Ups and Downs - seriously picture heavy!!

Life has been full of ups and downs recently.



I have been very busy with caring for my wonderful Mum, and have had to squeeze about 30 hours of work into a 24 hour day. I am sure you all know that feeling!

But despite the stress and worry of looking after someone I love very much, I have had to work as well. Weekly Craft Fairs are a wonderful outlet and brilliant time to connect with other crafters when you work from home and feel a bit isolated, but I have to say I have been finding it really hard to cope with making enough stock these last 3 weeks. On the other hand - it keeps me grounded and stops me from moping and worrying too much. It makes me work - and I can eventually loose myself in the work and just be.

Happy times also inbetween everything else. My beautiful and wonderful daughter has just turned 14!

Frogs are her "thing" of the moment - so I made 24 Frog Cupcakes for her birthday tea!


We also had a wonderful day out with her best friend and my best friend and went for a girlie day out to London and visited Harrods where the girls got their ears pierced (after nagging us Mums for the past 7 years!).

Life is good - and worrying - and stressful, but I am so lucky to have my wonderful family and my wonderful life, for all its ups and downs.

So anyway - here is what I have been working on.

The picture at the top is a swirled lentil bead necklace with leaf caps. A "happy mistake" was made with the leaf caps - I didn't realise when I placed them that they would all line up perfectly like flowers,but will be making sure I do it again!





This is something I am really pleased with - hundreds of leaves all made into components that interlock. The inspiration came from a little cliosonne articulated fish that my daughter has. Loved making it so much I made a bracelet and earrings to match!



Here are the rest of the things - lots more phot0s but not too much of me whittering on!!

Enjoy!

Fish Focal Beads - Update!

Swimming Fish Focal Bead
Originally uploaded by Pips Jewellery Creation

Just to let all of you who have asked me, that the Fish Series Focal Beads are now up in my Etsy Shop.

I have added a link to my shop, over on the left hand side, here on the blog, so if you want, you can just click on any of the pictures and it will take you straight there to have a browse.

I will be putting up the listing for the Flower focals and the Tree Focals later today and tomorrow!

Thank you all for your interest and comments on these beads - it means so much to me to get your feedback - and I love comments!

Hope you all have a great week.

Fish, Flowers and Trees - 1 Week and 23 Beads Later...

My journey into the realms of Focal Beads has taken me by surprise. Having made the first couple of Flower Focals I knew I was hooked, but I have been surprised by how much these little beads took over my creativity for over a week.

I was like a thing possessed! Most of you who know me, know that I am a butterfly, always flitting around from one technique to another, from one style to another and usually when I have made one or two of something, then I am off looking for the next exciting thing I can make in polymer.

Not this time. First a series of 8 Flower Focals. Then I had images of fish in my head and knew that I would have no rest until I had captured them swimming all over my beads and in and out of reeds and weeds.

So several days later I had another series and another 8 Fish Focals.

Then I had images of Birds Flying....unfortunately, these proved more tricky. I did not want a "cute" looking bird and that's what I kept ending up with. Frustrated and surrounded by various canes of all shapes sizes and colours (you should have seen my work table - talk about no room to work!) I decided that the birds were obviously waiting for warmer weather before allowing me to capture them.

By now I would ususally be thinking of the next new project - some Mica Shift maybe? Or perhaps some valentines hearts? I really should be making stock for Saturday's Craft Fair at Cirencester, but no - my muse demanded yet more Focal Beads and suddenly I knew what I wanted to put on them. Trees. Trees in winter against glowering skies, trees just coming into blossom in the spring before the leaves have had a chance to show themselves, trees in all their summer glory - autumn leaves drifting...I think you get the picture.

So 9 hours later I have another 7 Focals with Trees. Phew!

I am so happy with these beads - a completely different style of work for me and it has been great doing them.

Now I can finally start on something completely different - unless of course I do a series of butterfly ones......Hmmmm.!

