#2015PCChallenge : Week 32 : Colorful Rustic cuffs

Hi !

This time I made a simple, yet colorful rustic style cuffs.These are the first attempts of this style for me , so will be working on this style for the next two weeks as well.
I have wanted to make these ever since I bought the Rustic beads tutorial from the BlueBottleTree blog , but I kept putting it off.I was feeling rather "off" for the last month, so I thought I shall revisit the basics and this was the result.
While I am quite happy with them , there are quite few kinks to be worked out.
Just one pic with both the bangles this time.

Thanks for reading & have a great day !

#2015PCChallenge : Week 30

Hi !

I keep thinking that this challenge will get easier as weeks pass on by, but it has not happened yet. I planned to have an easy month this time , and I set myself no boundaries at all. I experimented a bit , tried on a bit of bargello , a few faux ceramic jhimkis , a bit of mokume gane trials and made a few leaf canes to keep for later.

I wanted to make a few leafy bangles for this week , unfortunately all my flower petal canes have dried out :( . I am very very sad . They crumble when I try to cut them. I have now  put a bit of TLS on them and wrapped in a plastic sheet to rest , hopefully it shall come out fine. There is a shortage of white Premo & white translucent  in all the stores I buy from , this makes me bit wary to make petal canes again , as I don't want to waste the bit of white clay I have.

After that , I wanted to try making a mask , similar to the one worn during masquerades( shaped like a sleeping mask lol ) , I made a mess of that as well. I certainly learnt a lot , but wasted a fair bit of clay.

By now, more than half the week has passed me by. I was feeling pretty despondent by now, so I thought I shall try a mokume gane. Another failed attempt to my name :( . My color choices were terrible , and I have a lot to learn.

In between all of this , I was making a few jhimkis to list in my store . Frankly they were the only thing I am happy with this week.I did not want to list jhimkis again , but they are the only completed pieces I have , so here they are :

Primary piece : Extra large Jhimki in red , gold & pearl.This measures 4 cm at the widest.

This is the secondart piece : There are three of these jhimkis. They are quite small , measuring around 2.5 cms at the widest.

Thanks for reading , have a great day !

#2015PCChallenge: Week 24 : Hibiscus cane

Hi !

I am so glad this is the third week ! Every week of this monthly floral challenge is tougher than the last.I expected it to be easier as the month wore on ( as it normally happens with me) , but this was a tough week.

I decided that this week my attention would be turned towards hibiscus flowers.

Hibiscus flowers are commonly known as shoe flowers .I normally call it  Chemparathi , which is the  Malayalam word for it.Until I moved out of Kerala, I never realized how much I missed the dash of color this flower always brings , it just about grows in every garden and quite abundantly in the wild too.There many varieties and colors , mostly due to cross pollination. The most commonly found are the bright red shoe flowers , along with the pastel pinks and yellows.

Chemparathis in my memory are all tangled up with my memories of my Grandma.One thing I remember, she used to always make sherbets out of the red ones which grew in abundant profusion in our house.It was a trick of hers to give them to visitors and when they oohed and aahed oved the taste and finally when asked where to buy them from,she would tell them she made it and everyone would be surprised. Our regular visitors always had some at their home , she was not stingy about giving it away.

She  used to add the flowers to her  hair oil  , and added them for me as well when she would send me some. My grandma had thick , jet black,  beautiful curls  and hardly any grey hair well into her seventies.Now that she is no more, I buy a version from the Ayurvedic shops , but they are no match for my grandmas recipe.Eventually I hope I can make them myself.

Even though this was a tough challenge , it was a nice one as well. I always forget how amazing my grandmothers are , all three of them , and this week as I was working on this , I was pleasantly reminded of it again and again.

I was unable to make any pieces of jewelry this time. So I am submitting two hibiscus canes. These were quite difficult for me to make as I had to visualize the flower and make it. I did see some canes , but they were single colored or dual colored , but I wanted the beauty of the colors to shine through.

