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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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

Latest Canes

Sunflower Inspiration

I was creating some sunflower earrings for a customer the other day and I thought about how much I loved this colour combination and that I didnt have any of it in cane form. So the first thing I did with my excess clay is do a geometric cane that I sliced up and made beads out of. More of that project later when I get the bracelet done.

The next thing I did was do a little bullseye caning and then some stacking and then some squishing and then some slicing for beads. I used all my extra left over clay and I enjoy the colour combination.

Cheers!
Julie

Latest Bead Offerings - Currently on Etsy