Spikes, Car Trouble, Rationalising Bead Boxes and Appreciating Past Efforts

Well, this is a bit late, as I try to post every ten days, but we took a short break for our combined birthdays and various DIY things happened too. But I did get some time in my workshop despite all that. 

I sold a bunch more spikes things on Facebook last week. So I am feeling appreciated ;-) These pictured below are some of they. .

On a less happy note, I managed to reverse into a friend's car on our drive a day or two ago, so the feeling of being appreciated is only transient. . . An insurance job, as it bent the front wing and cracked the lens on the headlight. My car was merely scratched a bit. 

Oh well, there goes me no claims bonus for a while. The rear visibility is not good in my car, but that is a poor excuse.

To bore you further, said car has done 100k miles, so I splashed out for a service. The mechanic asked me when the cam belt (I don't know either) had been changed, I said as far as I knew, I didn't think it had, so he looked it up in the manual. It contained the interesting information that it should have been changed 40k miles ago. . . So I have been pushing my luck apparently.

Back to bead matters - I have been sorting out my various bead boxes, in conjunction with checking my laptop, with a view to working out which beads have been listed on Etsy, which have expired, and which never got as far as being listed in the first place. There are surprising number of things that aren't in my shop. I am going to start remedying that situation forthwith.

It's been nice seeing some old friends lurking in their little compartments. Some things I was, and still am quite proud of. I always learn something from looking at what I was doing a year or so ago, it's easy to forget how far you have come in that period. And to realise what you have also forgotten, some it useful stuff that you would do well to remember.

Here are some of my new spikes, for sale in the LBA Galleria Elementals group on Facebook. Only a glimmer of interest so far, but give it 24 hours and we'll see where we are.

On to more general stuff, like the weather. . . 

Time marches on, and as was the case this time last year, (and every other year I imagine) the aconites are out in the garden, and some snowdrops, some cyclamen and even some crocuses are coming out. The hazelnut trees have catkins hanging off them, and all sorts of daffodils and suchlike bulbs are determinedly pushing their way out of the ground. At least Spring seems like something that will happen in due course. I even heard a skylark singing the other day, when the sun broke through. Don't know what it was thinking. . .

Winter ain't over yet however. I don't mind, as long as it stops blooming' raining. This winter has just been sodden. Give me a crisp, cold day anytime instead of dismal wetness and uncomfortable blustery winds. . . Extreme weather? We get extremely dull. Hence no photos ;-)

Jon x

The Diary of a Complete Pillock, part 68 - Back to Vague Visibility, (Probably) and The Gentle Art of Not Getting Caught Up In It All. . .

So after a period of experiencing what Americans refer to as 'tumbleweed' in my Etsy shop, I got two big orders in the space of one hour. One from the UK and one from the USA. Exciting stuff. . .

So what do I do? I carefully package the orders and send the UK order to the USA and the USA order to the UK. Brilliant.

What a pillock. . . (A mild semi-swearword that I have used often but never thought to look up the derivation of. Until now, thank you Wictionary -

"The origin of pillock is believed to go back to the 16th century meaning penis, from the Norwegian word pillicock, presumably akin to the slang dickhead meaning inept fool.")

Oh right, another knob related insult. Had to be really didn't it? ;-) So it's not some sort of cross between a pillow and a hillock after all, that's a shame. . .

Anyway, both bead sets are being sent back to me as soon as they arrive at their erroneous destinations, so I should be able to rectify the situation amicably, refunding various bits of postage, and paying for it all over again as I resend to the right customers. Might take a week or two though.

Oh well, these things happen. Bloody annoying when they do though, for everyone concerned.

But, the good thing about this occurrence is that it might well mean that I am at least somewhat visible to prospective customers. A conclusion backed up by a couple of smaller sales in the last few days. We shall see.

