Heh multitasking

I feel so much better now with the house looking tidier. Well it's not completely, I still have to finish pieces and put them away, but the rest looks good. I managed to sleep til close to 6 am, that's a record for me, and even if right when I woke up I was still tired, about half an hour and 2 cups of coffee later I felt so much better.

I've already been working on both tutorials - the public one and the one for my sponsors and patrons. If all goes well I should be able to post both towards early afternoon. I wanted to do this early, because, again, we're having a scorcher. Tomorrow too. So I wanted to get things out of the way before it gets too hot.

The public tutorial is a pretty necklace, with an amber effect obtained with alcohol inks and gold foil, and some delicate flowers on top. I hope you'll like it, it's not that hard to make.

For the sponsors tutorial, it's the bracelet base. It's got a few tricks, if you want to get it right, and not get the tiles mismatched. Nothing worse than do all the things and then realize that the tiles don't align properly, eh?

Last evening though I realized how addicted to claying I am. The idea was for me to get things finished and put them away, right? Right. Well late afternoon, I was checking the small folder with pieces of scraps - just a small organizer I have where I put bits and remnants of colors from various pieces - I found about a dozen small pieces of various colors, and I felt sorry about putting them in the smusher to make mud clay. So I went ahead and made a mokume gane, then with the metallic remnants all mashed together a mica shift. then I've put them together and made a full set, pendant, ear rings and cuff. Just one more thing to finish. Grrr. Addicted, I'm telling you.

They did come up nice, though. I only need to put a back on them and findings.

Pretty, aren't they?

Unfortunately I had a bad surprise too. I had made a long fat bead for one of the asymmetrical necklaces. It looked fine Sunday evening when I got it out of the oven all cooled off. This morning, when I was putting to the side things I have to sand, I noticed it was cracked. The only thing I can think of is that probably I should have left it longer in the oven to cool. Or maybe dunk it in ice water? I've never had a bead crack like this before. The truth is that the mud clay I used for the base was a very old sticky one. Maybe that was the culprit. I'm sorry for the bead, it was a very pretty bead, all with mica shift and appliques of leaves. I still have the leaves cane and it's not hard to make it again, but still...

Look at it

Oh well. Back to work. I heard the oven ding.

Update:

Here's the tutorial for today: