Instinct and Round Numbers

Well I've been kind of busy this last week or two, making stuff and generally following the proverbial fascination, like I do, but with a specific aim in mind. I wanted to have 300 items available in my Etsy shop. A bit of an arbitrary figure I know, but a nice, round one. And anyway, it's quite useful to have a target. Helps the motivation.

It started off well, in as far as not selling very much, therefore enabling me to build up the numbers can be called starting well. . . Then at the end of Feb, and through the first ten days or so of March I sold a whole bunch of stuff, which was great, but dented my intention to get to 300. (If indeed you can dent an intention. Whatever. You know what I mean.) Undeterred, I plugged away, making stuff and listing it, and eventually, despite people insisting on buying things, I got to 300! I also got to 300 sales at about the same time, so cause for double celebration.

I'm not sure whether having over 300 items makes the shop somewhat hard to find specific items in and hard to navigate generally. A lot of supply shops have more than that but I'm not a bulk supply shop. Oh well, I guess if someone is interested enough they will trawl through the goods until they find what they want. after all, it's all wonderful stuff. . .

As you can see, this fascination following I have been doing has been quite productive. I haven't prevaricated. I have been letting my instinct guide me and just got on with it. 

For instance, I had been meaning to try my tile beads in actual bona fide, proper square metal bezels, to see how they would look, so I bought a few. I had a tile bead or two hanging a round so I sanded the corners off a bit and stuck it in a bezel. Very nice.

But a couple of blank baked poly clay squares caught my eye and I tried another thing I had been meaning to try for a while. Which was using PVA as a resist. So I painted a simple design on the poly clay square with PVA, let it dry, or rather blasted it with a heat gun as I was impatient, and the heat gun was within arms reach, then painted some indigo alcohol ink onto it. Once that had dried, all I needed to do was peel the PVA off. Only it didn't want to peel off. I picked it off with a finger nail and it had worked fine, the simple design was left white. So I put some more PVA on and painted with a different colour, dried it, picked it off and the result was a rather cool, vibrant coloured, kind of abstract expressionist poly clay square. So I sanded the corners a bit, polished it up and stuck it in a bezel. I also grunged up the bezels with Alc ink and gilder's wax etc, as they were a bit boring left blank, and I wanted to make them 'my' bezels. Not everyone's cup of tea but I like it. A lot actually.

Trusting your instinct is a good habit to try to adopt I think, as when it works, it encourages you to have faith in your creative powers. When it doesn't work you can comfort yourself with the thought that you had the courage to step outside your comfort zone, and each time you do, you learn something useful that staying on the well trodden path wouldn't have taught you.

People go on about knowing when to stop, in the creative process. I think the converse is equally important. Knowing when to carry on, when to keep going and find that flash of inspiration that can turn a seeming disaster into a work of art. Learning from your mistakes and then turning them round. Persistence it's called.

So, encouraged by my success at poly clay squares in bezel making, I used up some more tiles I had knocking around, and worked up some more blank squares into interesting abstracts, either by painting as before, or engraving a simple design and scratching and sanding the hell out of it, selectively. It was fun. I have even made them into simple pendants by sticking each of them on a chain and making a simple clasp. I have put them up in my shop, so we shall see what the consensus from potential buyers is on them.
I was going to write about the other stuff I have been making in my journey to my nice round number but that would have meant an unfeasibly long blog post, and a bunch of bored readers. So I shall bore you with it next time.
J x

Bead Frenzies and Textures and Tools

As I wander around on my day to day travels, taking the longer, more scenic way to the post office maybe, or on walks round the local bird reserve, or just wherever I happen to be, I am always half looking out for interesting things that might make a good texture on Polymer Clay. I'm sure there are many fellow texture obsessives out there who know just what I am talking about.
It's surprisingly hard to second guess which of the things I pick up will work and which won't, (too big, too small, not detailed enough at the right scale etc.) Some of the things I find look promising but don't deliver when it comes down to it, some are ok but nothing to write home about, but others are really cool and work beautifully. The ones above were pretty nifty. And they just look beautiful anyway. The closer to the minutiae of nature I get, the more wonderful I find it.