Flower Series Focal Beads

I am pleased to present my new Flower Series Focal Beads.

I have had such fun designing and making these. Using the wonderful Donna Kato's Composition Technique I have developed this entirely new series of beads.

Each bead is hand shaped with a variety of skinner-blend backgrounds and then covered on all sides with tendrils, leaves and blossoms. Each one is completely individual and no two are alike.

I have not made a series of beads before and am very excited by them. The ideas for more series are swimming around in my head, and the next series will be fish!

I have a few more colour-ways for the flower beads still to create and I hope that when they are all ready they will be well received at my weekly craft fair at Cirencester. I am still undecided as to whether to put them up for sale in my Etsy Shop or not. I am being asked more and more at Cirencester if I will make some beads for sale and decided that now was the time to do so. Beading and Jewellery making has become increasingly popular here in the UK over the past two years, and unusual handmade beads are always in demand. I would love my beads to become part of someone's design, or maybe to inspire a design because of the theme of my bead - that would be fantastic.

I hope you like them as much as I do.

Carnival

Carnival
Originally uploaded by Pips Jewellery Creation

I posted this photo on Flickr yesterday and got so many lovely comments on it, I thought I would share it with my blog visitors too.

There are 95 individual beads on here - each of which I hand sanded and polished! It took a very long time as you can imagine, but even longer to put together - 95 wire wraps take forever!!

It is the fullest bracelet I have ever made and I wondered if maybe it was a little too full, but when it is on it looks fantastic and makes such a great sound too!

The technique for the beads comes from Donna Kato's book, "The Art Of Polymer Clay - Millefiori Techniques". I can recommend this book 100% for anyone who works with Polymer Clay - it is a constant source of inspiration to me.

The colours I have used are quite muted, which I wanted because with so many beads I thought that brighter colours would make the overall effect too "busy".

I would love to know your thoughts on this. Would a bright one be something you would like? Would it look good in lots of shades of one colour? How about a sort of rainbow effect, starting with one colour at one end and then working its way round the spectrum to the other end? What do you think - I would love to know!

New Year - New Work

Sea Pod
Originally uploaded by Pips Jewellery Creation

A belated Happy New Year to you all!

The Christmas period was so busy for me that I did not have time to blog at all, or take photos, or do anything apart from make jewellery and try to fit in all the normal Christmas preparations for the family!

At last, it is January, which is cold, extremely snowy and most importantly a time for a little breathing, calming and experimenting. I have been playing around a little at the clay table and enjoying having extra time to just think and spend some time on the computer and catching up with all my friends on Flickr, who I have been missing like mad. It has been good to start reconnecting with them and seeing all the new work that is emerging in this new year.

This new necklace, which I have called Sea Pod, was a happy accident. I was planning on making one sort of bead, but somehow, it morphed into something completely different, with no seeming input from myself. The clay sometimes has a life of its own and will go it's own way! I hope to take this design further and already have some idea of other things to do with it, as well as make some more like this in different colours.

These pod beads remind me of something that you might find on a coral reef.

I hope that 2010 is a wonderfully creative year for all of you!

Evolving

Black and White Bracelet
Originally uploaded by Pips Jewellery Creation

I was invited to a friends 40th Birthday Dinner Dance this weekend and the dress code was Black and White.

We had a wonderful time, with good friends, good food and good music. A chance to catch up and exchange news and relax a little in this busy time.

I pondered for a time on whether to get a dress with both black and white in it, but decided in the end that this was a wonderful opportunity to make a piece of jewellery in the theme.

However, after several weeks of trying to come up with something completely new - I was still drawing a blank. Why does my muse disappear at the most needed moments?

So I decided to try something new with an existing design. Here is the result. A faceted silver bead threaded into each cockleshell with looped wire. It took ages to make, but the ends justify the time spent I think. Extra Texture and extra shine and reflected light.

I love it when something evolves!