Landscape/Seascape

I'm spending some time on my Landscape/Seascape necklace series today. It seems that walking away from them for a bit was worthwhile - I feel like I'm looking at them with fresh eyes. This is one of those pieces I may have to deliberate selling.

A big thanks to Angie at a little etsy love for featuring my work (with a coupon code) today!

Toga Beads How-to

Here's a short how-to for making what I call, for lack of a better name, toga beads. They remind me of marble "fabric" drapped on classical statues.

All you'll need is white polymer clay, a cutter, needle, black acrylic paint, paper towel and possibly some steel wool.

1. Make a ball of white clay about double the size that you want the finished bead to be.

2. Pinch and twist opposing sides of the ball making "handles" (sort of) and continue to twist until the bead has layers/twists to suit you. Less twisting will result in thick folds, more twisting results in thinner folds.

3. Carefully cut the handles off the ends of the bead.

4. Pierce, flat end to flat end, with a needle and bake standing up on one end or using a bead rack.

5. Brush with black acrylic paint, getting the paint into all the indentations, then immediately removing paint from the "high spots" with a paper towel. After the paint dries if you find you want more white showing, remove even more of the black paint with steel wool.

Black and white gives these beads a marble/toga feel but different colors of clay and paint would be fun too!

Learning something new

Happy New Year!

I have read that as we age its very beneficial for our brain to continue to learn new things. Are you over 40 years? Then let your heart (er, brain) rejoice because today there is NO dearth of new things to learn!

I've recently tackled Instagram. Wow, it does so much for much for my iphone photos! The first two images of buildings at the Ephrata Cloister are regular and for the second two I used Instagram filters.