Caramels, Beads, Polymer Clay Canes and Other Goodies

I love Caramel Nips; they are a smooth caramel hard candy that slowly melts in your mouth and is full of milky, sweet caramel and comes in a box of maybe 15 or 20 for about one dollar. I don’t have them very often, but when I do, they are a blissful moment of yum.

When I created these polymer clay beads, I did not notice the caramel color too much, but once I started my sanding and then glazing, they were the same smooth caramel goodness. The polymer clay lentil beads were so similar to the those candies that I wanted the beads to just glow with the caramel color.

My polymer clay cane flowers are all bright and colorful. I used all my own canes except one flower I happened to have in my stash of polymer clay goodies.

The little round beads are all 10mm beads and the small roundels are in the same yummy caramel color. I did one set of beads with my pale blue star flower on them and one set with the purple violet polymer clay cane.

The lentil beads will be great as bracelets and they are in two different sizes. The lentil beads with all the color flowers on them are 20mm in size and I created six of those and the other lentil beads are 15mm and I created eight of each of those sets.

I thought the lentil beads with the rose and pale green flowers on them would be perfect for a Victorian themed bracelet.

All of these wonderful beads are just waiting for the right project!

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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