The Canes Have Now Become a Bracelet

My canes have tantalized me for a week now as I have gone through the creation process and I was more than ready to create some beads from them. However, I had another project that I wanted to participate in first.

Jacki Christie of Christie’s Cottage does a Wednesday give away on her blog. She does tireless promotion for many of the artists on both Artfire and Etsy and I have been honored by her featuring one of my pieces of jewelry as a give away. I offered up one of my polymer clay bracelets and she also gave away one of my polymer clay penguin Christmas ornaments. This time I told her I wanted to create something specifically for her give away.

Since I have bunny earrings and bracelets running all over my workbench, I was really leaning towards creating a Easter Bunny charm bracelet. The give away is slated for March 7th and I felt this gave me enough time to do something specifically “bunniesh” and the recipient enough to time receive it before Easter, especially if I went with something for the younger crowd. It could be a great basket stuffer.

Well, as inspiration would have it, I kept thinking about my new canes and I kept thinking about this stash of a dozen brass bangle bracelets that I had staring at me. Then a Victorian thought came to mind. I have been surrounded lately by some beautiful Victorian lace valentines and the background of Jacki’s blog is Victorian. The Ashes of Roses of these canes kept whispering lace and fineness and the pinks and peaches of the excess clay staring at me simply demanded that I create that bracelet.

So, I looked at a million lace patterns and  intended to create my translucent and white accent cane by using a lace pattern, and not the normal bullseye lace pattern. I was looking for real lace. But, as my impatience to create overwhelmed my nitpicking, I went with a crosshatch pattern.

The bracelet quickly came into shape and the colors were sweetly romantic, feminine and oh, so, Victorian. I fell in love with the bracelet and it did not take long to determine that this was the give away for Christie Cottage.

Here is my most favorite bracelet EVER! Well, for this week anyway.

This bracelet is set on a brass bangle and it has been hand wet sanded through three grits before a light varnish to give it shine.

If you want to be part of the give away, here is the link to Christie Cottage. It will not be posted until the first of March, but she has other shopping sprees, twitter trees and other promotional events that she routinely schedules.

Enjoy the canes, these are the actual canes that I have for sale on my website.

These canes are limited and they will not be repeated, so if you are inspired to create your own Victorian bangle bracelet, then now would be the time to get the canes.

Enjoy

Julie and Blu

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Winter Earrings – The Canes Dangle from the Ears

This exercise was actually two-fold, if not more. I wanted to make 10mm polymer clay beads using my winter series of polymer clay canes. I was going to set them up for sale as earring pairs and just leave it at that until I actually finished the beads and held them in my hands. I knew as soon as I touched them that I wanted to create the earrings from them myself.

I had been working on getting the technique for wire-wrapping down and had yet to try the closed loop for bead attachment. In fact, I have been totally intimidated by the closed loop – no matter how many times I looked at the instructions, it just did not click with me. But, in order to create the earrings that I envisioned, I was going to need to close the loops and not work with a wrapped end.

I wanted to create dangling earrings using chain and knew I did not want to open the loops and then attach the wire wrapped beads. That did not stop me from creating a couple wire wrapped beads and assembling them that way. I did sit down and took out one of my many beading books and looked at the instructions over and over again. Any standard beading book will include instructions for wire wrapping and simple closed loops for your beads.

I did not get them all right, but I did get them to work the way I wanted them to, which allowed me to create 8 pairs of dangling chain earrings.

Here are the earrings using the winter cane series in 10mm bead format.

     

What fun they were!

I will create some more 10mm for the earrings pairs that I originally started out to create. Hopefully, those will make it to the shop for sale, but I can make no promises. :)

Enjoy the beads, canes and earrings,

Julie and Blu

Technorati Tags: blue morning expressions,artfire,polymer clay beads,polymer clay canes,winter canes,flower canes,polymer clay earrings,handmade beads,raw canes,millefiori canes

Heartsy Deal on Artfire

If you are interested in getting a great deal on my clay canes and beads, then click over to heartsy, which is the artists' equivalent to groupon.

This is for my artfire shop, which has over 1000 different items in it, from jewelry and beads, to xstitch and beaded loom patterns.

I only have a few hours to get all the needed votes before this goes to a final approval stage.
The discount is $14 for $30 voucher, which DOES include shipping.

http://heartsy.me/deals/4164/like

Playing Through

When you live in Florida, you are surrounded by both the beautiful waters of the Atlantic Ocean and miles and miles of golf courses.

