Stained Glass And Copper Wire Wrapped Pendants

Greetings! I've been playing around with the rotary tool and stained glass (see my previous posts) and decided to try to wire wrap the glass this time. What do you think? Front and back of the palm tree. I like the natural white streak "mountain" hidden in the glass on the middle right side. Reminds me of Hawaii!

Don't ask me why I zig zagged the back. Would have been better if I wrapped it like my next one...the same front and back. Oh well, I still like it!

This one came out a little better. Having the wrap the same front and back gave it a little more stability and of course, symmetry. :) The glass is hard to photograph but it's iridescent, rather purply and pinky. This is the same glass I used in the windchimes I showed here last week. It photographs much better outdoors!

And it's transparent. :) It would actually be a nice Christmas ornament or window decoration. As you can see, I wrapped the back to match the front wires. It almost looks like a reflection in the phototgraph! :D

As always, thanks for looking and come visit again! You never know what I'll be up to next....

Polymer Clay Rose Cane and a Dummy

I've been playing around with rose canes again. My mother's name was Rosemary so I've always had special feelings about this flower. I made the clay couch and covered Altoid tin pictured below years ago and still have both!

There is one rose cane I keep seeing that I love but I am not willing to pay $30 to learn how to make it! Just can't do it these days...or I would! But I found a link recently that is very similar so I decided to give it a try. My results are below. They are unfinished yet, as I haven't glazed them. I did my trick about pressing the back into coarse sandpaper dusted with cornstarch to hide fingerprints on the back. I also used my 1/4" wide flat wire to make bezels for them...baked them right on. If I made them thinner, I could have used the bezel rims to hold resin in for doming. Some are in black wire, others in gold colored. I used several tricks I learned recently to reduce...put end caps on each end (I usually use those acrylic blocks for stamping) and use scrap clay on the ends to reduce waste of your clay cane. I ended using those scraps, too. Never very much waste with PC!

The last project I have to show you is actually several years old. This little clay mannikin has sat mostly covered with clay for at least five years! I never knew how to finish her. I had the bodice and skirt done but the top was unfinished. I decided to use an ivory cane since it is sort of flesh colored, and to use the technique that looks like a knit to finish her top. I don't think that technique even existed when I started working on her! :D All I can say is I am glad I took the photo before baking! She got a large crack right up her front afterwards! Sigh. It's my own fault. I should have finished her sooner! I think the clay sort of dried out. Also, it wasn't nearly thick enough. I should have coated the entire thing in a layer of waste clay before starting to piece her together. I guess I still could...just cover her and start again! 

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Stained glass, engraving and polymer clay

After making the stained glass windchimes the other day, I had several pieces of iridescent blue glass left over. I'm slowly learning to combine the different skillsets I've learned - some are coming as rather "duh" moments....as in, why didn't that occur to me before! For instance, one of my FB groups is a microwave fused glass group and someone mentioned using his ring saw to make an awesome Minion pendant...I have a ring saw AND a grinder and never thought to use them to make shapes for the MWK (microwave kiln)! And another group member mentioned using a Dremel to engrave on glass with no water. I just got a rotary tool and have been wanting to test it out on something and knew it had some diamond bits that came with it, so I decided to give it a try. Do yourself a favor and don't "try" stuff on items you like! I had taken one of those bits of leftover iridescent stained glass and put some polymer clay around it and decided to etch a saying in it after it was baked. let's just say I learned my limitations with a rotary tool! I would never try it without the flex shaft, but it made me too brave! My handwriting isn't that good to begin with because of my arthritis and I ended up screwing up my pendant quite badly. So I tried to fix it by writing my saying in clay and rebaking. I want to antique it to match the frame but I am afraid the lettering will come off so I'm leaving it alone! 

