Canes, finished pieces and low temp enamels

I'm putting here a few short notes - I'm waiting for the medical transportation company to pick me up for my appointment with the spine specialist so I will post something more elaborate later today. I just wanted to give you a few heads up where I am right now.

I only need to finish editing the tutorial on the pieces made with the Stroppel cane. The unfortunate events of yesterday with the delays uploading the tutorial on the cane itself made my work on that be delayed as well.

I got the cane caps from tinypandora (thank you, Elizabeth!) and she sent me a bracelet kit too (I love you, Teresa!). So depending how worn out I will be after the doctors visit (and if they give me any spine shots or not) I will be working on a translucent cane tutorial either this afternoon or you'll see it tomorrow. And next week I'll do a bracelet one too with the kit.

Finally all got finalized with the low temp enamel manufacturer. I do have to re-shoot a few things on the review and testing, and I will also take the opportunity that Ludmila Bakulina has posted a video on how to make enameled-metal-looking-like poppies, I will try and see if this enamel works on doing those, so you know if you want to make the poppies, where to get the enamel, here in the US. I hope to have that up Sunday.

So, teaser for the pendants made with Stroppel cane until the tutorial gets uploaded

New piece and still thinking about tutorial

I am sorry but I am not yet decided on today's tutorial. Might be the sculpted feather piece. It depends on how I'm going with the few pieces I'm working on, and i also need to go out and do some grocery shopping.

I managed to upload in the store one of the new pieces. Working on uploading stuff from the last few tutorials.

Anyway, here's the new piece. I'll make a separate post about the new tutorial.

Industrial Era necklace and bangle set

New tutorial

The powers that be at youtube say 2 hours 55 minutes. It's 20 minutes long.

3 hours

Yay. 3 hours. This is how long it's left on the first part of the patina jewelry set. But at least it will be uploaded today for sure. I will try to get the part 2 uploaded before evening as well. Because otherwise it won't get uploaded til Monday.

Tomorrow is Sunday and I have started the "clay with me Sunday" and I will be sticking to it. I am actually thinking of making a live thing starting next week. Announce what is needed 3-4 days in advance, then make an easy jewelry piece so people can actually really "clay with me" live. And who doesn't get to be online during the live event, the whole video gets automatically recorded and posted by Youtube.

What do you think? Would you like that?

9:50 am update

50% uploaded.
Time remaining: 2 hours 50 minutes.  That makes this Saturday a record. The video is 25 minutes long. So it comes to an average of about 1 hour for each 4 minutes of video. Youtube. I'm at a loss of words.

4:20 pm, 39% of the part 2 is uplodaed. Youtube doesn't want to tell me at all how much time is left.

Dragon's eye. Really, dragon's eye

Sorry. It was just taking for ever last evening and I was way too tired so I interrupted the upload and went to bed. I had sleeping issues in the last few days, so I kind of slept since 8 pm last evening til 4 am this morning - with short interruptions.

But after I had coffee, I actually divided the dragon's eye pendant tutorial video in two parts. The first one is almost finished uploading (about 30 minutes? hopefully?) and I'll start uploading the second one right after the first one is done.

Here's the teaser - the final product

And I still have to mow the back and the dog run.

update 11:00-ish am

Done the dog run

Part one is uploaded

Second part is up too

Leaf day - and a give-away?

Today is a quite yucky day but, braving the rain, I still managed to snatch a couple of leaves to finally make this tutorial. It actually has two more parts to it - one is on how to make molds of leaves and the other one on how to make patterns with leaves on an object - I'm thinking maybe a light switch cover?

I started the upload of the tutorial. Considering the video is about 15 minutes long, youtube says 2 hours 15 minutes.

I'll update with the link to the video when it's done.

Update: it's up

This is the final product of the "bonus" part. As usual, I'll update more as the day goes by.

12:30 pm update.

About half an hour left on the upload.
And a surprise. I have 98 subscribers on my youtube channel! Considering that I posted the first tutorial 19 days ago, I am really surprise - and feel very blessed - that I already got so many subscribers.

