Alligator Clips Extraordinaire

I'm really loving these cute cute alligator hair clips that I've been embellishing with my kaleidoscope canes lately. They are really pretty and are a nice one-of-a-kind way to hold a coif! :)

I like them so much that I bought more of the alligator clips to beautify and I will be displaying them very soon. Please feel free to check out my Etsy shop which has many small gifts at very reasonable prices for the upcoming holidays. I appreciate your looking and sharing.

https://www.etsy.com/shop/ThePleasantPheasant

Squares vs. Hexagons - All In A Day's Play

After a lovely visit from our young granddaughter, it was time to get down to brass tacks and clay again. I clayed while she was here but not with the same focus as when I'm working alone. She's a very mature 3-year old, but she's still a 3-year old.

I've had the nicest couple of days with my clay, falling in love with it all over again. Also, our clay buddy Matt of the newly opened ClaybyKerm at Etsy has done the impossible... he has me thinking in hexagons instead of squares! I just know he's laughing behind his hand as he reads this, as we've had a few conversations about square vs. hexagon. :) I'm not sure if he's completely converted me or not. Hexagons are rather interesting, though, as I'm learning.

Here is what is on my clay table today, and it was hard WORK (okay if I'm being honest it was hard play....), and I'm going back to play some more. Hope you like these!

Click to see larger photo:

Embroidering with Polymer Clay

At times I feel like I'm embroidering pretty patterns with my polymer clay. This week, my thread colors have been turquoise, white, black, green and yellow. I've got some new polymer clay cane patterns to share:

(Click on the image for a closer view)



Next week I'll be working on some coasters for the Polymer Clay Central Coaster Swap. I'm looking forward to it, and already liking my prototypes.

Stack O' Canes

Oh boy, I've been sadly neglecting my blogging lately. In my last post I said I expected to be back to my healthy self, but that didn't happen. Instead I had a darn relapse! But now, for sure, I am back to my healthy self and back to claying, as well.

Here is a photo of my latest doings... my "Stack O' Canes"! As usual I had a lot of fun making these. The orange set was made to mimic the school colors of orange and grey for the Atascadero High School, the school where my niece and nephew attend. The other two sets were my experiments with putting some of the color yellow into my work - it's a color that I rarely use. I think it worked out well!

Please click on the photo to enlarge it. Thanks for looking.

Purple and Gold, Blue and Lime....

That title sounds like school colors or something, doesn't it? Nope. Instead those are the colors of two new sets of polymer clay kaleidoscope canes that I made. I've been sick for about 2 weeks - one of the longest illnesses I've ever had, and so I haven't done any claying for that whole time. Finally I felt good enough to get back into my Claypen, and these canes are the result of that.

I just know I'm going to be my regular healthy self any day now, I'm feeling much better at last. And I'm rarin' to get back to the clay table and make more canes. A lot of ideas are jumbled up in my head so I better let them out while I can!

Here are two of the most recent canes:





Thanks for looking! There are lots more canes that I've recently made on my Flickr site, I'd love it if you'll take a peek. Here's the link:

Jae Jewelry & The Pleasant Pheasant Flickr Album

Canes for Corey

In honor of the memory of my friend Seana's son, Corey, whose 21st birthday would have been this week, I have created a set of orange canes. Corey loved the color orange, and all Seana's friends wore orange clothes as a remembrance of him on Friday.

While it's incredibly sad that Corey is not with his family now, we do know that they will see him again in Heaven. So to help ward off the sadness, we can use these small ways to remember him and the joy that he was while we are still held here in this realm.

Seana, my pain meets yours in the loss of your son. I can never express the depth of my sorrow to you in your loss, but what I can do is make a set of canes that I've named "Corey's Canes" to help keep his memory alive. (((((Seana))))) You're a dear friend and one of the best polymer clay cane-makers I know!!

The Miracle Baby and Some New Canes

Many of you may know that my child-bearing days are well over. So why do I have a 7-month old baby girl in my care this week? Ah, the miracle of grandchildren. We (husband and I) are having so much fun with this little baby, she's so cute and so busy, crawling all around the place and talking to us in big paragraphs that we don't understand a word of! After the first day, when she was a little worried about what happened to her old life (poor thing), she is now acclimated to us and just beams with happy smiles every time we look at her or talk to her. Of course - MY old life has taken a drastic change, too! Diapers and feedings are the new norm for me.

Since I finished some new kaleidoscope canes the day before Lucie arrived, I thought I should share them with you now. These are my "Magenta" and "Easter Sunset" series of canes. I won't be making any new ones for a while, since after this week with Lucie, her 3-year old brother Max will be here for a week. Crazy! But fun.