After that little mishap I started playing around some more with the rotary tool and I am pretty happy with the results. I found that using darker glass is better than clear...which really didn't take to this technique too well, although I am still experimenting! I rubbed some paint into the engraving to make it stand out better. Some paints didn't work at all. The one that worked the best was a green metallic paint. I believe the metal flakes in the paint lodged themselves into the engraving. They sparkle in the light, even without the paint. I think there are tiny chips that give it that sparkle. :D

 At this point, I have a choice in how to frame them. I can just use copper tape and solder but I am not sure that that is safe to wear against your skin as a pendant! Maybe as a decoration for your tree, or hanging in a window? I could also grind the edges and then wire wrap them. I made the one below using some metallic green polymer clay and giving it a good antiquing with some brown paint after baking. I pressed the back with some coarse sandpaper with a dusting of cornstarch on it to texture it. I may make others with no back so the light can go through. I really loved this glass - it's sort of mirrored, as you can see the in the left photo. Wish I had more!

Back to experimenting! :)  Thanks for looking! Make sure to stop by my Pinterest page and like my Facebook page! 

Stained Glass Windchimes

Another one of the recent Facebook groups I joined was a stained glass group. I've made a few things in stained glass but I never felt that my soldering was sturdy enough. I saw someone post a project on the group that didn't require any soldering, though, and decided to make my own version!

I got some thick copper wire at Home Depot in the electrical department. I am not sure how long the spool of it was but I have enough to make about four of these, for around $15. I have a stash of stained glass due to lucking into someone selling a huge bin of it at a yard sale once....got the glass and some tools for $25! I used iridescent and clear. 

I have a set of glass drills from Harbor Freight (best place to buy tools and some supplies cheaply!) but didn't want to bother with using them, so I decided to use my grinder's wheel to grind rounded indentations so I could use that to attach them to the wire instead. Much faster! I used this rubbery clear/white hollow tubing I bought for jewelry at Hobby Lobby - it comes in black and white together in the package, but I have never had a use for the white until now! I think they use it for pony beads. 

So I had a lot of that on hand and decided to reinforce it with some fishing line inside it. I cut small pieces of the tubing, ran some fishing line through it, wrapped it around the indentations in the glass and then secured it with some 20 ga copper wire I had from jewelry making. Then I added some beads, and more tubing, and attached it to the wire with some more wire wrapping. The pictures might make that clearer!

I have a large stash of beads...a lot of these were from a package I got from a friend who had purchased them at a yard sale. I am not sure about whether this should be used outdoors, although all of the materials are rather weatherproof I will have to decide whether or not to seal the copper so it doesn't tarnish. Below is a closeup so you can see the variety of beads I used and how I secured the pieces to the wire. I wrapped a package of 20ga around the thick wire and left spaces where I could run the individual danglies I made. It is a pretty simple project, just requiring a glass cutter and the supplies I mentioned. I didn't cut straight lines, it is mostly freeform. I just ground the sharper edges off and left it rather - whimsical, shall we say! You COULD wrap the edges but then the glass wouldn't "chime". It doesn't really make a sound like windchimes are supposed to, though, anyway! More of a tinkle. :D You can vary how it hangs, by making the spiral wider...which would shorten it up some. Or make the circumference smaller and then it would hang lower. I have to take it outside and get some pictures with the sunlight hitting it! 

Update! Here's one in the sun. :) I just love this glass! <3

As always, thanks for looking! Make sure to stop by my Pinterest page and like my Facebook page! 

Sunface and Polymer Lanterns

Well, first I'll show you another Sunface I've been playing around with - building on the idea of using that flat aluminium wire as a bezel for my PC pendants. Decided to try to make them the sun rays. I was told that these are a little too large for actual necklaces...maybe they should be fan pulls...you know, for the light pull. :)

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The reason I started this post was that there is a sale going on @ Joanne's right now, they have PC for 50% off. I went and stocked up on the new Souffle clays because I am so tired of brittle, breaking clay, as in the statue below. This statue is why I got away from PC a few years ago. After spending so much time on her, her hand broke off. For no reason. Along with most of the petals on her flower home. And yet, her hair, which is very long in the back and extremely thin, as you can see from her awful bangs, did not break off. I know that I could repair her but she wasn't that great to begin with and I simply got frustrated. Especially since she is so ugggggly. :) What do you want for a first attempt? lol. I put her aside, and put clay aside, other than making faux finish jewelry, which doesn't have such delicate areas, usually, if I make a pendant.

