Turquoise today for sure

I promise. I did turn some things around, because as I was making my Kingman turquoise experiments, I stopped and thought: "you know, people probably would like to see first how to do a simple turquoise, without so much talk of 'this turquoise mine this and this turquoise mine that".

Then I started thinking: "what would be the easiest way for someone to actually achieve the look of an average turquoise without getting their hands stained by acrylic paints to the elbows and making a mess all around?"

And the answer came to me. It's so simple you will have a "doh why didn't I think of this before" moment.

I'll post the teaser photo soon. One stone is in the oven, the other ones will get there soon, then as soon as I polish them a little, I'll edit the tutorial and upload it. I DO have to get to Hobby Lobby and Walmart though sometime this afternoon, preferably before the storms start. So I don't promise that it will be uploaded before noon or late afternoon. But that also might depend of my trip to Walmart. I realized last evening that the WiFi signal in the back room where I work and where the desktop is, is not as good as in the rest of the house. So - as I can't move my whole hook-up in the living-room, doh - I am going to pick up an Ethernet cable at Walmart and just hook the desktop to the gateway through wires. To heck with fashion when I need speed.

So update later today.

11:25

How about this for a teaser? This is the piece that I don't think it came up too good.

7 pm

It IS uploading and has been for a while. Except the two interruptions when I lost power because there's a storm system passing through. So... it says 2 hours left so who knows.

"Clay with me Sunday" live this coming Sunday

I will enable superchat so you can ask questions.

Kingman turquoise tutorial today

Nothing better than when you hit unexpectedly something and you publish a post right after writing just the tile eh?

Anyway.

Working on a Kingman turquoise tutorial. It should show up on youtube probably around 3 pm CDT, considering youtube upload "speed"

I decided on Kingman vs. Royston because Kingman is much easier than Royston. And that before getting people into such a complicated turquoise as Royston maybe a more simple one would be good.

I didn't do a generic turquoise. I might, at a later time.
But I think that if you want to do something that really looks good, you don't go ahead and do just assembly-line type stones. Get in mind what you want to do, as piece of jewelry. Then decide what kind of gemstone you need. Then make the gemstone specific for that piece of jewelry.

Anyway. So I will do today are 4 types (actually 3 with one of them having 2 subtypes) of Kingman turquoise. The high-grade spiderweb, then the waterweb - with silver matrix (pyrite) and with copper matrix, and the more generic Kingman. These are the easiest Kingman types to make.

Here, I'll show you.

generic "boulder" Kingman

waterweb with silver (pyrite) matrix

another waterweb with silver matrix

waterweb with copper matrix

high-grade spiderweb

another generic ("boulder") Kingman

So, I'll update later when the tutorial is done, with the teaser photos, then the link after the tutorial is uploaded.

12:07 update:

The regular Kingman and the spiderweb (I think) came up ok. For the waterweb I need another solution. If I don't figure out how to make a spherical skinner blend, I'll have to go in a different direction of cane. Haha.

3:40 update.

Ok. This is ridiculous. Everybody and their mother HAD to need me today. Phone calls, skype calls, people at the door to check on me - don't get me wrong, I appreciate the care, but seriously? I had restarted the process on the turquoise and got interrupted 4 times, and of course with people who had to visit with me for at least half an hour each, so... yeah, wasted clay, wasted time. I will restart the process.

The only one that came out kind of ok was the "boulder" Kingman. But I'm not happy with it. Too straight lines.

I made real quick some cute DIY earrings, I'll post the tutorial as soon as the varnish dries on them.

how I feel right now

No carnelian til Saturday

Ok so, I am very sorry no tutorial yet. Probably not today, it depends how long it will take me now to tape, edit and upload one of the other ones that I have in plan.

What happened? Well, Souffle happened.

I started doing my tests for the carnelian tutorial, and all my tests were coming back opaque. Tried first with Premo then with Pardo. Same.

Then I realized. Souffle. Souffle opacifies the translucent way more than Premo. Who would have thunk it. I don't have the colors I need in Premo. Only in Souffle.

The thing is, I can do the carnelian with just translucent and alcohol inks. But not everybody has alcohol inks. I want to do a carnelian tutorial that people can do by just going to the store and getting 1 package of this color of clay and 1 package of this and ... you get the idea.

As much as I like playing with the new toys, I am trying to have at least half of my tutorials, and especially the more basic ones, keeping in mind that most people don't have a load of money to spend on gimmicks, and especially the beginners did not blow several hundreds to get all kinds of expensive stuff they don't even know how to use. Heck, they might not even know it can be used with polymer clay, huh?

So I'll have to go get new clay for this, Premo clay, but I won't get to the store until Saturday. MAYBE Friday. But that's a maybe.

Wanted to do the malachite then realized that two of the greens I got for malachite are... Souffle, and I have some banding done with translucent, so... it will have to wait til I get Premo too.

So I will be pondering for the next 10 minutes. I'm inclining either for the feather cane or the turquoise.

Watercolor set

I spent all morning finishing a set, taking care of my other websites,  giving the kittehs their topical flea treatment, and cooking. I have to mow the lawn, and this puts into question if I will post a tutorial today or not. It all depends how messed up my hands are after I'm done mowing and if my pain level gets increased.

I guess we'll have to wait and see. The tutorial is about faux carnelian.

I'll update this later. Until then, here's the piece. It's a "watercolor" classic jewelry set, necklace and bracelet. Waiting for the glaze to dry so I can put the clasps on. I used alcohol inks on a subdued "torn paper" effect to get this. And I'm using "old gold" type findings and chain. The chain is actually baked in the clay, I did not use hidden bails or jump rings.