Year of Clay – Orangina

One of my favourite beverage treats is Orangina. I’m convinced half of my like for it is just because the bottle is that cool shape.

And of course once I started claying I knew that one day I would have to cover one.

Here is a just baked vase and the original bottle -

polymer clay orangina vase

I first covered the bottle in scrap clay to get the vase shape, then in a thin layer of white mixed with pearl. I sanded it a little and then layed thick slices of cane. I’ll sand the cane a bit and add some tendrils but week 9 was going to go by if I waited!

This also accomplishes something else near and dear to my heart: reusing(of the reduce, reuse, recycle spectrum).

Claychicks Help Caro Clean Her Desk Off

Pretty much as it says. My partner in clay is clearing out a pretty big and varied box of canes on ebay this week:

ebay canes

There’s also a set of pretty roses in the Claychicks Ebay listings and a variety of goodness in our Etsy Shop.

Year of Clay – Spring Canes

Here the ground is still covered in snow but I’m already dreaming ahead to Spring. We had a sneak preview last week due to a Chinook. A few weeks ago I got started on my Spring run with my colour mixing and rose cane making. This past few days, I finished up the rest of the canes from that batch:

spring 2007 polymer clay canes

The box of blends – yes, I make blends ahead of time – is echoingly empty and the boxes of little wrapped canes for sale and less neatly kept canes for my own use are bulging.

Clay + Chicks = Claychicks

And a whole lotta chicken related jokes.

She’s gone completely around the bend you’re thinking… We’ll ignore that thought and get to the point.

Carolyn Jordan and I have joined forces to begin selling our work on Etsy and Ebay. We decided on the name Claychicks for our venture and are looking forward to a light-hearted, colourful and profitable run. To this end we’ve also registered www.claychicks.com though right now it’s Under Creation (so sick of under construction).

This week we have Carolyn’s lovely set of pansies on Ebay:

Pansy canes

Sheer poultry in motion…

Heart Cane

I whipped up a simple little heart cane for my Valentine to my fellow clayers! It uses one of my new favourite toys, my Makins Extruder.

Year of Clay – Jacob’s Ladder

Why should the kids have all the fun?

jacob ladder polymer clay

Following Bob Wiley’s tutorial from Polymer Cafe, I made a few Jacob’s Ladders. I concentrated on the mechanics this time but will work on a cleaner finish for the next batch. The toys were a big hit at Christmas.

jacobs ladder polymer clay

My daughter selected the bunny theme on the above one. The black edged one has floral canes on one side and a 4-colour MG pattern on the other.

jacobs ladder polymer clay mg

1 Ounce

In the interests of full disclosure – I make and sell canes. I also use other peoples canes in my work even though I make quite good canes.

I think a lot people don’t realize just how much you can get out of one small sample of cane – I’ve picked one ounce or 30ish grams.

I mostly make two types of canes – canes with translucent backgrounds, used to layer over a base, often on beads and canes that are meant to be sliced like cookies and used as slices, for buttons, beads or scrapbook parts.

Here is a photograph of 1 ounce of translucent canes(that’s one half pack of clay):

one ounce cane

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Year of Clay – Hearts

The first half of February has me with hearts on the brain. See, Valentines is not only a super-hyped holiday but my birthday. So I indulge a bit.

That and swirlies can easily be squished a little into a shape other than lentils -

polymer clay swirly hearts

The heart on the right has a little metal leaf swirled in to it. The scanner didn’t capture the subtle (I sanded most of it off, oops) flecks well but it would seem surface inclusions swirl right along with everything else!

Stay tuned over the next week or so – I have more heart related goodness coming up!