Like a lot of my goodies, these started by those wonderful three words that we all love to hear, "Do You Have ....." which is a variation on the theme of "Can You Make..."

A friend of mine needed a gift for a lovely lady golfer and she saw some ladybug pot holder magnets that I had done and asked how hard it would be to create golf balls for her friend's kitchen. I thought about it a minute and said, "well, I could do a set of two for your friend, if you give me a couple of days to get them done".

It was a mutually beneficial exchange, she had a set of magnets that couldn't be found anywhere else and I had a new product line that given my locale, made for a popular gift.

I used Fimo Soft to form my golf balls, I added my hook and glued it in before baking. I attached a heavy duty thick magnet on the back, and now these are ready for a place of honor on any golfer's refrigerator. Priced right and fun, those are two things that I strive for in my creations.

Most of all, fun.

See you on the 19th hole.

Julie and Blu

Playing With Palettes

I have a book that is fast becoming worn around the edges as I spend a lot of time simply leafing through it. I take it with me when we go somewhere and I glance through it while riding along in the car. I like to look at the photos and the different beaded images and then look at the scenery around me and find a palette based on what I see.

Margie Deeb has put together this book, The Beader’s Color Palette, to inspire us to take a good look at the world around us and find the natural palettes to use in our art. Whether beading or playing in clay, I am always trying to find new ways to do things. Sometimes, I can not think of a single thing to create. (That’s why I like this book so well!)

I had on my to do list, some kaleidoscope canes, as I have almost exhausted my entire collection. I sat here and stared off and fiddled around and couldn’t think of a single thing to do with my hundreds of brand new packages of premo! I got carried away when they went on sale and have boxes of clay now.

So, I sat on the couch and watched the news and picked up Margie’s book and started leafing through it again and suddenly I thought of the artist grade clay that I have recently switched to and how it closely resembled the oil paints and their unlimited ability to create every colour we know.

I began to look at the book and try and imagine what colours it would take to create the ones I was seeing in the photos. I tried to be picky about what colours I wanted to work with and the canes that I would make from the clay. That approach wasn’t working, I still couldn’t decide.

SO! I randomly opened the book and made myself create from the colours on the page.

This was the first cane that I did with this new thought process :)

Ecru is now my new favourite colour!

This fruit dove was on the adjacent page and I figured that with only 4 colours, it would be an easy cane. However, there were certainly MORE than 4 colours by the time that I was finished.

I never left the page with these two sea inspired pieces.

I think these two might just be my most favourite for the moment.

I did something a little different with these canes, I have nearly zero left over clay. I used every little bit of mixed and blended clay to either wrap or add a dot or outline a cane. I have 4 chunks of end pieces from these but for the most part every bit of clay was used.

I suppose the next step is to make some beads from these! I already have plans for the first cane, I think I will make a necklace set with matching bracelet from it.

If you are interested in the book, here is the book with a link to Margie Deeb’s site. It is well worth picking up.

Have fun!

Julie and Blu

Buckets of Beads!

Off on a bead kick! I have all these beautiful floral millefiori canes that were just begging to be used up so I could create LOTS more. I didn't even make a dent in my huge inventory of canes. The end result was a bucket of beads. Almost all of them are floral round beads with a side order of pillow beads and lentil beads.

I still have a lot of beads to create and will get them done and up as fast as I can, until then, enjoy the bead show. :)

 

There were a total of 78 bead sets that are new in the month of October. The one kaleidoscope pillow beads shown here are a one of a kind. I created this kaleidoscope cane and this is the only set of beads from it.

The florals are all bright and shiny and I hope that you enjoy them.

All are available at www.bluemorningexpressions.com

Have a GREAT evening, Julie and Blu

Southwestern Fantasy

Not Canes but they came from canes!

I like to use as much as I can from my clay and sometimes just a few lentil beads can become something more than the cane itself.

I liked these beads so much that I kept them for myself and I didn't follow my usual varnishing procedure and just left them in their baked state. There was just something that lent them to stay matte. I combined them with more earth beads by adding dyed bone beads and some potato pearls.

Czech crystal beads add shine and glamour to the necklace. It isn't "heavy" but it is a piece with some weight to it.

Finally! I have my project board cleaned off.
Off to create more beads!
Julie

My Latest Beads

New Canes, New Bracelets!

I have been meaning to put a few bracelets and earring sets together using my latest beads and I just now have gotten the chance to do that.

I have 5 more sets that I need to finish up, but this is the preview of good things to come!

Have a fun weekend,
Julie