Bead Peeps Swap n Hop partners

I signed up again this year for the Bead Peeps Swap n Hop because I had such a good time last year. The best thing about swaps is getting to know your partner. The admins work very hard at matching everybody up and do a fabulous job at it. My partner this year is Lori Jean Poppe. We wrote back and forth to each other to get to know a little bit about each other which helps us to choose what to send for the swap. We have to swap beads, a focal bead and a clasp. They should be of high quality such as we would gift to a good friend. I have always been so impressed with the quality of beads that I have received in previous swaps. The jewelry making community is extremely generous.

Lori is  an amazing woman who seems to do everything! It makes me tired to just list all of her accomplishments! She lives in Bear Creek , Wisconsin and works a dairy farm with her husband, sells essential oils, designs jewelry and is currently running in the local school board election. Lori is a mother and advocate for her daughter with Down Syndrome She has worked as a Certified Nursing Assistant, Special Education Aide and Special Needs Advocate. See what I mean?

Somehow Lori finds time to pursue her artistic passions. She has dabbled in stained glass, fused glass, lampworking, leather work and metal weaving/wrapping. She is a rock hound and polymer clay artist. I am "gobsmacked" by her life and what she manages to fit into it. I forgot to mention that she is also a housewife and mother of 4 which as we all know is more than enough for any woman! I am in awe of Lori and her superwoman status! Here are some her artistic creations.

I was tasked with sending a bead soup to Lori for our Swap n Hop in the Bead Peeps Facebook group. I have nowhere near the variety of artistic talents that Lori has but have been making jewelry and polymer clay beads and components for several years so I hope I have chosen a selection that will please and challenge her. Here is the teaser photograph I made before I sent her goodies off to Wisconsin.

Art Bead Scene Monthly Challenge

I have to admit that this challenge is one of my favorites. Each month a work of art is posted with a description and history of the artist. The challenge is to make a piece of jewelry inspired by the work and/or create art beads inspired by it. I don't  participate regularly because I frequently am stumped by this challenge. I have started many projects then discarded them in disgust. the quality of the art beads on this blog is quite high so I won't post anything I'm not satisfied with.

This month the art is Simultaneous Dress Next to Simultaneous Car from
Vogue magazine in January 1925. It is by Sonia Delaunay and George Lepage. They describe the style as simultanism, a form of Cubism with a focus of colour...aimed to created rhythm, motion and depth through overlapping patches of vibrant hues.

The colours, shapes and contrast appealed to me. I didn't see red, white and blue but rather a deep reddish orange instead of red and those are the colours I worked with. Unfortunately the orange I used ended up looking quite red once I had finished with it.
I have been working on my technique of building canes of polymer clay. I thought that the geometry of this art translated well into canework so I made a cane of triangles in the contrasting colours. The problem I have is with canework is the rigidity of the designs so I always have to add my own twist to the results and usually  warp the patterns in some way to express my love of abstract designs
. I made beads covered with a veneer of clay made from the cane . Even though I didn't plan it that way the beads ended up with a star in the centre . I was aiming to replicate the triangles in the design.

While playing with the cane I  also made these long earring beads inspired by the angularity and geometry of the art challenge. 

I hope you enjoyed seeing my entry to the ABS February Challenge. Check their blog on the 29th to see all the other entries. 

Happy New Year 2016!

I'm so happy to be ending this year and looking forward to a new start tomorrow. Personally it's been a difficult year for me with my knee injury followed by knee replacement surgery in November. See the results in my last post. I see the surgeon next week and hope to keep moving forward with no more health issues this coming year.

It was a great year for me creatively thanks to participating in the #2015PCChallenge and creating many new items for it I discovered many new techniques that I am gradually improving on.I will give you an overview of what I've been creating since my last post about this challenge. This is the last blog post where you will be inundated with so much stuff. I intend to spend this year refining my techniques and focusing on completing more projects for sale. I hope to continue updating my Etsy shop and adding more polymer clay jewelry and components to it. My first goal is a Valentine's Sale so keep your eyes peeled for that!

coaster

So that's the end of #2015PCChallenge for me. It was a great experience and I learned so much and came to know some great, talented polymer clay artists. I actually managed to produce something new for every week of the year and am quite proud of that accomplishment.

Thanks to all my readers for joining me in this challenge . I wish you a very 

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Busy times!

So, I survived the knee replacement in November and count myself lucky. Having some down time totally focused on myself without distractions such as clay play, reading, Netflix, etcetera has been an interesting time for me. The pain from the surgery was so bad for the first week that I couldn't do much of anything else. However, I count myself lucky  that my recovery is almost over. Through friends and family I have heard of the sufferings of many people and my issues pale in comparison. It's good to put your own problems in perspective!

