Late butterfly!

Feeling bad about missing the butterfly party that was hosted by Alenka of Pepita Handmade. After a frustrating day yesterday of trying to learn how to build a butterfly cane I spent a few hours(lol) looking at butterflies on Pinterest and came across a tutorial on origami butterflies and thought I could manage that.
While looking through my Japanese paper collection today I found this pretty butterfly paper so decided to use it for the origami.

I've always wanted to try more origami beyond the basics. This is a variation of Akira Yoshizawa's origami butterfly that comes from this blog. This was posted to celebrate his 101st birthday....creator of modern origami.

Phew! I managed to meet this challenge after all. I hope you like my little butterfly and will enjoy hopping around to all the other participants blogs to see their wonderful butterflies! Here's the list again.

1. Alenka (Pepita) 

2. Monique (A Half-Baked Notion)

3. Beti Horvath

4. Kathy Lindemer

5. Kepi

6. Christine Altmiller

7. Amy S.

8. Dini Bruinsma

9. Cynthia (Antiquity Travelers)

10. Alicia

11. sheilaposter

12. Therese Frank

13. Rebecca White

14. Rachel Mallis

15. Liz E

16. Ana (ACBeads)

17. Jasvanti Patel

18. Carolyn

19. Nan Smith

Happy Birthday Butterfly Blog Hop and the 2015 Polymer Clay Challenge continues......

Alenka of Pepita  Handmade is hosting this Butterfly challenge to celebrate her birthday. We were tasked with creating something butterfly themed. I totally fogot about this one and have nothing to share. I guess I've been so caught up in the PC Challenge with a weekly post that my brain couldn't contain all of my commitments. Sorry but I will be visiting everyone's blog to see all the lovely butterflies! Enjoy!!!! Here is the list of the participants. ( ignore that last name!)

1. Alenka (Pepita) 

2. Monique (A Half-Baked Notion)

3. Beti Horvath

4. Kathy Lindemer

5. Kepi

6. Christine Altmiller

7. Amy S.

8. Dini Bruinsma

9. Cynthia (Antiquity Travelers)

10. Alicia

11. sheilaposter

12. Therese Frank

13. Rebecca White

14. Rachel Mallis

15. Liz E

16. Ana (ACBeads)

17. Jasvanti Patel

18. Carolyn

19. Nan Smith

Wow, it's week 14 of the #2015PCChallenge  and I've managed to post an entry for every week so far! If you knew me you'd know how unusual that is. Always very enthusiastic at the start of a challenge but I tend to drag my feet as it progresses. Not the best with follow through ! However this challenge is different because I'm having so much fun playing with the clay and there is such amazing variety of techniques and tools to experiment with  Anyway here is a summary of the last few,weeks:

Week #8 : stamping and gilders paste

Week#9 : lace cane

Week#10 : flower cane earring beads

Week #11: First time with chalk pastels and Helen Briel texture sheet.

Week # 12:More cane work.

Week # 13: My favorite project this month....cuffs made using texture sheets and gilders paste. Love them!

Week # 14: Pan pastels are wonderful on polymer clay!

This is a weekly challenge that I'm participating in on Facebook. It's amazing to see the talent and variety there is in this art. If you want to see more here is the link. I'll be posting my contributions periodically on my blog but every week on FB.

Have a wonderful Spring weekend. I hope you get lots of sunshine where you are!

Bead Swap is Complete!

So Johana finally received the bead package that I sent her so I can now reveal what she sent me. I posted the photo of her package a couple of weeks ago when it arrived but if you didn't see then this  is what it looked like. I love her logo and packaging.

And without further ado, here are the great goodies she sent.

Everything is made by Johana except the pretty pink Czech glass beads.

Such a sweet enameled copper bird and co-ordinating filigree beads and fabulous enameled floral headpins. I think what I love the most is the beautiful handmade copper leaf clasp with the green floral accent. Unique and just my cup of tea!!!!

This is going to be a fun challenge for me with the colours and style way outside my comfort zone so wish me luck and tune in on May 3rd for the big reveal of  the Bead Peeps Swap and Hop when there will be many fabulous creations from over 200 jewelry artists!

Now I can reveal what I sent to Johana since she has now seen everything. Here again is my twisted vision of what she received.

