Fun with Lesson Plans

Oh my gosh I soooo love playing with clay - even doing lesson plans are fun for me (although I could easily leave the picture taking to someone else). Just want to show you some of the finished pieces I've been doing lesson plans for - all is going freaking fantastic.


A cross between the woody technique taught at the Clay Carnival by Kim Cavender and Christi Friesens gremlins.


Imagery cane (my signature cane). Kathi from Bakersfield taught me this one.


Some painted clay tube beads. This one was inspired by Donna Kato who taught me the faux silscreening. This is a variation on that technique.


Awesome flowers and leaf sculptures. Christi taught me the leaves and how to put it all together and I came up with some of my own flower designs to give it a twist.

Peek-A-Boo Brooches/Pendants

As Rachel mentioned - Autumn Roundup is nearly upon us (yay! so love this weekend) and I've been playing around with different things wondering what would be a great thing for the ladies to make. I've been tweaking lots of different techniques that I learnt with all these fabulour artists in the US and decided to have some fun with the Desert Brooches as taught by Natalia Garcia de Leaniz at the Las Vegas Clay Carnival. I loved the design of these and the peek-a-boo effect so you could create 2 different layers and have a "window" looking through from the top embelished layer to the decorative layer below.

This is what I came up with. I sooooooo love them and sure hope the ladies do too. There are lots of techniques involved in this one and so many that I learnt while I was away - yay!!

Autumn Round up 2012!

I've been getting myself organised for this years Autumn Roundup in Mullewa, for those of you who don't know about Autumn Roundup...its an amazing craft event held in the little regional town of Mullewa in Western Australia. It attracts around 150 - 200 people annually, which is a big effort for an event that receives no funding and is held in a town with a population of just over 900 people. This year is its 20th year and sadly it will be its last! Over two days crafters from all over the state take part in two, one day workshops of their choice, this year the workshops are:

Deb Crothers – Peek-A-Boo brooches & pendants with Polymer Clay

Elizabeth Morley- Paint, Print & Pattern to create your own fabric.

Fiona Parker – A day of paper craft

Rachael Mc Kenzie – Silver clay for beaders and Silver Clay trinkets and charms.

Anne and Tammy  Ringrose – “Ribbon Cottage” & embroidered woollen bassinette blanket.

Erika Monique – a figurative clay sculpture

Kaye Street – “Many Trips Around the World” in a day

Carol Brady – Links Quilt using strips and point to point Diamond Quilt.

Judith Lubieniecki – Quick Cathedral Windows & Make a Bag Day

I'm using some of the skills the fabulous Kate Mckinnon taught me for the Silver clay for Beaders workshop! These are the results of a play date/test run with my mum and her friend!  I love, love, love mums golden patinaed(is that even a word) bead caps!

Here's all the components all put together into a finished piece!

The trinket and charm workshop is a little bit fiddly but I love the sense of fun 

and play when making these little babies!

For more info on Autumn Roundup please contact Janine Crudeli at cruauto@westnet.com.au  

              

Painted, burny bits!

Debbie has been bringing me up to speed with some of the amazing stuff I missed out on

while we create more lesson plans. Today we are working on Dona Katos painted clay technique...which by the way...I Lurve to bits!

Debbie has some baking trays she found in a second hand shop that she thought 

would work well to form polymer clay and bake it on.

Good plan but something went wrong. Half way through the baking a little smelly 

smoke wofted from the oven alerting us all was not well!

Oh, my lovely painted bits are now a little bit burny, bubbly and flat out burnt! 

Oh my! We are not sure exactly what happened, maybe the oil etc left on the 

baking tray from previous cakey baking! Who know...?

Back to the drawing board!

Busy beavers!

As part of this project we are creating a series of lesson plans to share with 

community members for the next stage of the Thousand Mid West

 Flowers  project. 

Lots of making, photographing and note taking!

.....and more photographing!

The finished patina!

From shiny, shiny to midnight black , finishing off with a nice subtle 

colour to bring out the details!

I was always a pure matt silver gal but I have to say I have been seduced by 

patina's potential and her fickle mind, you never quite know what shade of the 

rainbow she will deliver!

To Patina or Not Patina

This is the exquisite ring that Rachel made during our time with Kate (and what an incredible little thing it is - clever girl). The pics show the ring in the bright silver after being tumbled and then blackish from the patina. It's been tumbled again after and has turned out a beautiful colour (don't think I got a pic of that one - might need Rachel to take a pic of it now to show you the difference). Kate's book "Structural Metal Clay" explains the patina process beautifully and shows what amazing colours can be achieved using patina.