I think this needs celebrating. And I think I will have my first giveaway. Once the tutorial gets uploaded, I will make a short - 2-3 minutes video for the 100 subscribers celebration and giveaway and just have to click "publish" when the 100th subscriber happens. I'm excited.

And I think I have the perfect thing in mind. To choose from one of my "happiness kanji" necklaces or one of the "bargello" necklaces.

What do you think?

Sunny with dragonflies

Gods above and on Earth I'm tired.

I woke up a little after 2 am. Storms moving through. Very noisily. At least on my side of town there was no wind damage. Well, at my house. I didn't get out of the house today so I don't know about others, but the West and North sides of OKC had wind damage.

So I told myself "I'll take naps during the day". Well, I will. So there.

Until then though, I finished the "make a dragonfly necklace out of your scrap clay" tutorial. It's uploading now. But it's 42 minutes long. So... 4 hours, maybe?

Anyway. It looks good. I'll take a nap and then I'll work on the other one I have in mind. I intended to go get something but I decided it can wait. Until the week-end.

This is how the necklace came out:

Edit 12:15 pm

Youtube is sneaky. Now it doesn't say anymore how much time remaining for your video to upload. It only says the %. Because of course you might forget that you started the upload an hour ago and it's only gone to 20%. "Four hours? Us? Naaaaa! Here, look at this %! See how good we're doing?"

Edit 7 pm. It's finally up. I realized I did a little mess up and the eye cane section was repeating, I fixed it but it takes a while for youtube to process that (in case you were wondering)

Anyway, here it is

Edit 4:45 pm. It started showing time remaining. 2 more hours. I think I really need to divide any videos into 10-15 minutes at the most and just upload "part 1" "part 2" etc. This is ridiculous. Again it's youtube not me. It does seem to go faster at night, but I'm sorry, I am not going to leave the Starship trooper on for the night. Not so much about power consumption but about noisiness.

Now I feel like

Redone a tutorial

I went ahead and re-did the Bargello tutorial. I got many messages and emails from people asking me if I could make the video better.

Well, I can't. Everything kind of went wrong that day. I first chose the wrong setting in the recording, as in wrong type of file. File that my video editor couldn't handle. So I had to "translate" it. Some quality got lost. Then I didn't realize that youtube likes certain types of files better than others, and the type of file I saved the video in, Youtube has the habit of making "choppy". Even if the video before uploading looked fine - and even if I download it again from youtube it looks fine - you need to watch it in super-HD for the least choppiness.

So I decided to make a new one, now that I know what to use.
Also, I'm still looking for a used computer desk to make it "tutorial space", that would allow me to actually edit my videos sitting down instead of standing up - as now I'm using my existing computer desk for tutorial working space. And working space in general.

I am uploading a little video as I'm typing this, and as soon as it uploads I'll add it to the end of this post.  Just about the finds I had in stores lately. Shows that one doesn't have to spend hundreds on texture sheets and stamps and stencils, and serendipity might make you find something that can be used as a stencil when you went in the store to get olive oil.

European suppliers

I do quite often purchase things from Europe. And most of the time it may take just a day or two more for them to get here compared to purchasing US only. Yes, the shipping is a tad more - but not by much, and even so the prices are still lower than the US prices.

One of the stores I've discovered is in the Czech Republic. So many things I want to buy from that store that - can I win the lottery please? Look at all this stuff. Keep in mind that 100 CZK (Czech crowns) is just a tad over $4 (today it's $4.13 to be exact). No wonder European artists create so much more than us in the US of A or even Canada.

Nemravka store

New tutorial - pastel chalks painting on polymer clay

Sorry for not posting anything for a few days. We had bad weather. Bad weather for me means less moving around.

I was still able to make a short tutorial.

Sunny with a chance of polymer claying

Just kidding. Well not kidding actually, stating facts.

I usually - and when I say usually it means that unless we have tornadic storms, subfreezing temperatures or horribly sick days, it happens - me and my best friend have to quench our "fix". That is treasure hunting at Goodwill (and sometimes other second hand stores or flea markets).

Sometimes we do it on Saturday, sometimes on Sunday. This week-end today is the day.