But then, there is this, below. I made a translucent/white clay outline flower cane and used it to cover this vase, VERY thinly. I want to say it is mostly 1/16"! I was pretty happy with it, as it was quite even although i just mushed cane slices on, not making them into a sheet. BUT - it is about the same age as my fairy, and did not crack but a tiny bit on the bottom, which is different clay...So your choice of clay is very important! I am surprised at how durable this one has been. I wish I knew what brand I used to make it! OR the breakable fairy! I assume Sculpey III....or even the original crap because I didn't know any better....

Here is the same vase, lit with an LED light from the dollar store! (Gotta love that place, I get so many supplies from there! Parchment paper, turkey roasting bags, aluminium wire, LED lights, makeup for iridescent powders, soft makeup brushes for powders, acrylic blocks to use when reducing canes...the list goes on! Heck, I got the glass vase from there, too...) It looks so much nicer though when it is lit up. It really highlights the opaqueness of the white and how the translucent lets the light through. I really love this vase, this post is making me want to make another one! I have a matching vase with no clay on it, just staring at me...:)

And one more time, another vase covered in clay canes. As you can see, this one isn't as even...the dark spots give me away! I believe this was my first one...glad it didn't make me stop trying the technique! It looks pretty good at night, lit up though...:) During the day, not so much! Lol! But once again, this is a very thin PC coating and NO cracks.

After reading the Bottle Tree post, I thought I'd give the Souffle a try for my newest attempt at a different technique...clay embroidery, I believe it's called. I will post pictures when I get something I'm happy with! And since she said it's so soft, I may try using it for brush embroidery on clay, as well, as I've done a few times with both clay and slick fabric paint...

And one last thing...I've been admiring the work of Kathrin Neumaier for quite some time! She does amazing things with transparent Pardo and liquid Fimo that look like real glass! Amazing stuff. I have some Pardo trans and found out on my PC Facebook group that that brand gets old and hard to work with, rapidly. So I started playing with it and was quite frustrated to find it had a lot of air in it once I was done with my test beads. I think the trick is to roll it as thin as possible. Here are my attempts....the one on the left is very VERY thin....the other is about a 16th of an inch and you can see how plaque filled it is! Still kind of cool looking and VERY sturdy. And flexible. I am impressed with this clay. I hear it isn't available in the US right now though, so I will be trying to overcome my hoarding tendencies and USE the stuff! :D 

That's it for now. Thanks for looking! Make sure to stop by my Pinterest page and like my Facebook page! 

Microwave Kiln and Glass Fusing

I have so many craft interests...and they seem to blend into each other constantly! For instance, I have a microwave kiln (MWK) that I've been using for a couple of years. I just found a Facebook group for them..! And I am learning so much so fast! I love it!

I found out there today that you can use mica powders, such as Pearl-Ex, on glass before it is fused! I found a very cool place to buy samples of mica powder very inexpensively...around a dollar a package! Here is the link.  Apparently some colors work better than others but I am so intrigued! I wonder if you can use actual eye shadows, too...Apparently the color doesn't always last through the heat but the sparkles do!

I've been using a Fuseworks microwave kiln for a few years now...I believe my first few experiments (above) were created in 2011. I find this FB group and have only read back a few weeks and already have learned so much that I was either doing wrong or didn't know were possible! Combing the glass while hot...using molds in it...mica powder..."hot pots" - now I learn that the crap I've been buying at Hobby Lobby is inferior and that there is another type of kiln paper that you can use that is much thinner than what I got at HL. (I am not endorsing this brand or these sites, they are links I got from the FB group!)

The cool thing about it for me is, that paper is thin and sturdy enough to be used with the Cricut! I've been using the thicker paper with paper punches and punching out shapes to use with my fusing, like the ones above - the hearts and the dragonfly, etc. But apparently you can sandwich this thinner paper between sheets of glass and LEAVE it there after firing..