Facebook has been interesting, sales wise. I sold out of the small selection of new spikes I listed, with a couple of requests for made to order thrown in, but a subsequent listing session involving crusty, ancient type beads met with little interest and no sales. So it's a case of the usual swings and roundabouts of online retail stopping me from getting complacent.

It's impossible to second guess the reasons for these ups and downs, but that doesn't stop me trying. . . The beads may have been too expensive, or the right people just weren't checking that group that day, maybe my potential customers had spent all their cash on the spikes a few days before, or some better known bead artist has a showcase on another group and all the buyers are congregating there, throwing their money around, not even aware of the wonders lurking nearby, who knows?

These things are pretty much unknowable, so I shall just try again, with some different things and see what happens. I shall relax and let it be instead of endlessly going over the ways I might be doing it 'wrong'. If a pattern emerges over time, I may be in a position to draw some conclusions and work out a strategy to improve things, but until then, I shall stick to happily creating things and seeing if anyone likes them enough to buy them.

There is a down side to selling well. I don't actually like the fact that on the relatively rare occasions it happens, I start thinking "Those beads sold, I should make more like that," because when I do I often find that the spark goes out of the process somehow, and the results aren't as interesting.
Once I am aware that I am going through the motions rather than exploring, I have to stop and try something different. After all, the selling is just an afterthought to the making for me. It's great, but it's not what I do it for.
Fah! Bloody Artists!
cheers,
Jon x

More Adventures in Ancientness, (if that's a word), in Solving The Unwelcome Pinkness of Black and in the Production of Spikes

Well, here I am, taking a deserved break in the laying of tiles and grouting of same, and taking the opportunity to share some of my recent creations with you.

But first, I would like to say a special 'hello' to the interestingly large number (percentage wise, pertaining to this blog) of Russian readers. ;-)

I'm told that 'Privet' is the correct greeting. Though in English it is the name of a type of shrub largely used for garden hedging. . . .
There are lot of excellent polymer clay artists in Russia, as any time spent on Facebook will show you. So - Privet!

Ancient look blue simple beads - SOLD

OK. 'Ancientness'. I am having fun playing with all sorts of things that can make the surface of a bead look ancient and crusty. Mainly it involves using stuff you can use as a barrier between inks and paints, and which will then wash off in water, leaving an interesting random pattern.
Well, that's all the handholding you get I'm afraid. Have a play with anything you have lying around that fits that description and see what you get ;-)

This sort of thing

Now for the unwelcome pinkness of black. I mentioned in a previous post about the tendency of black alcohol ink to revert to a pinky purple brown when either diluted a bit, or when the brush starts to run dry ( if you use a brush to apply it instead of just using the dropper/nozzle on the bottle).

It fades into pink purple when baked too.
Also varnish can kind of leach out an extra bit of pinkness if applied too enthusiastically.

This is a pain, as it turns the edges of the black and white into a purply pink smear instead of a lovely clean demarcation between black and white, so I have been messing about with mixing several colours to get a better, non-pink black. (I could use black acrylic paint, but I want the particular surface effects that alcohol inks give.)

Dark brown pinky black with pinky smears. . .

Dark blue and dark brown seem to be the best colours to mix, as the brown compensates for any purpleness in the blue, and the blue compensates for the redness in the brown. I tried adding a small amount of green too, as black is technically the sum of every colour. Well, in theory anyway.
Whatever, it worked pretty well. See below.

How much more black can they be? The answer is 'none more black'. . .

I hope you got the Spinal Tap reference ;-)

I have also made some more of my popular turned style spikes. I probably need to explore some different colours next though. Not that there is anything wrong with browns and blue greys ;-)

Anyway, until next time,
best,
Jon x

How many of What? Crackly Stuff, No Room in the Inn. . and New Year Good Intentions

First off, may I wish a very happy new year to all my readers, present or past. thank you for your support. It is nice to think that I am not just talking to myself.  ;-) 

I'll try to make the read worth the wear on your link clicking finger. Failing that, I will at least try to make the the pics worth looking at. . .

simple crackled barrel beads

So, to business. . . 

As you may have realised from the title and any pics that may have passed in front of your eyeballs so far, I have been playing around with crackly stuff again. It's nice to come back to a technique after a month or two of not using it. I find the time gap has somehow consolidated a few things in my mind, and I am more sure of what I can achieve with it. 

I am really liking how it can be combined with my turned technique to make ancient looking beads which could be made of anything from ceramic to bone to horn etc.

Semi trans cernit tube beads with crackle and alcohol inks

Talking of making beads, the other thing that has been exercising me somewhat, is the issue of how many of what to make. 

I guess it all depends on the use the beads get put to eventually. I used to imagine my creations being used in necklaces and the like, so I made sets of six or eight. The number was pretty arbitrary but seemed to be ok with buyers. 

After a while I realised that they were using them mainly as earring components, which I obviously didn't have a problem with, but I did think that maybe making pairs would be more convenient for earring makers, so I started making pairs of beads. 

So, sixes or pairs? 

Crackled round semi trans beads

I hope you had a good Christmas or other festivity you may indulge in.

Mine was by and large good. We had an interesting moment when we turned up (after a four hour drive) at our pre booked hotel in a small Yorkshire town only to find that it was dark and uninhabited. It had gone out of business a couple of weeks before. The booking firm sent us an email just after we left on the 23rd but we weren't online after that so it didn't get to us in time.
Luckily the phone number had been rerouted to a pub just up the road, who were very nice and helpful and got us booked in to another local hotel. Phew.
Could have done without that to be honest ;-)

green patchy crackle beads

The new year gig I mentioned in a previous post went very well. Just me on bass and my mate Rich on guitar and vocals banging out old faves. The pub was packed and we all had a great time. Yay! And we got paid! (getting paid to play is a novelty, believe me)

grey round, turned technique semi trans crackle beads

I haven't made any new year resolutions as they never quite work, and make you feel bad when you don't keep to them. I have set some intentions however, but not with negative associations attached.

I am going to list more stuff on my Etsy shop and share on FB and Instagram etc. Thus keeping my profile reasonably high. But only if it feels good to do it. I'm trying to avoid the concept of 'should' where feasible and not harmful, as it usually turns out to be a confused version of somebody else's 'should' and not something drawn from my own experience. Which doesn't tend to turn out well imho.

Spikes!

I made some more cool spikes. These are fun to make and I will keep on making them and variations of same. . .

MDF backed poly clay 'biscuit' beads

I also found some smaller 'biscuits' (for use with a 'biscuit jointer') in a diy store (in the reduced price box.  .) They are MDF unlike the larger ones I had used previously which were plywood. This makes them a bit less forgiving to work with, and produced nasty dust when sanded, but nevertheless I made some MDF biscuit backed poly clay textured drops in a faux bone style. .

Well, that will do for now. Have a good 2018 'going forward' as they say, I intend to have a good one too, though going sideways is probably more my style ;-)

Jon x

Bead Techniques Converging, Necklaces, SEO anxiety and being Thrice Cursed in the Lawnmower department. . .

Multi coloured 'candlestick' turned look bead

Well, since I regaled you last, we have had a thunderstorm induced 24 hour power cut which somehow sent my wife's computer's internet permissions into a parallel universe or something. Well, maybe not quite that, but it did insist quite bluntly that it couldn't access the internet, when by rights according to physical evidence it really should have been able to. . . Sigh. . .
Well, no point wondering why computers do what they do, you 'just' have to find the right dialogue box and click a few things, which is pretty much what I did eventually and saved the day. Phew.

My computer was fine as it had been off at the time of the big thunder clap that knocked out power for our end of the village. . .

That's about as close to drama as we get round here, which is fine by me.

Combined technique earring bead pair

Anyway, on the bead making front, I have been playing around with my 'pot' bead technique and combining it with organic textures to make quite interesting looking half and half technique 'organic' beads. Ostensibly for earrings as I made them in pairs. Definitely going to delve into this technique convergence a lot more.

