Tiny elefants and skulls - everyone needs pink flowers! (ear studs)

You see the pink flowers? I think you may guess for whom I made them ;) 

Tiny ear studs... skulls and elefants.

As much as I like cute stuff, it is something I am not enjoying to create as much as my organic, more tribal work. But from time to time even I need to work "in cute". ^^

I especially love the elefants (I also made molds of both of them after sculpting). They are not really difficult to make - under one condition - stop trying to be perfect. They are rough, have fingerprints, are not perfectly shapes... but have a look at this tiny beauty: It doesn't matter! One glance and you see: It is an elefant! (or a skull...)  :)

PS: I even have a small tutorial for skulls here (just don't judge the images to strict... they were taken over two years ago and not the best ^^). 

Tiny white flowers

These are my training pieces for a special earring commission. A friend was helping a friend of her (I never meet her) with her wedding. The bride had some ideas about her jewelery in mind so I started to play around. Her inspiration were white flower earrings (you know the kind of flower, made with resin and a mold, nice but you can see at the first glance what it is and how it was made). 

My favorite polymer clay to work with is fimo classic. But in this case I switched to cernit porcellain white. It is a beautiful white with a subtle translucent. You can't see it without comparison to opaque white but it creates a more delicate feeling. Also the cernit is not as sticky as fimo classic (which itself is already not as sticky as a lot of other brands) therefor I was able to freeform the single petals between my fingertips. I learned to love finger prints to create more structure (thanks to all the books of Christien Friesen :)) and for these flowers it also makes all the difference.

I also made them with fimo effect translucent. Also beautiful but they have a complete different feeling. Not as fitting as the porcellain white from cernit.

All together, yes, I played around to get a better feeling how to make them.

Here is my finger next to them: Just so you get the idea how tiny they are! 

This was the first method I tried. Nice and I see a lot of uses for them but not... not perfect. This is why I started then really to make every single petal one after another.

The final pieces are also made, she wanted the flowers to be bigger! ^^ The weeding is also over so therefore I can show you know all these flowers. I still have to edit the other pictures with the finished pieces...

...and I feel so, so, so honored that someone (who doesn't even know me) would wear earrings made by me to her wedding!

PS: A little trick if you need to work with your finger tips and the clay sticks to your skin: Use baby (talcum) powder! It works wonder. Just use it at the end because if you already have a non-sticky polymer clay and mix it with these powder, it just crumbles. But as soon as you have your little pieces to flatten and to form between the finger tips, it works so great.

Dots of colours!

To test pattern and colour combinations I just love to make these tiny dots of colour. Small earings (or earstuds) that create a beautiful effect. It allows me to see if something is working or not. Also to challenge myself with new ideas and with colours that are... let's just say not really me ;)

There are also my best seller at every fair. They are unique, handmade and also I sell them at a good price. And most people love to buy something. If you go to a fair you want to buy something, just a little thing. Like a memory to hold :)

Leaves, stamps, head phone surfaces... nothing is safe!

Really nothing ^^

Advent calendar - 23th

Of course, earrings again! Little earstuds! Made from polymer clay (Fimo classic), stamped with broken metall earring parts, coloured with black acrylic paint... and then I added a layer of liquid polymer clay! And... so it gets the clear / translucent effect: Lots of layers of shiny gloss!

I have made a lot these earrings / studs in the last weeks and months. But I forgot to take pictures... before I took them to the craft fairs I went to. A lot of them found somebody loving very soon! It feels special that people like the things you create so much that they are really paying for them! Still strange, always wonderful! :)

Advent calendar - 10th

This is metall foil / leaf on dark brown polymer clay. You don't need any glue because the foil will stick to the polymer clay! I rolled it out a little bit to get the cracked look. I baked the polymer clay (using fimo classic), added a layer of liquid polymer clay (fimo) and baked it again. Regaring how thick the layer of the liquid polymer clay is as well as the kind of metall foil you are using, the metall foil may change its colour! You see that in the middle it has a different shade of gold than around the edges? The effect is reproducible! At last step(s) I added several alyers of shiny gloss to get the transparent effect of the liquid polymer clay. Others are heating it up again with a heating gun... but that is overheating and the fumes which are created are really not the best for ones health. The shiny gloss or lacquer works for me! :)

Earbuds or plugs or whatever + yarn!

This was a cute Formentera-crafting-project of my sister Lachafa! She bought some yarn in different colours. Some of it we used to wrap a strand of her hair... 

...and then she though of using the same technique with her earbuds! This had two advantages: 

• First: The earbuds were cheap ones, so the yarn stabilized the cable that it wouldn't break too easily.
• Second: It looks just great!

But there were one big disadvantage... some thing she didn't think of...

Our brother!

Who asked her with his dark eyes and a sweet smile (and the argument that his birthday would be there soon) whether he could have the earbuds! 

Needless to say that she gave in ^^