Etsy Goodies
The site updating is going pretty painlessly so far! Yay! There’s a few more changes to be made but here’s a post that might be helpful for my Etsy-using friends:
I’ve been selling on Etsy the last 18 months or so and I like the place. It has it’s issues but overall, the price is right. Here’s a few off-Etsy tools to help with your Etsy experience:
More Info Please
- Unofficial Etsy News - these folks take the headlines at Etsy and put them in one spot instead of requiring you to sift through Etsy’s own chaotic and unreliable news services.
- Majaba.org - this site helps you sort through the somewhat complicated ‘favourites’ system at Etsy. It will count up all your item hearts or views for you and display them in a format that’s usable. This is a way to see what’s popular in your shop.
- Pricing Spreadsheets - by Chris Parry is a great answer to: How much should I price it at? There are other excellent posts on the site but this one’s an eye opener.
Help Me Sell
- Let’s Ets - will actually make the file you need to load up the contents of your Etsy site to Google’s shopping listings. Free, simple and super useful.
- We Love Etsy - is a social network (I know, you need another one of those) that is high traffic and regularly updated. In other words, useful. A way to make contacts, network and promote.
Using Those Beads
A long time ago when I first started with clay, I made beads to use in my jewelrymaking. Once clay had me in it’s grip I made jewelry to showcase my clay beads.
I’ve been enjoying a spot of jewelrymaking this month though. Most of it will go to my fall shows and it’s been a fun trip preparing. One of my challenges was figuring out some uses for pillow shaped beads. These are a bead shape I had never really used in my own creations and that I had only begun to make at the request of customers. I’m having fun now though!
There’s other things than pillow bead creations of course - I used a few older beads of mine to make silly cake earrings, bookmarks and some new, sweet roses to make bouquets for your ears and wrist.
And a fellow blogger (and super talented beadmaker) had a very good idea for how to display earrings at shows. Take a peek.
Making Candy Corn
I’ve never tasted the stuff. Yes, I know, I am missing a significant cultural part of my life. But I did MAKE some this week - clay candy corn that is. I wanted another quick, simple motif to add to the fabric of some pillow beads and this was just about my speed.
You need a lump of off-white, a slightly bigger lump of orange, and a little larger lump of yellow. I used Premo! for all three - white with a crumb of ecru, orange with a pea of ecru to dull it down and yellow with a pea of ecru for the same reason.
How Many Beads in a Tumbler?
Last year I invested in a double barrel Lortone tumbler - this model. I love it. It’s blessedly quiet compared to the little kiddie one and best of all it lets me tumble a whole lot of beads in one go. You can go one barrel at a time and place the other barrel on the rack with water in it to balance it (though the sales rep told me this was unnecessary, these machines are built to last). The specs say up to 3 pounds per barrel but you have to remember that 3 pounds of clay beads takes a lot more volume than 3 pounds of rocks and sanding grit.
What I usually do is get my bi-weekly load of beads going in the one barrel, then finish off the other barrel full while the first goes through the first two grits. That way I’m not faced with 400 beads needing varnishing at once.
Most of what is in this pan will fit in the tumbler for a run. I find that I get the best results if I pack without too much extra space left - that way everything is grinding together. There isn’t very much left after i fill up and layer with sandpaper, see? That’s about 150 small beads - I usually have more variety in sizes but this week the orders were for mostly the same shape of bead.
I start with 400 grit sandpaper for my first tumble and go for 18 hours or so. The next grits go for 8 or 10 hours. For beads that I intend to varnish, I go up to 800 or 1000 grit and a final spin in the tumbler with lots of white felt to shine ‘em up.
Year of Clay - Pillows for a Small World
Before I started with polymer clay I had never really heard of pillow beads. When I made my first few, my daughter ‘borrowed’ them to use as Barbie doll pillows so to this day they remind me of little doll minis rather than beads.
These are 2 each of beads I made with little clay fabric swatches I made a few weeks ago. They are all 5/8″ squares, plumply stuffed with scrap clay… and a fabulous way to use clay fabric. Since you can flatten sheets of clay in the pasta machine, to reduce the bumpy feeling, I often recommend pillow beads to new clay bead makers. If you are careful, there is minimal finishing to do, the shape is easy to hold to sand or varnish and does not roll away when being photo’d or worked on.