The ring in all it's silver glory........


and after patina - to be tumbled again.

Ringy Things!!!!

Soooooo many pictures and so few we showed........

Re-visiting the blog and looking through all the pics that we shared has made me realise that quite alot of great piccies got missed. Waaaaay too much fun and not enough time is what I put it down to!! Soooooo......without further ado......some(more)pics from our silver clay workshop with the very talented Kate McKinnon.



This is Rachels yummy ring stack.


This is my finished ring.


Kate showing us how to add a bead.


Kate finishing off her post rivet ring.

Bye Donna - Bye Puppies - Bye Everyone.........

Thank you from the bottom of my heart to everyone who made this experience possible - especially my fantabulous friend Rachel - without her this simply wouldn't have happened.





I'm not quite ready to say goodbye yet so will be showing some pics every now and then from the trip, and hopefully of new stuff I've made using some of these great techniques.

and so it's my last day.....

What an incredible adventure this has been, and so on the very last day Donna, Sylvie, Gerard and I all went shopping and on the way home Donna drove us through the Garden of the Gods. What an incredible place this was. I would love to come back here and sightsee next time. There are just so many beautiful things to see but not enough time to see them all (have to admit the clay play was pretty exciting so I don't feel like I missed out on anything).

I wish Rachel could have been here with me................

Smokin hot, smokey!

After wrecking my brand spanking new electric bead reamer, I hand drilled this lovely smokey quartz bead to fit the wide shaft of my silver clay ring to finally complete this lovely flower ring that Kate showed us, what seems a life time ago now! I particularly love the contrast of the patina and non-patina pieces together!

Thanks Kate, I love it, it hasn't left my hand since I finished it!

........and our new "gremlins"

Mumma, bubba and dadda. I used embossing powder and chalk pastels to tint some white and trans blue.


...kinda wierd guy....


and check out Dusty's absolutely awesome attempt. I think they're just sensational.

Great project Christi. We both loved this one - thanks so much.

Ghoulies!!!!!

These pics may be ones you've seen before but I wanted to revisit them as I've just had a play around at home creating some with my 11 year old daughter Dusty. I wanted to show you these pics again first and then will share the pics I took of our own little creations.


So these are Christi's gorgeous "gremlins" in all their gorgeousness.


....and this was my first little feeble attempt.

More Simple Embossing Powder Beads

So we're getting towards the end of the last day so rather than start another big project I decided to have a play around with coating some beads in embossing powder and seeing what happens. I've since had a play around with this at home and am learning lots of "what not to do". It can be tricky working with this stuff as a surface treatment - of course depending on what powder you're using. More experimenting to do.....

Mmmmm Embossing Powders......

So more great fun stuff to play with today - this time - embossing powders. These gorgeous little powders look simple enough in the jar but they can do oh! so much and oh! how I love them. We are simply mixing into some trans clay but the results are awesome. This is a sample bead don't forget (although you should see Donna's - it's freaking incredible!) so the shape is not that perfect and it, of course, hasn't been strung yet but again, you get the idea.


Yummy embossing powder.


Mixed into the clay.


Getting ready to be a bead.


My yummo bead.

Donna's Screenprinted Pieces.

You know I absolutely loved watching Donna work - her sample pieces turn out freaking awesome every time. Gotta love it......



These are Donna's screenprinted pieces ready for baking. She ended up showing me how to turn them into some great pendants but I didn't get pics of those - sorry.

I'll show you pics of my stuff tomorrow.

Screenprinting On Clay - Oh What Fun!!!

So this is a great technique that we learnt on our second day of claying. We decided to play around with different surface treatments for polymer clay. This is probably some of the stuff that I love doing the most. I have never played with screenprinting (on clay that is)and haven't even seen any of the screens. This was a real treat for me to be able to learn this process.


So this is a screen.


This is my clay after one run through with paint.


I did take lots of pics that ended up blurry so sorry about the quality of this one but you get the idea.



Finished pieces ready for baking. Yay!!!

Get set to revisit some old pics.

You know the journey is almost over but I still have so many pics that I didn't include in the blog, many that I can share so keep a look out for some workshops that I'll revisit.

Here's a sneak peak now..............



and what could this be I wonder..................

The Finished Paintings - woohoo!!

So this is my finished piece. We could have cut out sections to create pendants or such - I wanted to bake the whole thing cause I couldn't face the thought of cutting into this. I think they make great "wall art".




......and Donna's drop dead gorgeous piece. Really, really love this technique.

Thanks so much for showing me Donna.