Sunday, August 31, 2014

MEMORY BEADS

My sister's mother in law passed away about a month ago.  She had just turned 100 in October.  We sent a large bouquet of red roses which she loved.  I had my sister send me the tops of the roses so I could make Memory Beads for the family.

These are the flower tops she sent me.  If you want to dry flower petals, here's the easiest way.

Take a large piece of paper towel and take the best of the petals.  I had to throw away the ones that were brown and I managed to save more by cutting off the tops.  Lay another large piece of paper towel over the petals and roll them in from both sides till it meets in the middle, flatten the two side together so they lay flat in the microwave.  Put them in the microwave for 2 minutes at power level 3 or 4 depending on how strong your microwave is.  Keep your eye on them.  Take them out, unroll and give them air.  Roll them back up and put them back in at the same power level for a minute or a minute and a half.  You will be able to feel if they are dry.
Once they were dried, I put them in a plastic container and snipped them into small pieces with a scissors.

When you incorporate them with polymer clay and run them through the pasta machine, they break up even more.
This is Pardo Translucent clay and gold embossing powder with the dried roses in it.

These are the raw beads before baking.  Notice how white they are.
This is what the beads looked like after baking.  I put 3 coats of glaze on them and re-baked them for an hour.  There was no color added to these.


This is the jar of rose petals that I have left.  I dried 3 sheets of rose petals and got about 3 cups of petals out of them.

This saga will continue another day.  But now you know the quick and easy way to dry flower petals.



Wednesday, August 13, 2014

Where Did All That Clay Come From??????????

I was looking for something in my studio about 2 weeks ago and realized I had 4 scrapbook containers full of clay ends and pieces.  Thinking about what to do with them was over-whelming.  I bit the bullet and sorted them out by color and made clay slabs.  Good thing I had a 200 foot roll of plastic wrap.  I ended up with two scrapbook containers of conditioned polymer clay in different colors and a box of canes.  I started using some of the canes to make beads to make golf stroke/walking counters that I sell on Artfire and Etsy.




  • These are a couple of the ones I made.  There are 10 more and, I covered some crochet hooks.


Now I only have about 200 pounds more clay to deal with.  I really like making flower canes so I used some of the pieces to make these:





I started making beads with the cane and the left over pieces.  I saw a lady in an internet shop who was selling polymer clay beads and she sold a ton of them and they weren't cheap.  Not only that, they weren't finished.  Tell me if you think these should be shiny or dull after they are baked.  There are 14 good sized beads here.  She was selling 10 small beads for $15.  I'm perplexed, someone please help me.

Click on the pictures to see them closer and then tell me what you think.  It's raining here so I have all day to make a decision, at least till I get the ironing done.  LOL