Clay Fabric Sheets
I have (easily) 200 different canes in my stash, of various size, design and colour. Sometimes, I dig out a bunch and make clay fabric. The clay fabric gets used on any sort of item that has flat surfaces like pillow beads, cutter beads and pendants or pens.
When I’m dreaming this stuff up I usually work from one of two directions. I either unify a sheet by colour or by pattern. I use the term ‘unify’ loosely here, the idea is to use canes that may not otherwise get out to play much!
First, here is an example of by pattern. One section is of my current stock of mums and the other of roses, sliced and placed on a black base. Though the colours vary greatly, the pattern still ties the sheet together. The shapes are similar and the eye appreciates that.
Second we have a few of my by colour pieces. Black and white, coffee tones and accents and blue-greens. The colours are picked from a variety of sizes and designs but limited colour ways.
To see some more of the clay fabrics I did with this run take a look at my flickr. Next up, a lot of items! These pieces look small but after the slices get smoothed in and the sheets flattened on the pasta machine, I imagine there will be enough to make many dozens of items just from these few sheets.
Year of Clay - Sandblasted Beads
When I make beads I use a tumbler to sand the smaller ones. I love my tumbler, particularly since I upgraded to a nice, quiet Lortone last summer (from Green’s Lapidary, the source of many temptations and wonders). With it I can sand hundreds of small beads in a few days with a little sandpaper, water and the tiniest dab of dish soap.
I started reading on the forums and hobby groups that people had begun using rocks or other grit to tumble their clay beads - faster and less wasteful than sandpaper - so I picked up a few bags of stones here and there to try out and tossed a load of scrappy beads in with the first bag.
Oops.
The result was sweetly smooth beads but the end appearance was like a sandblast, mottled and pitted appearing (they are smooth to the touch though). For most of the beads in the load, this was not good as they had bright shading and clear, specific lines and detail. However, one of the sets in the tumbler actually looks better - or at least more interesting - after a sandblasting go. You can compare it to the originals in this picture which were nice but a little ho hum.
I think a very gentle buffing and I will leave them matte and ancient looking. And, update, the ones that were damaged perked back up after a couple rounds back in the tumbler with regular conditions.
Year of Clay - Earring Stand
OK, so this one isn’t really clay but I had to scramble a bit because all I’ve made from clay this week are stacks of Natasha beads. I leave for a couple days of Easter break tomorrow and I had gotten the studio cleaned up.
The stand is based off a design in a sweet book called Beader’s Stash: Designs from America’s Favorite Bead Shops by Laura Levaas. I took the book out of the library in this weeks stack of books and it has other interesting, contemporary designs as well.
My stand is made from simpler stuff than the one in the book - plain black plastic coated copper wire. It currently sports my favourite pair of citrus slice earrings and a pair made by the amazing Sarah Shriver. I will probably make a few more of these in colours that match my booth setup better but this time, I found the 16 gauge black first!
Mapping Canes: a Puppy
Last year I wrote about using a photograph to inspire a cane and how to map the cane out from the photograph. This time, I’m using a swatch of fabric a friend showed me on webcam to make a cane. She’d like something to use in favours for her daughters upcoming baby shower but she isn’t a caner. She made the cutest little sculpts and I offered to whip up a cane to make magnets, charms or pins with.
Safety Tips for Polymer Clay Use
On the Etsy forums there was a thread about studio safety inviting people to post their tips or hints for their medium. It was mostly amusing but it got me thinking. I posted some there, all ones I’ve learned from experience. There are more I’m sure!
- Put your sharps away
- Use sharp items carefully, not while distracted
- Make sure you have a first aid kit on site, always
- Hair up, glasses and particle mask on when working with power tools or powders
- Oven mitts. Use them.
- Slice down or away if possible
- Glues should also be put away
- Nail polish on hand for removal of superglue from self
- Do not waste good clay by letting it get dusty, melted to surfaces or semi-baked on your desk / containers. Keep baggies on hand.
- Accurate oven thermometers are very useful. You’ll still burn clay eventually. Be ready to open windows fast
And all these assume you’re fine with cooking clay in your regular oven, as I do, and just giving it a bit of an extra scrub occasionally. Otherwise, you want to add:
- Use a dedicated oven or a sealed baking tin to cook your creations in
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