Hands feeling a tad better

So I started working on stuff.

Rough attempt at black Australian bolder opal. To be very honest, I had this planned in a long time. Just didn't have the money to get all I needed, and then, by the time I got all I needed, Ludmila Bakulina came up with her tutorial on that. I think I am overly ethical sometimes (I even manage to get irritated at myself) so I postponed my tutorial for black opal for a while

It is true that:

1. My way of doing it is not really like hers.
2. There are other tutorials out there on the same stuff
3. Goodness gracious there's so much stealing nonchalantly going on from people's ideas and tutorials it's flabbergasting. The other day (I wrote about it) in  one day only, I saw two fresh tutorials presenting the stuff I had just posted in mine, with no reference to my tutorials, presented like it was their idea. And this was on things I came up with, not common knowledge. I even commented on one of those "I am happy when I see people doing beautiful things from my tutorials". The woman just said "glad you like it". No shit. Then another one, just copied exactly (well tiny differences in the execution) one of the tutorials Gayle Thompson had just posted, same subject, same colors, same title (only in French). So  ... if I'm not even using her technique, I shouldn't even worry, right? Sigh

But.

I know there are people who would see it as some kind of challenge. I am not here to challenge anyone. Even if I am always honest and if I don't like something or I think it's done wrong I will come out and say it (well, of course, coated in honey so I wouldn't hurt people's feelings), I don't like people to feel like I'm against them or something.

After all, people make money because of the Adsense accounts, the ads on their videos. I don't. My Adsense account has been suspended about 8 years ago - long story short, Google shafted me (like they did hundreds of thousands of people, we're a whole group) when it was time to pay me and said I had invalid clicks, and because I wasn't able to tell them were all the 1,300+ internationally-spread members of the dating website I owned were accessing the website from (No, I am not kidding, that is what they wanted to know), they suspended my account. For ever.

So yea, back to our subject - I do understand they make money, and that is why they are so desperate in getting more subscribers and views. But still. I promise you, I'm a very nice person, until someone takes me for granted or thinks that they can bully me or take advantage of me or lie to me.

So... there, you know more about me. I was told I don't write enough about me and I'm too short on my blog posts. Ok, I can only promise that I'll try to write longer, and I'll try to write about myself and what's around me too.

So, now that my hands are starting to work again, let's see:

Got that black opal cooking. It's a rough attempt, just want to see how the colors would come out and if the way I thought of putting things together would work. I doubt it will look too good, but it will give me an idea.

I do need to work on tomorrow's tutorial. I have to get out of the house to grab some money - not a whole lot - from the store I have stuff in consignment/ And get some fresh fruit. I've been out for 3 days now. That should be around 10 am, so considering I wake up between 4 am and 5 am, and need at least an hour of coffee to get functional, I need to work on it a little bit tonight too.

Not sure yet what it will be though. Soutache? Not the carnelian for sure, I need daylight and sun coming from the East in the room. Maybe another type of stacked - well it's not a cane so I don't know how to call it really.


I finally got the gold and silver leaf in the mail. And I have 3 different techniques I have to try with those.  They are related to mokume gane and to Sutton slice.

I'll update this later after the first attempt to boulder opal is cooked and I sand and buff it.

And what about some polymer clay doodle technique? Huh? Huh?

Update 8:40 pm

Ok. Not bad. I know exactly what I need to do and I need one more ingredient and already ordered it. Honestly I'd love to have bronze (or at least copper) foil instead of gold but I think I can do that with alcohol inks (change the color of the foil that is)

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.

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.

Ocean and earth

I almost named this post "trials and tribulations".

So yesterday I worked quite a bit on the "Caribbean Dream" necklace. Which will end up as "Ocean" or something. Because I think it came up more as an underwater coral reef than a beach. And I need to make a mold for jellyfish. And corals. To finish it.

Anyway, this is how some of the pieces look (it's necklace and earrings)

Now you see why I say I need some jellyfish and corals? lol

So, anyway, as I was cleaning my cane drawer, I decided to mush a few - that obviously I'll never use. While I was joyfully mushing the clay through the pasta machine I got this:

Are you kidding me? I would have worked three days and two nights to get those effects on purpose.

OF COURSE I saved those.

I'm a scrap clay hoarder. There. I came right out and admitted it.

I even used a piece of that long strip that looks like a watercolor landscape to make a mokume gane using the remnants from the necklace sadwiched layers.

It looks like a geological formation.

So.... up in the "I might use this later" folder it went.

Sigh.

Hoarding.

Anyway, finally my "pebble" canes got cured enough so I could use them. I made a wavy delicate bangle. I need to finish sanding it and buffing it and all that. But I like it. I will make a big cane now that I know that my experiment brings in success and make something out of it. A stone jewelry set.

Nah. I got a Stargate in mind. You'll see.

Now this bangle is made up of slices of small canes, but the next cane will be big enough that I won't have to puzzle and quilt and patch. Also it will all be of one kind, these little canes were experiments with color of clay and interstitial color.

Ok getting ready to tape the tutorial. I decided to do a more extensive "watercolor torn paper technique" one. I might have to divide it in two parts as I presume it will be long, as there are all these variations I want to present to you.

When I'm done I need to go get some glue sticks. I have this awesome idea of a glue gun stamp for a type of controlled hidden magic/mokume gane. Yeah!

Will update later, as usual.