The other thing I look out for, though not in the same places, obviously, are tools. There is a secondhand tools stall on our local market that I like to keep an eye on. I have snagged a few useful things really cheap. A pair of parallel motion pliers for about 3 quid for instance. OK, theoretically useful things I mean. I haven't found a use for them yet, but if I wanted to bend several wires of the same width at the same time, for instance, they would be just the job. . .

But the extra small, bent nose pliers below, £2.50, and the fine point round nose pliers £1.00, are very useful. Not sprung handles, but sometimes that is a disadvantage as they can spring open when you accidentally relax your grip for a split second, causing you to drop things. And you know what happens when you drop things don't you? They bounce, and unless you manage to follow their progress with a hawk eye, they vanish, only to be found feet away from where you thought they could ever possibly end up, if they get found at all.

I have to say I do get a kick out of 'finding' things, whether in fields or in secondhand shops, it allows the Universe to smile on you from time to time I think, which is always nice.

 Here are some more texture finds. Bone is always good, with that kind of bubble structure. The middle one is Sugar Beet stalk I think, as that is the only thing grown in that field that could produce something of that size and gnarly-ness. The thing on the right is familiar but I can't remember what plant it was from. Winter is a good time of year to find plant related stuff.

Below are more twigs, rosehips, cedar cone remains, flint and a dried root of something or other from the garden. 

I really need to allocate a special box for my texture finds, as my windowsill is getting stupidly cluttered. . .

I used some of these texture items on some of the beads I made in my latest bead frenzy. A selection of said textured beads are pictured below.

The shape of many of them is due to the ad hoc bead rolling device I have been using, viz - a clear perspex block, which, all things being right with the world, is intended to have a silicon texture sheet stuck to it. Of course, being me I use it for no such thing. . . 

The edges of said block are bevelled or grooved to improve the hand's grip on it or somesuch. This groove is hemispherical in cross section. 

So what I do is kind of push or roll a ball of clay down this groove using a texture implement of some kind to propel it and impart texture at the same time. 

Sometimes I use found bits of nature, as seen above, and sometimes my photopolymer texture sheets. The result is a sort of centrally textured, flat ended, ball shaped bead, which is a shape I really like. Kind of pleasingly 'primitive'. . .

It remains to be seen if anyone else really likes it, as these beads are only lately listed in my etsy shop. I think they look cool all together anyway.

cheers,

Jon x

Well I had a go at some pendants. . .

I took some bits and pieces from my 'pending' beads, the ones that are hanging around waiting to be photographed and listed, and a couple from existing listings, which I shall take down if and when, and tried a few relatively spontaneous ideas for pendants. Using my animal zoo stamp tile type things I mentioned in my previous post. I quite like them, and might be moved to try them out in my shop very soon. I need to play with the zoo stamps some more, definitely, however I keep getting distracted ;-)

I made some quite cool heavily textured spikes, that look fun. . .

and I shall continue to mess around with stuff. I have more ideas than time, which is the right way around I think.

cheers,

Jon x

Lions and Tigers and Print Blocks, oh yeah. . .

A few years ago I got particularly lucky in a local charity shop. (hmm. the mind boggles. . . ) What I meant was that I got lucky in that I found a very cool old block printing set. I don't know when it dates from, but one of the stamps inside is of a zookeeper with a whip. . . So not very recent. Maybe not as old as the image would infer, as these sorts of things kept on being produced a while after the Victorian costume in the image was out of date, I'm guessing. I could easily be wrong.

Anyway, I grabbed it. I even bought an ink pad from the stationers to try it out with. Very nice. I didn't have much I could actually do with it though, so it got put aside after I had had some fun with it.

When I got into polymer clay I always had a thought in the back of my mind that the zoo printing set I found all those years ago would be fun to mess around with as a source of image and texture stamps. I had a vague look for it, but as it wasn't anywhere obvious I shrugged and did something else. The other day I came across it while looking for something else (as predictably always happens. .) so I bore it triumphantly to my work desk and opened it up. 

