Inspirations: Snail (Worpswede, germany)

Sometimes a picture presents itself. The snail was sitting on the plants next to the front door where my grandmother lives. 

Inspirations: Birds (Worpswede, germany)

We went to my grandmother for a short visit (first time Rumpel meet her). We had a little walk before lunch and I was able to "catch" these little birds waiting on the sign for their parents to feed them. They could already fly... but still their parents were busy bringing new food (the first foto was while one of the parents came back, shouting to be the first one to be fed!). Teenager! Ha :)

Grey.

Der Himmel weint
und ich mit ihm.

The paradox.

I am waiting for you

My little ones to come

To soothe my pain

But you won’t come

Ever again because

I am crying for you.

At day's end...

She is beautiful.

It is sunday, the 11th of august, 2013, 11.31 (starting to write this blog entry... we will see how long it will take me to finish...).

I created her during the last days. I started at saturday and finished her the saturday after (yesterday). I made her out of polymer clay (this time a mixture of fimo classic and cernit, because I had it at hand). Originally it was white polymer clay and yes, I loved the matt white look. But it was not perfect somehow. Like with my doll head with the flowers I made some time ago (still not painted), I was afraid of ruining her by adding paint. But I needed to make her. I used the swellegant paints from Christie Friesen. Several layers of brass, all oxidation fluids (I wanted different shades and colours), a lot of different colour patines (don't ask me which ones... I am just going, trying, adding more, that is an ongoing process) and in the end the clear matt sealant. If you try this I have to add that even of the sealant is clear and matt, it still changes the brightness and shades of the colours! You need to seal it but maybe try it first with not to important objects to get a feeling.

I will make a picture wearing the necklace but not now.  I attached the same beads from the front at the end. The fall down the back. This is a little detail that I love to include in my designs. 

I started creating her after Bisu had another crisis. Bisu is the last one of my little ones, my cats. He was getting more stable and better but just one too warm and humid day was all needed to get to another crisis. There are no reserves left in his body. I was standing before my partner (Rumpel), crying and saying, he is dying. Even if the crisis at that day was not too serious, something inside me felt like this. He was getting better again until tuesday night. Again, a crisis. Wednesday morning we went to his doctor and he was telling me the same. Bisu got another infusion, vitamins, anabolika, a lot of other medicaments, like in the last months... The doctor also said, he will get a little bit better again but I will have think about when I will be able to let him go. This is just the short version of this conversation and all the ones we had before. Maybe just to you, this is the best vetmed in leipzig (and in my work I got in contact with a lot of vetmeds and the vet clinic here), I know him for the last ten years and I deeply trust him (I would love to have a doc like this for me!). He said it would be okay to go with another infusion, but also that for him it would also be okay to let him go now.

My former flat mate, those mother brought my little ones 12 years ago to us (just 4 weeks old, nearly dead, skin and bones, pneumonia, worms... the vetmed at that time didn't believed they would survive), was still in holiday and I wanted him to be able to say good bye. We all thought it could and would maybe take another week or two or even a little bit more before it was really time. Then I was hoping he would be okay until next friday, so I could take the day off and spent some time with him. But no... yesterday I knew it has to be the next days, not the next week. Yesterday I finished her. After this I just knew what was the right decision. Even if Bisu is still fighting, even if he is still curious and wants to cuddle, even if he still reacts to me... his body is failing him. Most cats and dogs with cni are not dying from the toxics or so, they are dying due to starvation. It is no gentle death waiting for a cni cat or dogs. I can see now that his body started to feed from all the leftover muscles not only his hind legs. He is also afraid of everything strange and foreign again, also very agitated and anxious.

I have to wait until monday to phone Bisus doc (he is not here this weekend). But this one or two days will be okay. I don't want him to endure the stress of an unknown person. His doc is one of the few vetmeds where most cats and dogs are not afraid to go to. He is a special person and I think that in all that past months when we went to him nearly every days, I just saw two times a dog being afraid and nervous, says it all.

I am already mourning even thought Bisu is still here. It such a strange emotion knowing that your beloved cat will only be alive a day or two. I try to be relaxed, to be calm, because he is reacting after my emotions. It is hard. Also to have everything at a normal routine.

I am rambling, I know, please bare with me. My blog is something very personal for me and writing in my blog makes things real.

It all adds somehow. I love the colour of these beads and they were perfect for this project. The size, the surface, the shading. I bought them from Rebeccas The Curious Bead Shop.