Veg impersonating combined technique beads

I also did something I had been threatening to do for ages but never actually taken the time and trouble. As you know, I make sets of beads, 6 or 8 or 10 in a set usually. And I make several different sets in different colours etc, just pleasing myself, with no thought to eventual use. Which is fine, but I had wondered what a whole necklace worth of similar beads could look like, and whether I could discipline myself to make that many beads all the same colour and using the same surface treatment.
It turns out I could.

Groovy necklace

It started by me making a long string of small 'pot' or 'candlestick' (faux turned clay look anyway) beads in a purply blue with turquoise accents. Alongside these I had been playing with making a large, multi-layered, turned look bead with simple incised patterns/marks on it, the surface featuring several bright colours.
As these two projects nestled side by side on my desk I realised that the big bead would look very cool as a sort of central focal dangle in the middle of the blue beads. I tried it and it looked great (to me) so I made the combination into a simple necklace.

So, suitably encouraged, I made a lot of greeny browny, turned look beads of various sizes and designs, and some bicones, all with same treatment and colour. Then I threaded them together to make another simple and quite earthy organic boho-ish sort of necklace.

Simple earthy greeny mixed bead necklace

As a consequence of all this I feel a bit more confident in my ability to put together larger projects as well as bead sets and pairs of charms etc.

The thing that puts me off a bit is having that amount of beads tied up in a necklace that may not sell. The constituent beads, in smaller sets might sell more easily. But that's defeatist talk, and we don't like defeatist talk, do we? Down with that sort of thing! we say. . . ;-)

I have less confidence in my ability with the next item of interest. S E flamin' O. . .
SEO or Surreal Exercise in Obfuscation as its full name should be, is not something I have had to worry about much until now. Etsy has it's own search foibles which are somewhat different to Google's SEO foibles I'm told. I got my head round those reasonably well a while ago. But now, as I experiment with moving my shop to another site I find myself up against actual SEO stuff like alt tags and meta descriptions and the like. Tedious in the extreme if you are trying to alter 300 or so listings from Etsy SEO to Google SEO. Especially when you are not convinced you need a lot of these things. Good, clear descriptions, titles and pics count for a lot surely? And in an online store you don't need to have a pop up that appears when you mouse over a pic of an item, telling you what it is, as there is always a written description right next to it. . .
So I have decided not to worry about it. I will change the titles to render them clearer and more readable, which Google likes I am told. And I will bung in some keyword phrases as 'meta tags' and copy the title into the 'meta title' or whatever it's called, and leave the rest alone. I will also read up on SEO practice, at least, as much as I can without my single functioning brain cell calling foul and shutting down in protest.

Another multi coloured turned look bead faux ceramic finish

And finally, The Country Diary of a Polymer Claying Gentleman part 304. . .
We have three lawnmowers. They all came with the house, which was great. But. . . the sit on mower is still not cutting right, the ordinary type mower is misfiring and playing up a bit, and the evil, cut through anything, so heavy it has a reverse gear, kick ass mower has lost it's ability to engage the engine to the blades. It gave up half way through my purge on the nettles and other wayward weeds in the orchard. . . Mr semi retired lawn mower engineer man up the road (handy or what?) is going to investigate all three.
On the plus side, I have my beloved camera back from the repairers. Expensive to fix, but it's like a new camera now. I hadn't realised how its settings and sensitivities etc had deteriorated over time.

Well, that's me, as they say. So, until the next time,
cheers,
Jon x

Ever Decreasing Ducklings, liquid polymer clay as varnish, and the delights of doo doo. . .

Faux ceramic tube beads/earring beads

Enjoy the bead pics and excuse me while I witter on about ducks for a minute. . .