Tiger Tiger etc One of the blocks inside. Rubber on wood, about 1-1/2" by 7/8"

I tried a print of the tiger block on a bit of spare poly clay, using dark blue Stazon ink. That gave me an impression in the clay and a coloured line at the same time. Probably a bit of a crude line, as when printed with less pressure you get more detail. But anyway, I baked it and then spent some time messing around distressing it up a bit. I just felt it needed it somehow. And I like doing it. It turned out OK, probably.

Encouraged, I tried a load more experiments. Different stamps, different levels of pressure and different treatments etc. Fun. 

Below are some of the results, for better or worse.

Two Rhinos and a Lion

Three very cool Buffalo. I love these, though I say it myself.

Three more Tigers with varying degrees of success.

And an Elephant cured with a heat gun, hence the interesting bubbles. I like this effect. . . but then I would.

The issue I now have, which is one that will be familiar to anyone who has seen my posts on FB, is 'What do I do with them?'
Would they make cool pendants? With a hole in each top corner? Key fobs? I'm not sure how they fit into the world of personal adornment ;-) As always, any ideas would be greatly appreciated. . .
Jon x

Do you like scr - scr - scratching?

Apologies to A Tribe Called Quest for the title. (I think that's who it was. It was a while ago. I feel old now. Actually I felt old anyway. . . ;-)   )
In my search for the authentically rustic, if such a thing really exists, I like to go really simple. What is one of the most basic ways of getting a design onto a bead? Yup, scratching it into the surface, that's what. I have messed around previously with this process, but with limited success. I scratched a design onto a a bead that had been covered in black gilder's paste, which looked nice, white design on black, but didn't like renaissance wax being added to the mix. Gilder's paste and ren wax don't get on, the wax takes the paste off unless you apply it oh so carefully.
Actually, the ones pictured below were unwaxed. Embarrassingly, the gilder's paste on it's own was not very robust, as I found out after having sold some. (Sorry Claire, lesson learned. .) This was a good while ago I have to say.

 So I tried scratching a design onto baked white clay, and then filling the scratches in with black ink or wax or whatever. I found that scratching into white clay with my trusty craft knife blade thingy, (one of those snap off multiple times ones, you know. . .) that I found it hard to see what I had been doing, being white on white and all. Painting the bead with dilute alcohol ink first helped to show what was scratched and unscratched, so I did that. I tried a few ways of filling the scratches with black. First, oil pastel, rubbed into the scratches, then 'fixed' with a heat gun. I thought it might melt into the scratches, but it didn't do it very well. I sanded the excess off to reveal the scratches and sealed with ren wax. Ren wax hates oil pastel too so things got a bit smeary. I tried black chinagraph pencil, as I had found a box of them for £1 in a local charity shop the week before. Same result really, only ren wax really hates chinagraph pencil.
What I did was to make use of the ren wax's tendency to dissolve gilder's paste, and apply g paste fairly generously, then use ren wax to on top and rub the resulting black stuff into the scratches. Then let it dry and sand off the excess. Ren wax on top was fine if applied fairly quickly without rubbing too much.
In hindsight, the easiest way might be to use black alcohol ink and sand off the excess. Ren wax is OK with alc ink, not best friends but ok. In future I will also try black acrylic paint or acrylic ink I think. Anything black that gets into the scratches will do the job though.

You could use dark brown alc ink, as in the examples above, and then paint with a lighter colour.

I like the result, only I worry that they are on the verge of looking less like arty 'primitive' beads, than ones that have been attacked by a ham fisted eight year old with attitude. Are they too 'crude'? They could be done with more 'care' but I am not sure that is the point of them. Their crudeness and simplicity 'should' be what gives them their charm. I may be wrong though. What you guys fink?
Jon x

Common or Garden, but mostly Garden

Echinops. . .

Well, as you might have figured, if you were of a mind to ponder these things, I do quite like to try out things I haven't tried before in the area of polymer clay bead making. Not implying that these things are in any way innovative or exciting you understand, just things I personally haven't tried before. Being relatively new to the medium makes it quite easy to find these new things to try. I haven't got even close to exhausting the possibilities of the material yet so I can have a small time, not much effort creative thought, put it into practice and see what happens. All nice and unpressured.

