming, reminding me that Spring will soon be here, even if it has been snowing today!

I hope you like them as much as I do!

Have a great week.

Pippa

Flower / Petal Capped Beads

I am not a great one for New Year's Resolutions, but this year I had decided that I need to make better use of my poor, neglected, Etsy Shop.

Doing a Craft Fair every Saturday certainly keeps me busy with selling and making my jewellery and as a result, very little finds its way on to Etsy due to time constraints. After all, there are only so many beads I can make in a week - let alone make them all up into something special in the way of jewellery.

Thinking about this over the Christmas Holidays, I decided that my Etsy Shop would be better put to use as a place to sell solely beads.

So after much thought, I came to the conclusion that I could easily make 5 more beads each time I make enough for a necklace/bracelet/earrings etc for my Craft Fair and put these extras onto Etsy and hopefully people will love them as much as I do.

So here are my first two offerings.

The first are the Bronze Flower Capped beads, pictured above. As soon as I posted them on Etsy, they sold! Yay!! So I made another set and relisted them. They seem to have struck a cord with people and the photo on Flickr even made it onto Explore - I was just a bit excited!!!!

The second are Petal Capped Beads in a lovely shade of Aubergine with Ecru and palest green/yellow. I love these!!

So if you are looking for some unique and individual beads for your next project, please check them out!

I would love to hear what you think of them and if you would like to these these in any other colour ways.

Happy New Year to you all and Happy Creating!

Pippa

Cara Jane's Sleeping Cat Tutorial

I was lucky enough to receive a sneak preview of Cara Jane's lovely Sleeping Cat Tutorial yesterday.

Cara first showed these little cats with flowery bottoms that she made on her Blog back in November, to much acclaim! Everyone loved them.

So much in fact that Cara decided to do a tutorial on them and then sent it out to a few people to "test" it for her. I was so thrilled to receive one.

And what a delight it is - great concise instructions, lots of pictures and such a pretty subject!

I immediately had a go and was so happy with the results I got by following the steps.

I added my own little twist in the flower by adding individual petals rather than a cane slice and voila! a little sleeping cat of my own!

If you want to have a go at making one of your own then pop over to Cara's blog where she has generously shared the tutorial for everyone to use!

Thank you Cara - what fun!!

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!