I had seen the technique on a different fusing group that was for regular kilns (much larger pieces) with a group member who made a beautiful Valentines Day platter with Cricut cut kiln paper cutouts embedded in the glass. I wondered how you could do it with the thicker paper because I thought it would leave air between the sheets - but now I see it was with thinner paper. See how much you can learn on the internet? :D 

It's funny how my different interests end up tying together....much like life itself. I called this blog Karmic Confetti for a reason...I have many interests and try many different crafts. I have a Cricut, I do stained glass, I fuse, I play with polymer clay, I bead with what I make...you never know what I'll write about or show here! So stay tuned. ;) Thanks for looking! Make sure to stop by my Pinterest page and like my Facebook page! 

Polymer Clay Challenge

I recently joined several Facebook groups dedicated to polymer clay that I didn't know about before! There are a few that have weekly projects and while I have been unable to do all of them, I did attempt a couple that challenged me. One was for a 52 week caning site, and I saw a beautiful cane that I had not seen before and decided to try it. I have mostly done faux projects and some molding, but doing a cane with extruded shapes was HARD. Especially comparing mine to the beautiful example on the site! Here's the link if you are on Facebook and would like to join us! I don't know how to share the beautiful cane she made but this is my attempt at it.  The original artists name is Jessica Almqvist-nilsson. She posted a photograph tutorial showing how she constructed this cane. Since it is hers, and she shared it on Facebook, I am not going to share it here. You'll have to join the group to see it! :) (UPDATE: I found her Flickr page so here is a link to the pictorial regarding the composition of this cane!)

This cane is what happens when I get tired and my eyes stop working properly late at night. I did okay until it came time to reduce the cane into six pieces to make the shape in the photo. And once I get tired, i get less particular and less patient...I think one of the sections was actually a piece I was going to toss because it was the warped end. Sigh. But at least I learned a lot...which is true of most of our mistakes, right? 

For instance, I learned to budget enough clay the first time to make the entire project.  I used different types of clay, too - pearl and some was Souffle. Maybe that's why it didn't reduce nicely. Triangles are hard, though! I also usually use those clear blocks you put stamps on on the ends of my canes to reduce them and I couldn't find them - impatience again. 

I also had a big chunk left I was going to make either a pendant with or use to cover up the ding in my covered metal mint box (pictured below) and I left it in the oven too long and burned it. 

¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Sometimes, you should just stop, and pick things up the next day! 

Also next time I'll let it cool down before trying to cut it....and I am going to have to make one of those Lego slicers to cut any future canes! I wasted SO much cane cutting it unevenly by hand...

Thanks to Jessica for showing us this cool way to put a cane together! Like I said, I learned a LOT.

(UPDATE: Since I posted this, I found a new technique for reducing odd-shaped canes. If I had known about this I might have had an easier time reducing the triangular cane! Details here.) 

Thanks for looking! Make sure to stop by my Pinterest page and like my Facebook page! 

Polymer Clay and Beaded Yorkies

I've been back to playing around with clay again and I was making some hair for my little fairy faces (a couple of posts back) and had some Yorkie colored clay to fool around with and decided to try making one. I adore Yorkies...we have four of them! They such wonderful, fun dogs. Ours are not show dogs, by any means! They are far too active to have long hair but love to play in the pool when it's warm enough and although they are all getting older now (the youngest two will be ten this year!) and sleep a lot, they love to fetch a ball or a toy. 

Anyway, I had this leftover clay and my clay extruder and this is what I came up with. I think I'll try again soon and make a larger one, but I like the way this little guy came out. I used black glass beads for his eyes but the rest of him is entirely polymer clay. I used Primo "Jewelry Gold" and "Copper", neither of which looked like I thought they would, but they were still a nice color for a Yorkie. I used some antiquing on him, sanded some highlights into him, and then dusted some glittery black chalk on him after it was baked. 