I am a novice at cane making , especially floral canes . While I am satisfied with the way they turned out for trial 1 & 2 ,I now know how to improve it. I will probably go back to them and give it a try later.

Primary piece ( cane ) : Red hibiscus.

This was the first hibiscus cane I made. Took me around 5 hours. It was longer than I anticipated , and I didn't get it right. The stamen along with the pollen did not look right at all. Not to mention the green color just looked strange,
So I made the next one.

Secondary piece ( cane ) : Pink & yellow hibiscus

This took me about an hour from start to finish. Even though the other  cane didn't turn out so well , it helped me a lot with what to look out for in this cane.
This cane also has issues , such as the petals look squished and the pink area looks like the background rather than part of the petal itself.On the upside ,I am quite certain how to improve these particular issues , but I am sure the next cane will teach me some more.

Hibiscus flower

I still don't know what to make with these , so I am putting them away for now. Hopefully the tube light would come on soon and when it does , I shall update the post .

Thank you so much for reading. Have a great day :)


Update !

I just saw that the polymer clay group 52 weekly clay projects have some amazing hibiscus canes ! I unfortunately did not see these canes before I attempted mine. I sure feel stupid , because I am infact part of that group on FB.I could have saved oodles of time !
I saw a group pic upload on Pinterest and there is an indentical pink and yellow hibiscus cane right on top ! I dont know who made it ,  I would love to know :)
The canes look quite similar , but I am going to try making those to see where lie the differences.

#2015PCChallenge , Week 23 : Marigolds in Polymer Clay

Hi !

For this week , I thought I should try my take on the only flowering plant I have ever been able to grow , a marigold.In case you are interested, they are ridiculously easy to grow where I live.

They deck wedding halls , they sometimes form part of the Pooja plates in temples, they are used to make garlands for weddings and other functions, they are used to make the wreaths for the dead. If you pass market areas early in the morning, say around 4-6 am , you can see huge coils of these flowers , wound about and kept ready for sale.When you travel in the train , some areas are blanketed with vibrant shades of yellow; these are marigold fields.

Their colors range from a pale , almost white yellow to a  deep blood red , with a yellow band on the outside of the petal.

The heavily petaled ones would have looked liked an orange colored giant Allium by the time I was done,so I chose to make my interpretation on the simple, home style marigold.

It was tougher going than I expected. I knew exactly how it looked , and I was growing increasingly frustrated that I was not able to make the exact miniature , perfect in details.

It took me quite a few efforts before I realized that I actually liked the style it had morphed to somewhere during the process.I used that style to make  a few pendants , a bangle & a pair of earrings.

Primary piece : Marigold bangle

Secondary Piece : Marigold buds Jhumka

I am quite happy about how this experiment turned out. But no more oranges for a while at least.


Thank you for reading :) Have a great day.

Trial : Jhimki Caned and textured

Hi :)

As this week continues with the set challenge , I did not want to start anything new.I was going through my pieces stash   ( which is  full by the way) , and I saw a few half done pieces.I thought it was time to fix them up!

Since I rediscovered jhimkis last week , I sat down and made a few  caned jhimkis.I shall put those pieces up soon for sale.

These were the few pieces that were already completed. I made these in November. I was terrible at making canes , and these are the very first canes I made.These are not for sale , just for my reference.

As you can see , they are not perfect.
There are spots around the dome structure devoid of any cane and just showing the scrap clay.
The wire work is quite terrible and uneven.I had made the holes in the dome with a toothpick and this led to hole sizes of uneven sizes.I used 22 gauge of wire for wrapping both , this meant that for one piece it was just right , but the other one the wire work  just sank through.
I had not added the balls at the end as they were not staying on for me.

I have no intention of selling  them , but they are easily wearable as long they are tweaked a bit, These are the results.

I also made a few more Jhimkis before trying out the new caned versions.

These were fun to make as well.I shall try to update on the newer cane jhumki's as soon as I am done.

Thanks for reading :) Have a great day!