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Yeah, I'm not sure what to call this post... Anyway, I haven't been in the mood to update this week. I've not exactly been myself lately. And my family has 'issues' with Halloween, lol!

One thing I'd like to mention, is the hurricane in America. I can't believe it's really happened. I thought the news people were making up stories, lol. Anyway, I've heard that the damage, especially in New York, is pretty bad. It's crazy, all the pictures we've seen on the news are the complete opposite to what people over here think of when they think of New York. I hope everything gets back to normal soon and that the damage to people's lives aren't that serious. I've never actually left the UK in my life (yet), and the worse thing I've ever seen is probably the flash floods and a relatively small earth quake that happened a few years ago, but nothing that compares to this. I can't imagine how people in America must feel :(

Anyway, on a more positive note, I made this necklace out of polymer clay because I love bats and it was Halloween!

I was going to make a tutorial for it, but I noticed it was way too similar to other tutorials I've seen. It's pretty much straight forward, too. Just draw your image on paper, cut it out and use it as a stencil to cut out your clay. Done :)





I know that most other countries don't celebrate it, but it's Bonfire night on Monday :) To my family, it's A LOT more exciting than Halloween. If you don't know what it is, it's basically a festival to mark the day when the houses of parliament were almost exploded, but the people doing it got caught (hence the fact we burn a little model of a person on a Bonfire). There are firework displays up and down the country, and they never seem to stop exciting people :D The only problem is, people tend to go crazy letting off fireworks (not in a potentially dangerous way!), and so the dog goes completely mad!

One more thing: sorry I haven't made any tutorials :( I felt that everything I'd come up with had been done. But I'll definitely be making some more soon :D

Another scrap clay idea...

I was bored... So I made these hearts out of clay and put some fruit cane slices on them. :) I put some white chalk on them too, because it looks kind of like icing sugar, well too me it does ;D

They're pretty simple and they're quite small so they're good for charm bracelets. I might make some     earrings using this sort of technique in the future, I think it would look nice :)

Another thing is, I was bored of the shape of ordinary eye pins, so I made up my own. I get bored   way too easy... I was thinking of making some heart shaped ones, too.

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.