"Winter Solstice" - Ornament swap

Some of the rare few pieces that turned out as I imagined it! But... and there is a huge "but" involved, there were a lot of times I nearly threw it away! There were a lot of new ideas, material and methods I tried for the first time and way too much went wrong during the creation process!

Kimberly Rogers started the "Winter solstice ornament swap". What a great idea and I joined! My swap partner was Karin Grosset Grange. How perfect since I love her work! Maybe not as perfect for her... since my ornament arrived way too late at her... *sniff* I will show you the gorgeous ornament she send me as soon as I get the right light! I already tried but didn't like the results. So... will try again soon :)

First thing going wrong: My material order didn't arrive in time. I waited... and waited... oh... and I waited!  

The back is actually a postcard from the Grassi museum (just around the corner where we live). It is an old arabic pattern and the heavy car board was impressed as well as gilded with gold effects. To make the first cut was really hard but the pattern reminded me so much of the rays of the sun!

I also bought the sculpey face mold. Yes, a commercial mold but I wanted to have the mold for years! All these little moon faces are so lovely! I used super sculpey firm now one my absolute favorite polymer clays ever. It holds even the tiniest details so perfect and really firm even unbaked. Sadly only available in grey but grey was perfect for this ornament. The baked face was antiqued using acrylic paint and I added the gold details complementing the background pattern with gold (coloured) leaf.

The back is also covered with gold leaf. Both sides are then covered with resin. I added some purple powder in the back but the effect is a little but too subtle to really see it ;)

Some chains and czech glass beads to add some dangling because every ornament and jewellery piece gets better with "dangling"! The etched yellow drop just seems to glow.

I don't want to go to all difficult parts nearly going wrong. Just the worst (the one I wanted to start crying and throw it away): Putting resin on the back side it started dropping to the front (the piece was put on a little stand) and I didn't notice it. I saw it just the next day when it was hardened: A big purple drop around the nose. All the work that went into this piece, for nothing? But I remembered reading something about this resin cold glaze (it is only for adding a surface layer, not for big pieces): That is adheres to paper and metal and wood and... and... and... but not on plastic. So what is polymer clay in the end? Plastic! I carefully started to try to rip the resin blob off... then with a little bit more force and it worked! 

Now I just love this piece, my version of "Winter solstice" and if I am honest, I think I love it even more because of all the difficulties I had to overcome :)

Yellow and I - that is a real challenge!

I really like to challenge myself. That has a lot of reasons and not the last one is to get the head free from worries, sorrows, too many thoughts biting in their own tail, just stress (even the good one, on a certain level it is so hard just to relax and calm down)... Just reading a book, drinking coffee with friends, watching a movie, go swimming... all great, but that all don't turn the stuff in my head off. But a challenge does. Working with the hands, creating things, the concentration at the moment...

But for this there has to be some kind of challenge for myself (or also new stuff and techniques and material, woks also great ^^). For all the colours I am working with, for all the variations of polymer clay I have, I realized that I don't really use yellow. I like that colour combined with red and orange in my apartment, on pillows and throws... but not in my wardrobe and not in my crafting. I am never drawn to yellow.

There we are. Yellow. Okay, I thought, lets buy yellow polymer clay and start making something. I bought a nice saturated yellow fimo classic. 

Two weeks ago I meet with friends for a crafting saturday (with sweets, fruit salat, Hugo and prosecco). We all made beads and earrings out of polymer clay, joining the materials and experience we have (I would so love to give workshops here in leipzig, but I still didn't find any oportunity with working spaces and everything...). I took my yellow clay with me and started...

...and it took me until now to finish of painting the beads, adding gloss or resin, and especially: Make something with them!

Here we are with my two first earring pairs made with yellow beads. Okay, I added other colours with acrylic paint (Reeves) but I don't like just raw baked clay. I prefer depths I can create with adding layers of different colours. 

For this little round beads (that are now really going into orange rather then yellow but I think the yellow is still prominent, nai?) I tried a technique from Kellie (Make it with me, have a look here) with pastel chalks and varnish. I scratched a little chalk dust with my scalpel of the chalk and used the shiny gloss from staedtler for fimo. I added some bright orange and red. Here a view of the back.

Also a first time for me: I used waxed linen cord and sewellegant paints. A lot first times in one and all of them just add a little subtle element but creates something that I really like. The metal rings are treated with some oxides from swellegant (the selection of metall coatings and oxides from Christie Friesen, made by Sculpt Nouveau). From the waxed linen cord I bought several colours as well as her sample pack for different strentghs (2, 4 or 7 ply) from Rebecca´s "The Curious Bad Shop". My biggest love is the teal one I used here!

Another real subtle effect that you just would see if you would change it: The silver beads. They are from the bead shop "Perlament" in Bonn. The name is a word play from the combination of "Parlament" and "Perle" meaning parliament and bead in english. Bonn was the former capital of west germany before the reunion of east and west germany. The beads are so unbelievable expensive but worth it. Sadly they don't sell online. A friend showed me this beads and she tried (I also tried) to get from any other company this beads. No way. It seems that they are covered in real silver somehow. They also have different kinds of golden beads... also real gold... going up to over 15 euro for some gramms. And yes, we just drove to Bonn to get beads... even if it is on the other side of germany...

For these beads I just used a red acrylic paint and covered it with (yes, you guessed it, another first time, this blog entry is kind of long...) UV resin. Uhm, I got little air bubbles, but still, you don't really see them and they are still beautiful. 

What took the most time: Find suitable beads to add. Red and yellow glas beads (round or swarowskis or lampwork) all seemed way to "matchy". It took away the whole effect of the bright yellow and red and I always just got an old feeling. I tried to add some bright contrast and it worked for a turquoise and silver glas bead I had... but I only had one left. That is strange because I always buy beads in two in case I want to make earrings with them. Then a friend suggested copper beads and these were the ones I finally used. They had really big holes so I added small red glass beads to cover them. I like the accent they are making. Can you see how the are going a little bit into the big metallic bead?

Oh, and I made a new mold for these beads. Using an old and cheap spoon I found during our poymer clay crafting session. It was stamped cheap metal: Perfect to make molds from both sides! This i why I have a negative and a positive image bead. Did you notice that the beads are not the same?

And can you see the little air bubbles? (I hope not ^^)

These earrings will also be my entry for the AJE Earring Challenge from Art Jewelry Elements. Have a look at the blog for the earring challenge as well as the Pinterest board!

You may remember this pattern. It is one of my favorite patterns :)

And here are all the beads I made in their true original yellow colour. No, I didn't use all of them now. But I promise to use all of them, it was (is) a challenge after all!

In all details...

...different shapes, stamps and molds...

...oh, these are made with a transparent yellow, not mine, a friend brought it with her at our meeting...

Little ones for earring studs!

I forgot to take pictures without colours, so at least the beads before I turned them into earrings.

And studs! I love to use the to try the effects I get from different pattern and colour combinations!

...or just yellow acrylic paint as yellow accent instead of yellow polymer clay?

Puh, to be honest, while I love single beads / earrings I made with yellow, it is still not my colour. I thought maybe after this challenge yellow and I would be more compatible with each other (happened to me with bright blue and pink before), but no. Or maybe... let's say a tiny wee bit better but still no big love. 

But I will thing of yellow as a tiny accent and / or contrast for other colours now ;)