In little parts we fell apart. Death may be the final piece but already before, if the process was going a long way, every day, there is a little bit more gone. I saw this with my mother when she got cancer. She was my mother until the end, the feelings were always the same, but her memory was already breaking down and with it the person I knew was gone even before I lost her completely.

Glas beads (quite cheap ones from Rco design) in bronze. I bought them because I loved the matt metallic colour, the rough lloking surface and the irregularity on the beads. 

I see it also with Bisu. His eyes, this bright looking eyes, always keeping his gaze on me, are still the same. But the strong, fearless, bold and quite often so impertinent cat is gone. Please, don't misunderstand me. He is still my Bisu. But with humans as well as with animals there is always to every time point in our lives something special that we should enjoy and value at that moment. Because we all change and sometimes along the way, may it be just to illness, we lose parts that we can never gain back.

I thread single strains of the glas beads with crochet beading thread before putting the necklace together. There are four rows in every strain because I really wanted the necklace to be sturdy in the end.

Yes, now in this moment I am mourning this. But it is nothing I want to mourn. Just to remember to live life now. Never wait like... when I will have time for this... oh, maybe next year... Also never let others decide for your life. The responsibility, no matter what bad things already happened, the responsibility what to make out of it right here and now, that lays only by oneself. That is sometimes overwhelming and heavy but also at the same time really great.

Just hands with tentacles. I love there shape and feeling. I thought of using them as earrings but not for this necklace. That would somehow not fit (just too much) and would take away from her face. So now there are waiting on my desc until I know what to make with them. Or maybe single pendants?

She is really beautiful in my eyes. She is pain. She is love. At day's end she is holding my tears. 

Blue glas

I am always surprised how different a pattern can be regarding to the colours and shapes used. This time white polymer clay (Fimo classic) and blue acrylic paint (Reeves), covered with fimo liquid and several layers of shiny gloss / lacquer. For the gloss it is really important to make at least fve or six layers to get the glas like effect.

I am surprised how much I love the deep blue! It says portugal or spain to me, summer with all the white and blue, the beautiful tiles (morocco would also be suitable) and patterns... Makes me smile :) 

Broken gold

Polymer clay (fimo classic) in a dark brown, gold leaf (no, not the real one, just golden cheap metal but still so beautiful!) on top, crackled by rolling over the clay, covered with fimo liquid and a lot of layers of shiny gloss! 

Grey matters

Simple. Dark grey and silver on white polymer clay. The pattern was made form a plastic place set ;) I am thinking of more bold colours for this pattern, a little bit retro style or just pure summer feeling? Or rather a metallic look...? Mh... difficult....

Strings and loops - use your yarn for earrings

There is nothing as good as fast and easy little projects. Okay, skip the fast. They are not fast to make. But still an easy and good project to take with you. Rumpel found some cheap and furthermore discounted jewelery in our supermarket. Knowing me (or rather even knowing me? ^^) he showed me the offer. The earring loops were only 59 cent (euro cent, not us cent) so I took some with me. 

I had a lot of embroidery yarn / thread at home, chose some colour combinations I liked and just wrapped the loops with them. The open ends are wrapped under the yarn, just for the end I made a knot and secured it with some glue. 

My sister Lachafa used this technique to cover her ear plugs with yarn (have a look here). Later she gave them away to our brother because he also love them. Just wrap whatever you like, secure the end of one yarn under the wrappings of the next one.

And if you don't like it anymore: Cut it off!

The original earring loops... and yarn...

I could also image to use different colour combinations for each ear. 

By the way... the even reduced the leaftover jewelery down to 29 cent. I bought 17 earring loops, all that I could find! A lot of them are smaller loops, but I think that will also look nice with yarn... or polymer clay...?

For the readers speaking german: I linked up to frifris blog! Mh... even if you can't read german, have a look at the blog and the linked blogs. They have a topic each months playing with fabric. The topic of july was threads. Seeing a necklace at Nahtzugabe also made by wrapping something with yarn I thought my earring would fit in and asked whether I could join this month :)

Per Zufall bin ich beim Blog Nahtzugabe über frifris "Stoffspielereien im Juli: Fäden" gestossen. Bei Nahtzugabe kann man eine Kette mit "Garnumwicklungen" und ein Makramee-Armband sehen. Ich fand, daß paßt perfekt zu den Ohrringen :) Deswegen hatte ich angefragt, ob ich diesen Monat auch bei den Stoffspielereien mitmachen kann... selbst wenn es eben mit Ohrringen ist! Hier könnt ihr die anderen Spielereien sehen.

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 ;)