So, I thought about selective texturing, using textures on only part of a bead. Alongside this thought was the knowledge that I had a new texture making tool, or something that can be used as a texture making tool.

You may or may not be a gardener of sorts. If you are, you may know of a plant known by the name of 'Globe Thistle' or by the latin name of 'Echinops'. It's a perennial herbaceous border favourite that stands about four foot high or thereabouts and has rather wonderful round, spiky, ball shaped flowers, or rather multi flower, ball shaped things which must have a technical name, but I don't know what it is. They can be blue or white.

When the autumn comes, and the flowers have gone, the ball shaped multi flower becomes a ball shaped multi seed head, and when the seeds have dispersed, a much smaller, (3/8"-ish)still spiky core remains. That is the thing I had in mind as a texture tool. I have several of them that I snapped off.

What I did was take a bead size ball of Polymer Clay and roll the echinops head around one end to make a textured area. Then I baked it. The bead, not the echinops. . .

The other thing I hadn't done before was selectively paint on Poly clay beads with alcohol inks, or anything else for that matter, so I painted a base layer of red, for the textured area, and yellowy green for the rest. When that had dried, I painted some stripes in yellow, I like the outline that appears when you paint alcohol ink on alcohol ink, and the fact that a new layer of ink tends to replace the previous colour rather than sit on top of it. I thought the result of the texturing and the painting was quite nicely organic looking, like a sort of unthreateningly alien acorn or somesuch.

As you can see below, I made some other ones, using a different texture tool. Those ones look as though they should be edible, like a bizarre sort of canapé or finger food. . .
I drilled a 1mm hole down the length of them, as I thought they looked like something someone might put on the end of a headpin. But whaddoiknow? ;-)

Well, the next step is to stick them up in my shop and see what the reaction is. Since the new year things have been eerily quiet on the selling stuff front. I suspect that it's the after effects of holidays spending and not that everyone hates my work. . . Whichever it is, I am undeterred, and listing stuff every day. Hah!
Jon x

Well, Christmas and New Year and stuff got in the way didn't it?

Kind of a long time between posts I know. But never fear, I am still here. Large as life and twice as ugly, as the saying goes, though of course that saying is referring to somebody very unlike me, oh yes.
Anyway, I hope you had a good holiday season and a good new year. Mine was nice. Three F's - Food, Friends and Family.
It was particularly hard to get back into the swing of things this new year for some reason. Christmas being on a weekend, and the new year tying up the next weekend didn't help. But I am back in a modified form of 'work mode' now and have been making stuff.
Despite previously talking about not making loads of beads, and instead, making some jewellery pieces, I have been making loads of beads. . . Yeah, well, I am going to follow my inclination in 2016 and let the second guessing and planning go hang. I am 'following the fascination' after all. Of course my inclination might change, and I might want to actually do the second guessing and planning thing, but only if I feel like it and it feels good.
I am lucky in that I am not making beads and jewellery as a way of making a living. I would like to increase the amount it makes me but it is only part of my (modest) income stream so I can play the self indulgent artist with a bit more freedom than some. And anyway, a lot of advice out there urges artists to please themselves before trying to please others, and that way attract a genuinely interested audience. I can see the logic there. The basic drawback being the hows and wherefores of attracting said audience. 'Marketing' I think it is called. I find it hard to raise my feelings about marketing above 'necessary evil' status I'm afraid, but I shall keep trying. There has to be a way that suits who I am better than bugging people on FB etc.
OK, so where are the pics of these beads I have been making? thought you'd never ask.
Here you go.

Image trans beads made from bits of digital image transfers rolled round a baked core.

Printed tube beads, using inks and my digital image texture sheets plus some alc ink.

These look like sweets but are entirely inedible. image trans patterns applied on chunky beads with a bloomin great hole in the middle. Kato Clear liquid as a varnish. Faux ceramic humbugs.