His neck came out a little thick but he's my first try! :)

This is the last Yorkie I made, a little beaded guy. I adore this one. :) He's a pendant. She, actually, because she has a bow! I think I will make a clay bow on the next PC one I make. :D 

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Bezels and Stringart

In my post yesterday, I touched on the subject of making bezels out of flat aluminum wire for polymer clay pendants. Pictured below are a few I have planned for the next time I want to make a polymer clay item...I'll use them to cut the clay out and it should fit tightly. Pictured with them is one of my fauxpals encased in a bezel. If I had planned it, I would have punched holes in the bezel and poked matching holes in the clay before baking. This one I just glued in. Using the wire in this manner makes a nice, professional, polished edge for the pendants. (UPDATE: I must have subliminally copied these ideas for my bezels below! Hers are SO much nicer though!)

The sun below shows how I used it to cover the edges of my back to back polymer clay faces. I retrofitted it, meaning the pendant was done but the edges were ugly, so I had to cut pieces of wire and punch holes so it would fit tightly around the wires holding the wire sunrays on the baked clay. I'm happy with the result. It's not noticeable that the black bezel is two pieces!

Now to get to the point of this post. :) I also tried the bezel technique around a previously made faux ivory/bone pendant that I wasn't crazy about the sides of, seen below. It really punched up the appearance of it. Gave it a nice finished edge. Then I tried something a little different..I used my metal punch to punch holes as evenly as possible along the edge of the bezel wire before bending it around the pendant (polymer clay with Lisa Pavelka foils on it, love that stuff!). I did not bother to glue the bezel to the clay this time because....

...I decided to wire wrap it instead. Sort of the old technique we learned in school where you used string and nails to make a picture...this time used to hold the pendant in place. It also held the bezel onto the pendant. As you can see in the photo above, the punch left jaggedy holes along the edge (I wasn't as careful as I could have been because I was experimenting!) and although I used a file on the edges, I was a little leery it would scratch or catch. But once the wire wrapping went on, it filled all the holes and covered the sharper edges, so it worked out nicely! The holes keep the wire from slipping. Next time I'll be more precise about hole placement!

Below is a different type of string art pendant I was making a couple of years ago. It is a pink fauxpal and I wrapped it by encircling it with a coil of wire and wrapping in between the coils. It takes a little practice but is a neat way to finish a pendant. Especially when you can find pretty pink wire to match your clay. :)

Hope you enjoyed this post and got some ideas from it for your own designs. Thanks for looking! Make sure to stop by my Pinterest page and like my Facebook page!  Later!

2014 Christmas Cards and Beaded Ornament Covers

It's been a while since I posted, thanks to Christmas and other household projects. But I've been making new things all along! I guess I'll start with Christmas!

I had never made any beaded ornaments before, but this year I was determined to make one! I had no pattern, I just saw a few on the internet that I liked the components of and combined them to make a couple that I liked. Love the little snowflake, they are very quick to make! Here is the link to the pattern, which is from a Russian site. The panels I made by looking at one similar and guessing it was brick stitch. :) The one on the right does not have wings! The wings belong to a wire fairy I made - behind it...for another post. :)

Then in the middle of my beading, I had to make my yearly Christmas cards! They weren't as involved as in other years but still took a bit to design. What do you think of the outsides? I have some wonderful embossing folders and had a lot of fun with them this year. The ones that looked like a reindeer sweater were my favorite. Middle right is one of them. Click the picture to enlarge! The metallic paper was cool...looked like metal when I was done embossing. Doesn't photograph too well though!

Here is a closeup of one card. I made the green patterned envelope to match the size of the card from some crappy Christmas scrapbook paper. I have stamped/embossed papers that are just a little ugly with some pretty glittery embossing powders before, but I decided to hold back this time! :) I cut the mats and used an embossing folder for the embossing on the white paper but cheated with the little ready made glittery chalkboard chipboard figure on the lower right. 

