That sounds dramatic but every time I bake an item with the little translucent floating canes on them and the canes go from being foggy, smudged pictures to clear little graphics I’m in love again with the technique. Today, I made pens.
These pens, with plenty of foggy pre-bake translucent on the cane halos and the mg:
And the same pens after baking and a bit of ice water! Magic!
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Wow, we did it. The Claychicks are back! And the Tooaquarius Shop on Etsy has launched! I reloaded the Claychicks Etsy shop with clay canes and added a few beadsets to the new Tooaquarius shop as well as the webstore.
Some features from the ‘chicks include:
and 
And in the Tooaquarius Shop and Tooaquarius Etsy I added quite a few sets of beads, all at $10, including:
and 
To get a good look at the Tooaquarius web shop’s collection, try here for sets in black & white, purple, blue or a warm tropical set.
In the end, what I love best is beads. It’s why I started with polymer clay nearly ten years ago and pretty much all my canes are design with What Beads They’ll Go On in mind.
So last week I got to whip up beads and finish some that were sitting here waiting for their finishing. Here’s some caned beads made from canes I did in February:
I do love my beads! Some of these – in sets of six – will be in my store tomorrow.
I just had a show at Tom Baines Jr High yesterday, in support of a local breast cancer patients group at Wings of Hope. The students who were the bulk of the organizing and fundraising committee were fabulous – there were jugglers, lots of student crafts and just generally a lot of creativity. This is my assistant (Hi Mom!) at my table / booth.
In the next few weeks there’s more of these coming! Next weekend I have a two day show. Raddison Heights / Albert Park (my community) is having a big craft fair / spring tea / garage sale event on April 19 and 20th from 10am to 6pm.
I get a week off before the next show, at Abbeydale Community. That one’s on May 3rd and runs till 3 pm.
Then, at the end of May, I have the Lilac Festival. This will be my first Really Big Show. The Festival is actually the 4th St. Street Fair (a community near the city center of Calgary) and it brings more than 50k people. Last year, I think they said more than 80k. It runs 10 blocks or more and for a show that size the fees for individual artisans are very modest. That runs 10-6 on Sunday, May 25.
Saturday June 14 is the Village Fair @ Village Square Leisure Centre. It runs from 11-3 and the one last year was great, not just as a seller but as a fair goer. There were food samples from the local communities, all sorts of dance groups, reduced rates on swimming and other activities and the attached library had programs as well.
All of these are in Calgary – I have one slightly out of town show coming up in the Fall but I’m not that brave yet!
I made a whole slew of bangles last year using polymer clay over a metal core and this year looks to be the same trend again in my work. While I really like the contrast between the edging / backing solid colour with the complexity of the cane section I was looking for some simpler designs that would have fewer steps.
This one is the first try at that and I have to say that I quite like it. I have a few more in the To Sand tub so that I can have another bangle stack! I wonder if I could texture the whole deal and skip that sanding step…