I'll stop by Hobby Lobby to get my black thick jump rings and some more polymer clay. I think I might try a faux turquoise tutorial, even if there are so many out there. One more doesn't hurt now does it.

I was also looking at the Tuareg tribal jewelry. "Tuareg". the word in itself raises in my mind fantasy lands with lots of  mysteries. That is because I was in my early teens when I read "Atlantida" by Pierre Benoit. If you didn't read it, go look for it. It's worth it.

Anyway, I started being fascinated by their jewelry. I might make some pieces inspired by it. I need to look more into their symbolistic.

So, talk to you tomorrow. Until then, here's my new tutorial.

First tutorial

I'm late again. So yes, yesterday I spent all day long making tutorial videos.

First setback - I couldn't find an LED desk lamp. I used to have one, and threw it away like an idiot. Now you can't find them anymore - they used to be around $10. The cheapest you can find now are $20. Also, swivel adjustable arm lamps are now over $35 - and those are the regular lightbulb ones.

The nice LED ones are over $80. So I will have to come up with some kind of rigging for that.

Second setback - well not really a setback, as I managed to do a temporary thing - was with rigging the camera so it would show just my hands and work space close up. Well, did that.

Then after I taped the first clip, when trying to tape the next one, had the nasty surprise to find out that the "free" video capture software I had downloaded was not free, was free for only an hour. So I had to look for and install another one. Couldn't use the built-in camera capture of Windows 8 due to poor frame rate.

Installed the second software and only after I had taped everything, when I started editing, I realized I had chosen a wrong type of file that doesn't work in Movie Maker. So I had to "translate" everything in AVI and of course some quality got lost in translation.

Well I did finish everything though. Not the quality I wanted, but it will work for starters. It's uploading on youtube as I'm typing this. 11% done. So probably it will take another couple hours to finish as the final video came up about 47 minutes long. I need to just stop talking and caption everything, so the videos are shorter and will take less time to process and upload.
So here we go

In the meantime, meet my fuzzy cat Conor. I had to make him part of my tutorials. You'll see him in the end of the video. Yes, he does sit like that. He also loves to have his belly rubbed. I mean, really loves it, not like other cats who just entice you so they can grab and scratch and bite you.

Weather and polymer clay

Artists who have worked a while with polymer clay know how much the weather can interfere with your work.

Too hot? Soft, stretchy clay. Too cold? You have to work a lot to condition it. And the worst is when it's too humid.

Yesterday was a stormy day. Well, it's Oklahoma and it's the end of April. Nothing unusual here.

I decided to set my "mosaic" flowers in bib necklace type settings that would be reminiscing a little the old Byzantine jewelry.

I had to take several breaks while I was working during which I had put the polymer clay in the freezer between paper towels. Hot humid weather.  Well mostly humid, didn't really need to turn on the A/C - I'm quite comfortable at 76F, thank you. The clay isn't.

Anyway, I decided to make one in ancient bronze look and the other one in a more copperish look.

They're at this stage - the ancient bronze one already got a brushing of mica powder, the other one is lagging behind a little.

What I wanted to do is to give you a tip - it doesn't show much in the photos at this stage, but when the pieces will be finished it will show properly.

Most people when they try to imitate metal, they will use that respective shade of polymer clay, then enhance it with mica powder then use some acrylic paint for patina

.

There's a way to make things look with a patina from the start.

If you take an old piece of jewelry (or any other metal work for that matter) and you look, there's a specific shade of patina depending on the metal. Right? That is why we use a green-ish paint for copper, black for silver, etc.

Well, try to do that to start with.

I normally mix different colors of the polymer clay to get the color of the patina directly. For example, try mixing the Premo peacock blue with gold and a smidgeon of bronze. You will get pretty much the color copper gets when it's oxidized. I used to mix silver and black until Premo came up with the metallic granite. It's perfect for silver pieces. For bronze, mix bronze and gold with a smidgeon of black. Then you won't have to work so much on applying a patina on stuff - the mica powder slightly brushed on will make the metal pop up and you won't have to worry about the aged look - it's already there!