Here is the inside of the card! They all had a fireplace inside. Saw it on Pinterest where someone used a crimper to make the border of the fireplace look like paneled wood. Came out cute! (There are other examples of fireplaces like this on my Christmas Pinterest page!) Used another embossing folder to try to make the background by the fireplace look like wallpaper. Stamped the Merry Christmas over the fireplace. I used some kid's holographic large chunk glitter for the fire, and it sparkled nicely! I used a punch for the "doily" and cheated with stocking stickers - they were cuter than anything I could have made! I did break down and buy a die cut for the fireplace grate. I love 40% off coupons! I also used snowflake peel-off stickers from Hobby Lobby to decorate the card and some had this type of wreath - which is also a sticker - and some had a different type. I didn't use my Cricut to make this card, it was pretty easy to do the math since they were all the same. I just used a ruler and a blade to make the few cuts there were. 

Snowflakes were the theme for most of the cards. I used an embossing folder and some very old Christmas paper I'd been holding on to for a long time. Wasn't sure about using pink glittery snowflakes but I think the card worked, don't you? :) The "Season's Greetings" on the bottom right were a stamp/diecut set I had.

Another inside. This was the other type of wreath I ended up using. No doily on this one. 

 I liked this set of earrings, I made several. They feel Christmassy to me!

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Now, on to more recent stuff. I've been playing around with my polymer clay again. I love making the bone/ivory canes! They look so beautiful when they're done right. And I've fallen in love with this one particular mold, which I like making into sun faces. You can see below the difference when the finished clay has not been antiqued! It really brings out their features. 

This is a recent sun I made, using one of the molded faces above. I love playing around with the faces after I mold them, before baking. On this one I only made it one sided but sometimes I sandwich wire between two of them so I can make two sided pieces out of them. 

I had a problem with the edges of some of the clay beads I had used the Lisa Pavelka Magic Glos on, and also when I had two suns that I wanted to meld back to back after baking (below). So I recently tried using this flat wire I found at Hobby Lobby (I've seen it at Michael's, too) as a bezel wire, as you can see in the photo. I glued a black one around my fauxpal in the photo below. I guess I could have done a better job with the seam! In the future I am going to bake them right in the bezel...this was my first experiment! I will also be able to drill holes to hang them by. I am going to use the others I made to cut out and bake the next clay pendants I make in so they'll fit perfectly. Has anyone else tried this? 

This sun is a good example of my bezel idea. I had two of the suns, which I glued together, but the sides showed, so I made a bezel that encased them both. So this little guy is two sided. :)

In the photo below, you can see the black bezel I made a little better. This is the other side of the one above.

While I was looking for my sun mold, I found a couple of other molds I had bought that were supposed to be for fairy and female forms. I wasn't fond of the fairy face but I loved the female one. Once again, it's fun playing with their features, although these are so tiny you'd need a magnifying glass and very steady hands! I had recently joined this cool Facebook group for polymer clay and saw someone using these intricate metal filagree plates to back a pendant and thought I'd try it with these flower filagrees. Love the butterfly one! They have a rather weird cast on some of them because I used pearl clay and it left a pattern on their faces, but I think it makes them look aged! Rather haunting, aren't they? Not sure if they should be pendants or pins...

Here is the butterfly one before antiquing. Big difference, huh! What a beautiful mold!

Another thing I played with was a contest I found, also on Facebook, on a DIFFERENT polymer clay group! I am so excited because Lisa Pavelka is actually a MEMBER and I think she's so talented! She has a different little contest every month - I just joined so they were doing a Valentine's Day Carmex jar challenge. I made the little doohickey below as a decoration for the jar but didn't use it. I made it from a clear rubber stamp! Once again, antiquing made a huge difference! Isn't it cute? It's only.about 1.5" square.

And finally, to end this long post! I made some of my sun faces into ladies. What do you think? Maybe a redhead? Brunette? Lol.

For some reason, this reminds me of the Les Miserables girl. :)

That's it for now! Look for me on Facebook. Karmic Confetti, or my Pinterest page! There is so much more there that I haven't uploaded here yet. Soon! Later!