Silly Stuff, Beads, Buttons and Textures Classes

Posted on February 6, 2012 by Elaine

All of these will be run at the Art Gallery of Swift Current – the nifty little place I spend far too much time at here in town – and they’re the people you need to call or email to register.

First up, I’ll be continuing with classes for the kiddos. We’ll be doing what I call the Silly Stuff this time around. By Silly Stuff I mean we’ll be making flip books, wobblers out of clay, pop up pranks in time for April Fool’s day and whatever else gets dreamed up. The Art Gallery has an amazing stash of crafty materials and the kids are frighteningly creative. I mostly just have to referee for this. Grade 1 and 2s will be on Tuesday and the 3-5s will be on Wednesday since this seemed to work before.

My polymer classes start off with a basics session where we’ll go over all of the basics: conditioning, working, curing and finishing. We’ll also do the fun stuff, the embellishing: basic canes, colour mixing and a few tricks for how to make great pieces simply. For this class our “basics” projects will be beads and buttons since I see these as instant gratification items. I will have a few finished items to demonstrate what you can use YOUR beads and buttons to create and time depending we may get the chance to go over a few of these.

Following the Basic Beads and Buttons session we’ll be doing an in depth introduction to textures in clay. We’ll go over how to use polymer clay to make your OWN versatile tools and then we’ll use our new stamps, molds and textures to make tiles, inchies, ATCs and, knowing me, beads. We’ll also get into surface embellishments to help highlight all the great textures we’ll be making.

The nitty gritty:

Kids classes will be:
* Gr 1 & 2: Tuesdays 4:30-5:30 – February 28, March 6 & 13
* Gr 3, 4 & 5: Wednesdays 4:30-5:30 – February 29, March 7 & 14

Adult classes will be:
* Polymer Clay Beads and Buttons Basics: 6:30-8:30, February 29, March 7 & 14
* Polymer Clay Textures and Surface Decoration: 6:30-8:30, March 21 & 28, April 4

Bead Soup Ingredients

Posted on January 30, 2012 by Elaine

So now that I know my partner and I have each received our goodies I’m allowed to post pictures! Which is awesome since I got the COOLEST beads (insert little squeeeee sounds). I even know a couple pieces they’ll turn into.

Cilla of TellYourGirlfriends fame sent me:

I see at least two necklaces with that. One with most of the lampwork and turquoise and another with a ceramic focal, the pretty copper beads and clasp and a couple clay beads i have that would work, I think. The face bead is definitely getting flowers with it. I do faces in flowers.

This is what I sent to Cilla:

Not sure what she’ll dream up from that but there’s plenty to mix around!

Trellis

Posted on January 29, 2012 by Elaine

The Art Bead Scene’s monthly challenge was an interesting bit of wallpaper by William Morris. The design elements are something along the lines of what I do so I whipped up a little focal bead with a trellis and orange-y flowers and made a necklace:

It gave me the chance to use one of the cute little bird beads I’d bought sometime ago as well as some of my collection of pretty stone beads.

Life is Bumpy

Posted on January 23, 2012 by Elaine

Well, at least the beads are bumpy:

I would say that life, last week at least, was CHILLY. There was a biggish milestone in it:

I guess that means there’s now a teenager in the house. So far teenage kiddo seems much the same as twelve year old kiddo!

The Bead Soup Partner

Posted on January 20, 2012 by Elaine

I took the leap of faith and put my name in the hat for the Bead Soup blog hop. And got a spot (and a partner to trade soup makings with!). My partner is Cilla Watkins, another Canadian jewellery artist, from the very pretty town of Salmon Arm in the British Columbia interior.

I was happy to see she has a little of the same jewellerymaking vibe as me. Makes it easier to pick out treats then even if I know we’re supposed to be sending challenging bits and pieces to our partners.