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

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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

Latest Bead Offerings - Currently on Etsy

Pink Pearls

Pink Pearls and turqouise cane flowers.

I have been wanting to create a bracelet something like this for awhile now. I wanted to try my hand at building a peyote woven base bracelet and then embellishing it with my cane beads. Well, I didnt know how many beads I was suppose to have to start with so the canes just kept coming and I ended up with a large aspirin bottle FULL to the rim with little turquoise beads and spiral fillers. I drilled them after the fact so they are center drilled and then sewn onto the peyote base.

I created the base to be 6 beads wide (6 ebeads) and it is about 6 inches long. I made the clasp too long to start with and so I had to redo it. I still am not happy with it, so there is a good possiblity it will become a toggle clasp at some point.

I have so many little beads left that I am sure that they will find their way into another bracelet!

The pink pearls seemed like a great added touch!

Have a great night!
Julie

PS - I have some fantastic new lentil beads to share with you as soon as I finish sanding them and creating earrings out of them!

The Latest Kaleidoscope Cane Beads

Premo! was on sale at Michael's last week and I couldn't resist buying as much as I could carry. And of course, to make room for my latest stash, I had to clear out some of my older clay so it was cane extravaganza!

Well, maybe not really an extravaganza, but it was one cane and one left over clay cane.

I did the above orange kaleidoscope as the main cane but I had all this red/orange blend that I didnt really have enough to make anything out of, so I kind of wadded it up and then tried another skinner blend on it. It became a flower that I fielded in white and outlined in red and black. I fiddled around with it until I had a handful of canes and then added a couple black/white spirals and the top cane was born. It was enough to roll out and slice to make the double sided padded pillow round beads. I didnt much care for the edges, so I popped black/white jelly rolls all around it. I got enough beads to create a necklace, a bracelet and two smaller ones for earrings.

Not too bad from the scraps and bits and pieces.

I am working on doing some colour schemes and will post what I come up with when I am done!

Now, I am off on vacation for a week :)
Have a safe and happy holiday weekend.
Julie

Newest Patriotic Cane

Fresh off the workbench!

I needed a few new canes for my next batches of beads, so this one is the newest!

Since I had sold all my other red white and blue canes, I thought I should have one too.
More new canes are in the works and then a whole new batch of beads!

Enjoy
Julie

Patriotic!

You're a Grand Ol' Flag .......
Just getting ready for the Fourth of July with these Red White and Blue Canes.
Each cane is 2 inches long and 1 1/2 in diameter. Not really big canes but fun ones all the same.

I spent the day doing some beading and getting my next necklace ready for sale and then I decided to relax by doing some cool kaleidoscopes. These canes are already spoken for but they were a lot of fun to do and I just might need to do a couple sets for myself for my pillow beads.

Enjoy and have a great weekend!
Julie