Nature is pretty impervious to sentiment it seems. One day we have twelve, or possibly thirteen ducklings buzzing around their mum (they don't stop running or swimming, so it is hard to count them). The next day we have eight, and later that day five.
The next day, we are down to three, then two. . . Fortunately two has been the number at which the duckling disappearances stopped. They are growing and sticking close to mum. Fingers crossed for them.

Reading up on this on the good old internet, it seems that this startling level of duckling decline is pretty normal in wild ducks, and two is a good number of surviving offspring as far as keeping up duck numbers is concerned. And they will most likely have more than one brood. Still, this tragic attrition rate is tough to bear witness to, even for a not all that sentimental human being such as myself, especially as the one extra-cute yellow one amongst the dappled brown and yellow brood was one of the first to go. . .

Moe faux ceramic tubes

We're not sure what happened to them, but most likely they became dinner for owls, kestrels, stoats, etc. There is a cat in the neighbourhood too (just the one, which is an unusual statistic I think), and always the threat of a fox, though they get shot by local farmers if they are spotted.

Oh well, these predators likely have broods of cute offspring of their own that need feeding. . . Nature huh? All together now, "The circle, the circle of l-i-i-i-i-fe. ."

A set of bicone and 'diablo' beads with crackly areas

And to continue this theme of predation and untimely death, something also put paid the big fish (a carp, about a pound and a half) that we used to see lurking in the cloudy water of our pond. We found its disembodied head on the bank. This is a bit odd because, reading on the internet (again) it seems that animals such as otters or mink (please not mink, they are not good news) that are able and willing to catch and eat fish, eat the head and leave the rest. We seem to have an inverse otter. . . It's a bit of a mystery as there are no tracks or droppings that I could find.

My fave so far, faux ceramic effect tube beads

Anyway, I have been back in the workshop after the distractions of Easter, and have been experimenting with liquid polymer clay, the clear kind, Kato clear to be exact. I have used it as a sort of varnish before, but a while ago and not very carefully. You do get a particularly glossy shine with it. The trouble is that it is quite easy to burn it if you aren't careful, which leads to a horrible smell and tiny blackened bubbles that set hard and can't easily be picked off.

Very shiny bicones

The technique I use once the liquid poly clay has been applied to the bead, is the time honoured one of sticking it on a wooden barbecue skewer or toothpick/cocktail stick and turning the hot air gun on it. If you hold the bead about six to eight inches away and spin the toothpick/other between your fingers you can usually avoid the heat concentrating in one place and it getting too hot. Not always though. The trouble is that there is nothing to tell you how hot the bead is getting until it's too late and it starts bubbling and smoking. What I now do is always hold the bead at the same distance from the heat gun, and only keep it in the heat for a set time, say 12 seconds. (You need to do a few trials to find your optimum time and distance). I have found that if I follow that procedure, the liquid poly clay evens out over the surface of the bead, and when cool results in a hard, smooth and shiny surface.
I like the toughness of the finish, but I wanted to see if I could get a duller finish, as hyper shiny is not always the look required. I tried thinning the liquid poly clay with a little white spirit before applying it to the bead. This sort of worked, but the semi shiny surface that resulted was easily smeared by my finger when cool so I put that idea aside.
I had a bit more success by using a brush and really trying to make a small amount of liquid clay go a long way. Smearing a very thin layer on the bead. This worked quite well. I got a tough semi gloss finish that suited the beads I was making.

Satin or matt finish

I will try the white spirit idea again, but only using a very small amount, to see whether that makes a useful difference to the result.
The shiny finish is very good for the sort of faux ceramic look that I have been messing around with though.

Earring beads, faux ceramic 'bells'. The colours look like Royal Doulton (I think that's the type of pottery I mean)

When we moved into this area about eight months ago, we were amused to see that there was a Chinese take away in the local town called "Do Do", which, of course, sounds like 'Doo doo' as in 'deep doo doo'. We have talked jokingly about having a take away doo doo someday, well today was that day. It was very good, so Woo Hoo for the Do Do! . . .
cheers,
Jon x