And here is what it looks like it living colour. 

There's quite a bit of my polymer clay creations including the bird focal, earring dangles, swirled coin beads and rustic teal beads. I added Scorched Earth's raku bronzy scales, some Mykonos accents, citrine and chrysocolla beads, Czech leaves, resin big yellow beads , gold painted wooden beads and lots of antique brass findings and charms. I can't wait to see what Johana makes from all of this!

My new blogging friend!

Thanks to the Grow Your Blog Party hosted by Vicki Boster of 2BagsFull  in January of this year I met several wonderful craftspeople and bloggers. It is so much fun to reach outside of the jewelry and polymer clay world now and again. It's a great way to meet people AND get more followers for your blog. Vicki organizes it in January each year but the info to sign up for it comes out around October. Definitely worth checking out if you want to get more eyes on your blog and enjoy a great party as well!
Linda is another Canadian blogger who is very talented in quilting.....something I know nothing about. While reading her blog a few weeks ago I came across a post describing a quilted pouch she made for her iPad and I fell in love. Linda was nice enough to agree to make one for me and it arrived here 2 days ago! She knows that I'm blogging about this and in fact she has done the same on her blog. She doesn't have a shop where she sells things but she is incredibly gifted in her sewing technique and her use of colour. See what you think! And stop by and check out Linda's blog StitchLines

I love the colours and it matches perfectly my plastic purple iPad stand so I'm perfectly co-ordinated for a change!

Patiently waiting!

Here is the wonderful package of beady wonderfulness that I received last week. My partner, Johana Nunez got her dates mixed up and thought the deadline was a week earlier. Lucky me! 

I, however, didn't send her goodies out until the last possible day so it will probably be a few more 

days more before she gets hers.

To be perfectly fair I'm not going to show you what I received until I hear that she has hers!

Just to remind you this is the teaser photo of what I sent her!

The mail seems to be moving fast these days so hopefully it won't be too long before Johana gets hers. As soon as I hear that she has received the package I will reveal what we both sent each other.

Not Dead Yet Style: Older Women: Represent With Your Selfies!

Not Dead Yet Style: Older Women: Represent With Your Selfies!: Here's a good Sunday read from the Guardian , "Why Older Women Should Become The New Selfie Generation." The author, Helen Wa...

2015 Polymer Clay Challenge.

Honestly I had good intentions to post regularly about my entries in the weekly polymer clay challenge I'm participating in but the time just seems to fly away from me these days. I'm spending so much time experimenting with various techniques and creating wonderful things for the challenge that I don't have any time left to post about it all.  Anyhoo I'll try to get you up to date on what I've been doing since January 15th which was my first post for this challenge.
The first 2 weeks were spent experimenting with mokume gane and alcohol inks which is so much fun and I will be returning to it again during this year long challenge.
Weeks 3 and 4 occurred simultaneously with other challenges that I joined in so I killed two birds with one stone for each week.  I have been playing almost constantly with polymer since the holidays and came up with the following pieces of jewelry. I wanted to try to make some clay in the same color as the Pantone color of the year, Marsala. I combined many pieces of scrap clay from my collection and was successful in making these discs in a pretty close match to marsala.

I also entered them in the We're All Ears monthly challenge whose theme was the color of the year.

I created this neat brooch when I was experimenting with mokume gane and found it echoed the monthly art challenge on Art Bead Scene so I also entered it into that challenge as well as week 4.

Meanwhile I have been exploring the creation of a new style of jewelry and components for me. I've been working on a more organic look to my creations and these pieces are what I've come up with for Week 5.

Week 6 is something completely different as I've been wanting to make some cuff bracelets. This is my first attempt using some left over clay from my mokume gane experiments.

Not as easy as I thought and I needed to order some smooth bracelet blanks to help mold the bracelet shape. So I sent off an order to one of my favorite local suppliers that always deliver very quickly. 

There's still lots to learn about this process and as much as I love these bracelets I have to make them more durable since the first one below broke the first time I tried it on. I need to make them thicker and cook longer I think to make the clay more flexible and less brittle.

Well that's the last 5 weeks of the #2015PolymerClayChallenge. I hope you enjoyed seeing what I've been doing lately. You can see everyone else's creations on facebook .

Good night and have a good week!