It’s time for polymer headpins

I always love the inspiration, information and all around good stuff shared on Art Jewelry Elements.  Today’s post in particular, such a nice tutorial for making earrings with gorgeous glass headpins, all from Jen Cameron.   Something made me think of the polymer headpins I had made once, just playing with the idea one afternoon – uh, at least three years ago! 

So often I went to poke around the studio to see if I could find them.  They weren’t in various boxes of experiments and as I stood in the middle of the room just being still and scanning.  I caught sight of them - there in souvenir shot glass under a layer of dust, were my organic shaped head pins.



Not a single pair in the lot!  I was just experimenting with shape.  Clearly these colours would be better off with copper too but I think there are some ideas here to work from.  I will be making time to play with this this week.  I’m here telling you to make sure I get it done and come back and share!

AJE Component of the month reveal

I was a lucky winning participant and eager to get my hot little hands on a labyrinth pendant from Jenny Davies-Reazor as part of the December Component of the month on the ever inspiring Art Jewelry Elements blog.  It sure is perfect imagery for this last day of the year.

I ended up with this long necklace featuring Jenny’s focal and complemented by my polymer beads, a little glass and some wood rounds.   The idea of a labyrinth had me looking at things I do all the time looking for patterns. Like how I brush my teeth, how I drag a tea bag around and out of a cup, and how I do many things working with polymer.  That lead me to wanting to include overlapping infinity symbols since that’s a motion I seem to fall into naturally.  So I started with a bunch of rich blue beads and a snake of cream clay and well, no two are alike in the end.  I then “glazed” them with tinted liquid polymer.



I also found that I have a sand labyrinth that I’ve never tried out. 



Wishing you all lots of inspiration and all good things for 2013.  I hope you will join me in seeing what everyone else created.  Thank you so much for letting me join in the fun AJE team.

This months guests of honor:
 Emma Todd <- that's me! Thanks for coming!
Lee Koopman
Jess Green
And participating AJE team members:
Jen Cameron Kristi Bowman
 Diana Ptaszynski
 Kristen Stevens
 Lesley Watt
Francesca Watson
 Melissa Meman
Jo Tinley
 Linda Landig
 Sue Kennedy
 Jenny Davies-Reazor, your hostess
 

Christmas and catching up

Hope everyone had a great Christmas or whatever you may celebrate this time of year.  We knew wrapping up presents we had bought too many for our one 2 year old girl.  I thinned it a bit by donating some, and holding others for her birthday.  Just like my own mum there are always several gifts stashed in the closet.   I wonder how old Averleigh will be when she figures that out?  I had an older brother to show me. 

No picture with Santa Claus this year as I was told repeatedly “I don’t like Santa Claus” each time I asked about it.  I was also told, repeatedly, “I don’t like presents”.  This last one didn’t stand up.   As I type this there are new toys everywhere and there is no sense in cleaning them up since she wants to play with all of them right now.



Christmas Eve is always at my in-laws and we started a tradition of new pyjamas from us so here she is Chrsitmas morning showing off said pyjamas.  We spent about two hours opening gifts since she likes to have everything out of the box to really check it out before moving on the the next.  She actually left four presents still wrapped under the tree telling me she would open them later.  Funny girl.  Then we were off to my parents house for Christmas with my family, there’s eighteen of us.  We spent the whole day relaxing with the family and all was how it should be.

As the end of the year is coming I know there are some things not yet done.  I still have bracelets to make for 7000 bracelets of hope and I will get them done, just maybe not before the 31st.  I have to finish my dad’s Christmas present first.  It was going to be ready for the 25th but I decided I wasn’t pleased with the final execution, it needs a take two.  I’m letting that breathe a bit.  I did make some necklaces for my mum though (and actually give them to her on time).



These are very similar, in the end I just couldn’t decide so opted to give her both.  I believe she prefers the one on the right as it is adjustable on the black silk cord.  The version on the left above features sterling chain and some of my all time favourite pearls, hard to see here but they are facetted
.


The silk goes through that spiral bead on opposite directions making the necklace easily adjustable and it holds very nicely if I do say so myself.

I’ve declared that 2013 will be the year I improve my wire skills.  It’s needed.  I have all sorts of great ideas for polymer with wire but I really need to bring up those wire skills to make some of those ideas reality.  So I signed up for Kerry Bogert’s Aspire to Wire course happening online this January.  I also was lucky enough to get her lasted book under the tree, (no surprise since I “added it to cart” myself practically) and then there was this in my stocking



Ain’t he a sweetie?!  My hubby remembered the conversation where I went on and on about trying to decide if I should invest is some quality wire tools now or keep going with what I have… He just couldn’t remember the actual names of anything I was talking about and the folks at the art store he tried to buy from just stared blankly.  He did remember me saying they were “the world’s most expensive” so that’s what I got.  I now have some Tronex tools on order, I will be very excited to put them to good use.

I have one last blog hop to close out the year on New Year’s Eve come on back to see what I made with one of these awesome labyrinth components from Jenny Davies-Reazor as part of the component of the month from Art Jewelry Elements