Summer

Yay, it's the summer holidays! Six weeks (well now five weeks) of summery fun! Of course, I absolutely hate  hot weather and end up wasting lots of sun cream because I'm so paranoid about skin cancer...

Anyway, it was my sister's birthday last week :) She's nine now. (Yeah, there is actually a seven year gap between us... I don't appreciate that.) I made her a necklace out of wire that had her name on it. I also made a charm bracelet.

Here's a picture I took of the charm bracelet on my NEW camera! ;D

I made a close up of this cake charm, because I managed to actually put her age on it. I worked hard on the flower, to! Anyway, I assumed that most people do know how to make polymer clay cakes by now seeing as there's so much tutorials on how to make them.






By the way, I love making those little polymer clay plumeria flowers. They're beautiful and really simple to make. I'm planning on making a slide show style tutorial (I'll explain why I can only make that style video in future) to show how to make them.

Anyway, (caution: moving away from subject) the Olympics started yesterday :). As a British girl though, I found the opening ceremony a little disappointing :( I'm not sure what I was expecting exactly, but it just seemed a little... well... disappointing that they put seven years in to preparing for the Olympics, and this was all that happened. I guess I'd like to know that the Chinese think so far because they had the Olympics last time. They probably came expecting something similar to what they did... And when they leave they'll know a little bit more about British history... lol.

Personally, I've been worrying about the terrorist threats... They keep saying about the security on the news and it's really bugging me.

Anyway (before I over use the word 'anyway' anymore), I've been playing Sims 3 lately and forgetting to update this! I ought to make a Sims 3 blog or something. In fact, I probably will at some point seeing as I gave up using the Sims 3 website so long ago.

First YouTube video?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m4hQJ3twKek&feature=plcp

I made a slide show of my 'best' clay creations so far :) Now all I need to do is make another Deviant Art account... Yes, I've had about 3 in the past... And always ended up closing them! 

But now I've decided I'm not just going to close everything because that's a waste of time. I will also make a slide show of my drawings when I can be bothered :D

I couldn't stop myself from adding a picture of my cat :)

Idea for Scrap Polymer Clay...

I have a LOT of scrap clay at the moment. I'm not sure why, I try not to waste too much clay because all together, clay can become quite expensive, but recently, I had a pretty cool idea (well I thought it was cool) about what I could do with it. Sorry about the low quality picture, by the way, I don't have a very good camera.

I like the Shamballa style bracelets I see everywhere lately :) But I thought it might be better to make my own, since most of the ones in the shops are made in different countries and I thought it would be fun to make, especially since I have no coordination (lol).

I'd like to make a proper tutorial at some point :) (but first I need a decent camera!) But basically, for the beads, I took a lot of scrap clay and rolled it all together. I cut ten equal parts and rolled each of them in to the shape of the bead. After that I used my thicker wire to push a hole through them, because everything else I tried just made the whole bead go a different shape (I guess that's just part of it being 'Soft' clay!). I also made two smaller beads, for the ends of the cord. I baked the beads all together, after that. I cooked them for about 15 minutes, since they are only very small.

I painted them all using acrylic paints. These paints also have a slight shine, so I didn't have to glaze them (I don't know if this is the case for all brands, but I use Studio by Sculpey - which is bakeable, but it stinks and the fumes really get me!).

I used the thinnest P'leather cord my local craft store sells to make it in to a bracelet. For the knotted part, I found some great tutorials on the internet :) I found this video on Youtube, which is very well made. It doesn't show you how to make a square knot, but it has a link to another video that shows you how. I also found this website, which is quite informational :).

For people who make charms with polymer clay, I also have an idea. If you find your white charms often get dirty and you have to paint them, try making them with scrap clay instead and paint them white. I thought it might be a good thing to try :D.