That's not to say that I haven't had a few hiccoughs along the road to recovery. As I mentioned the pain was very bad post op and it took a few days in hospital to get it under control! Once I got home I developed severe sciatica from the soft mattress I was sleeping on temporarily. The back and leg pain were much worse than the surgical pain! Once I got back to my own bed ( firm mattress) all signs of sciatica disappeared. I hope nobody is offended by this photo. My knee 3 days postop:

After a couple of days at home I developed a odd feeling of chest discomfort that I knew wasn't normal so I pushed myself to go to emergency at midnight as much as I didn't want to! Sure enough after a few tests including a CT scan at 4:00 am they found a pulmonary embolus ( dreaded blood clot in lungs). Since I was already on blood thinners after the surgery they just increased the dose and sent me home. Being a nurse and having witnessed critical incidents and deaths from pulmonary embolus made this a very frightening experience for me. Luckily for me it all resolved within a week or two.

I was making very good progress with movement and exercise and feeling pretty good about things until last week.  Then I noticed two strange streaks of red coming out of the incision line on my knee and my knee was slightly swollen and discoloured. Doctor's were concerned re: wound infection with joint involvement but everything checked out well and I was sent home on antibiotics for 10 days. Hopefully that's the end of complications from this routine (!!!) surgery. 

 Since the Christmas holiday weekend was coming I decided to get it checked out earlier rather than later. Back to emergency again!! Not my favorite place by 

As you can see I've been a bit occupied these past weeks but have also been busy with polymer clay. I couldn't post a lot because I was making  Christmas presents and a few sales from my Etsy shop! I didn't get much photography done so there's not been much to show you. I will try to take some photographs over the next few days and post some pictures of my new stuff, including the final weeks of #2015 PCChallenge to catch up on that .

I hope everyone who celebrates it had a lovely Christmas celebration / winter solstice. Here's a picture of the full moon on Christmas night, apparently quite a rare occurrence.Enjoy!

Nearing the finish line!

Wow, I just realized that there are only 10 weeks left in the #2015 PCChallenge that I've been participating in since January. I haven't posted about it but have been very busy experimenting with polymer clay and trying many new techniques and revisiting some old techniques. My last blog entry about this challenge was week 25 so I'll quickly include most of my entries since then so you can see what I've been up to. I've managed to produce something for every week but my blog has been seriously neglected.
Below are some pics of the last 16 weeks!

So that's about it. You're up to date on my pc adventure. Hopefully I'll be able to keep up to date for the rest of the year although there may be a brief hiatus in November since I'll be having  a knee replacement and may not be up to meeting the weekly deadline. I'll try to post a few ahead of time so I don't break my record. See you  on the other side !

We're All Ears Challenge.

Here's my second post in a week after a long drought in my blog over the summer. I  enjoy the "we're all ears challenge " on the blog Earrings Everyday because the inspirations provided are always so intriguing.http://earrings-everyday.blogspot.ca/
This month was no exception.It was a music video called Torque Starter which I found fascinating. If you get a chance check it out here. Mesmerizing use of shapes and movement. The two shapes I focused on were triangles and spirals.

 I made these polymer clay beads combining the two shapes. They have wonderful movement dangling from the ears.Hope you like them!

Whoops! I've been sooo neglectful!

My son's partner, the lovely Steph, reminded me today that I haven't written on my blog for over a month! I realized that I've been so immersed in the world of polymer clay that summer has just whipped by! I am continuing to have great fun experimenting  with new techniques and reprising techniques that I tried before but didn't like the results. After 8 months of focusing almost exclusively on polymer clay, my skills have improved and I am getting closer to discovering that elusive Artist's Voice I've been searching for. I have to say my attitude has changed toward my art and I realized that today at Hamilton's SuperCrawl            (an annual street festival focused on art and music) when I told a couple of artists that I am an artist as well and it felt completely authentic! A year ago, I felt awkward describing what I was doing as art but now there is no doubt in my mind that what I do  is art, whether  good or bad! Progress!

Products from my obsessed summer....awaiting sanding and buffing.

Now that fall has arrived I'm feeling  motivated again to increase my online presence. This is my favorite time of year ...what I consider the new year. For the next 2 months I will do my best to post more on facebook, update my Etsy shop, write blog posts more regularly and get ready to launch my Amazon Handmade shop. Yes, I'm very excited about being accepted and hope that it works out for all of the handmade artists who have signed up. I heard today that the official launch date is November 30th so I have a little time to create my shop and get my listings organized. They're leaving it rather late to catch the Christmas rush but we'll have to see how that works out.
I mentioned in an earlier post that I attended a great Helen Breil workshop in June. These silk-screened hollow beads are from then.

From there on in I've been experimenting with different techniques which you can see below. It was a truly inspirational workshop. That plus my weekly entries into the #2015PCChallenge has kept me totally obsessed with polymer clay.

Cute bowls inspired by Helen Breil.

I hope you've enjoyed seeing some of what I've been up to. Thanks Steph , for giving me a gentle nudge. I promise it won't be so long until you hear from me again.