Day 26 of Thing A Day - held up by electricity

I was ready to post a new photo for day 26 of the Thing A Day challenge, however, we had a snowstorm and suddenly lost all power for the entire evening, about 6 hours. So since the saying says "better late than never", I am posting some new kaleidoscope canes here for Day 26.





I'm still having a lot of fun making these canes so there will be more of them in the future.

Day 25!

Well Day 25 of the Thing A Day challenge at Polymer Clay Central means that we only have three more days left. I can hardly believe it, and may just keep going straight on into March!

I've been claying... making canes to be more precise. I had a lot of trouble photographing this color green for some reason. These canes are actually a mild pastel green and don't have all the blue in them. I worked at correcting the color on these but it's still not quite right. They are really mellow in person. Well I guess we don't meet canes "in person", but you know what I mean.

More canes tomorrow, I hope!

Day 21 of Thing A Day - Yellow Kaleidoscope Canes

I'm not even going to talk about missing three days of the Thing A Day challenge. Suffice to say that I am back on schedule and have some new kaleidoscope canes to share.

Hope to be able to clay later today again - we have snow but we lucked out and the storm moved north of us. We have 5 inches... our son's area has over 2 feet!! That is not normal, usually it's the other way around. We are feeling so blessed, and so is our son, because he loves to ski. There's a win-win situation.

Hope everyone is having a safe and happy Sunday.

Thing A Day for Day 16 - Works In Progress

I'm grateful to two people for showing me a couple ways to make pendants - first, Julie Picarello and second, Judy Belcher. Somehow, pendant-making has always been difficult for me, until these two wonderful women decided to share some tricks. These three pendants are made with my recent "Medieval Forest" canes.

They are not baked yet, I am waiting to get a full baking pan of things before heating up the oven, so I will share them as "works in progress" today.

Click on the image to enlarge them. Thanks for looking!

Red for Thing A Day, Day 13

What do Atoms, Fireworks, Baskets and Streamers have in common? Good question? I can tell you the answer - they are the pictures that I see in my latest set of kaleidoscope canes.

I made these for the 13th day of the Polymer Clay Central "Thing A Day" challenge - since they are red maybe I should be saving them for tomorrow, Valentine's Day, but I can't wait.

I did these a little differently in that I used exactly 50% each of Kato clay and Premo clay. I was impressed with how well this worked, I didn't expect them to be as crisp as the others, but they are. They also reduced without any more waste than the previous canes. So there's a win-win, since I have a lot of Premo clay here. They slice great, too, so I'm quite happy with the combination.

Here they are, please click on the photos to enlarge them.









I can't wait to make more... back to the Claypen!!

Four things for Thing-A-Day, Day Seven

I got down to business yesterday, and made a new set of kaleidoscope canes. I was so good today that I took photos, and listed them all at Etsy even before doing my Thing-A-Day post.

Well, you can't go to my Etsy shop to see them, because I had barely finished the listing when they were sold! Thank you to my new customers, I appreciate your purchases and your support.

Here are the cane photos, you can click on the photos to enlarge them.






As soon as I am finished here and check into Polymer Clay Central, it's back to the Claypen I go!

Jackie

Thing A Day - Day 4

I made this kaleidoscope cane with scraps just to see if I could make it work, and it did! This is from Donna Kato's recent book about millefiori caning. It was fun to do but I wish I'd started with more clay because it ended up rather small.

I didn't get to make a new cane for Day 5 today, and the Claypen chat is in the morning. So I will have to hustle to get one made and photoed on time for Day 5! Wonder if I can do it?

Day 3 of the Thing A Day Challenge

The month is starting to blur already - who will keep up and who will NOT keep up? This is the burning question! Well okay, so it isn't the burning question but it sounded exciting, didn't it? All the members of Polymer Clay Central are secretly hanging out in their studios at night, making who knows what kind of polymer clay concoctions to be revealed the next day....?

Well I have some more kaleidoscope canes, surprise, surprise. These are a little different, different colors, different look, but I like them a lot. To me they look like little bits of a medieval forest from a fantasy book.

With no further ado, here they are:




I enjoy all your comments and read every one of them, so please don't hesitate to post them.

See you tomorrow, time for me to go hang out in my Claypen and consider what kind of concoction I can whip up for tomorrow!

"Thing A Day" - Day 2

Today, Day 2 of the "Thing A Day" challenge at Polymer Clay Central, I have four things...sort of. I made some more kaleidoscope canes and had fun doing them. One of these days this month I will show photos of the process I go through to get to the point of actually having kaleidoscope canes to share.

Here are the Orange Kaleidoscope canes that I made, I just love them:





I can't seem to stop making canes! It's been so much fun and I am in the process of making more of them now. So, I'm off to the Claypen again - to "work" (haha).