Art Jewelry Elements Component of the Month

If you follow my blog or know me at all then you know that I have been extremely lucky when it comes to blog giveaways ever since I started blogging! I have lost count of the number of times that I have won a random giveaway in the jewelry design blogosphere. To say I feel blessed would be an understatement! I don't want to jinx myself but it has been an embarrassment of riches.See my post about it here.
I have followed the blog Art Jewelry Elements for years and enjoy seeing the creations of the AJE team and their guest bloggers but never thought I'd get an opportunity to participate in the component of the month reveal. Talented jewelry designers make jewelry components which they send to the participants and everyone makes a piece of jewelry featuring said component. I was thrilled to be chosen as a guest blogger this month but also a bit intimidated. The contributors to this blog are a diverse and uber-talented group of artists and I hardly feel worthy to show my work alongside them but that is what I am doing today.
The host this month is Niky Sayers from the U.K. And I love all of her work. She has a  unique and elegant style and does phenomenal metal work! I own a beautiful pair of her earrings (a win from a previous giveaway) and was thrilled to receive something else from her. Recently she has been working with British coins and for this challenge she created beads and clasps made out of farthing coins! Since I am a real Anglophile this challenge really spoke to me and I now have a clasp made from a farthing coin!

Niky sure knows how to send a parcel and make a gal feel special! Beautiful packaging too! So much to learn!

Okay that's enough procrastination. Here is the bracelet I made using Niky's clasp. I'm totally obsessed with polymer clay these days so I knew I had to make something using it. I recently learned how to make swirl beads from a you tube video by Heather Wells . I adapted the design so that the lentil beads have a shape similar to the coin clasp and  put them all together with some Czech teal blue beads and waxed linen thread to make this bracelet. I like it and hope that you do too!Lots of wonderful summer colours.

Please go to Art Jewelry Elements and see what the other artists have created with Niky's coins!

Halfway mark of #2015PCChallenge.

It's hard to believe that I've been doing this challenge for half a year! It's been a wonderful time of experimenting and learning. When I review what I've made each week I see that I've come a long way in my polymer clay journey. Thank you Katie from KatersAcres for this great challenge. It really pushed me to produce something new to post every week and I managed to do it. ( I think I actually posted twice for one of the weeks!)
I won't re-cap the last 6 months in this blog post just the last 6 weeks! The total year summary will be next January after I've completed 52 weeks of the challenge.
My last post was for week 20 so I'll start with week 21. I continued experimenting with the  Sutton slice technique and made this large statement pendant for a friend who fell in love with these colours.

More sutton slice for week 22 in my favourite combo ...black and gold.

I attended my first ever polymer clay workshop with Helen Breil on the weekend before week 23 and it shows in this week's entries. she taught us her own technique for hollow beads and pendants so that's all I made for weeks after. She also shared from her large collection of mica powders and I had a lot of fun with hers then  bought my own set of perfect pearls from Michael's with the 50% off coupon.I made many pendants to sell at my first craft show in years the next weekend. Here are a few of them for week 23 ,24 and 25.

Well after 3 weeks of silk screening, mica powders and hollow bead/pendants it was time for me to go in a new direction for week 26. I played with my laserjet printer today and managed to make two copies of some Gustav Klimt paintings that I found online. Unfortunately the printer gives me headaches every time I try to use it and it kept eating the transfer paper that I bought specially for image transfer. It's Magic Transfer Paper (MTP) that I sent away for from polymerclaytv.com. The paper is very thin and the instructions say to only put one piece in the printer at a time but it kept jamming in the printer so I couldn't make any more better quality images. I have to resolve this printer problem  because I really like this technique and want to do more of it. I'll let you know how it works. Here are the 2 pendants I made using image transfer.

I like the way the second one looks aged because the printer didn't work properly.One of those nice mistakes that happen!

So that's it for the first half year of the #2015 PCChallenge hosted by Katie Oskin. Please come back in September and see what I make this summer. To see what some other participants have made for this challenge you can check out the facebook page here.