Linda's Magic Workshop - Linda Britt Design

  As often happens, the picture in my head is more difficult to construct in real life than to create in my mind.  In the previous post I left you thinking I would just make a replacement steel bead for the one that collapsed in the kiln.  I tried!  The replacement was much more ragged than the first one and unusable for this project.  I think I'll be able to create an interesting bead using it but not for this post.  Rather than go through the process of making a third bead, I decided to try to reshape the original.  A long metal rod was inserted and I hammered and after several tries it worked!   Time to decide what beads I would use with the steel ones I made.  I started with the ones in the picture.  And I added and rearranged and added and played with the shapes and colors.  When I had a pretty good idea of what I wanted to use I started stringing.   At some point I realized I needed to make the center dangle/focal part or the necklace first.  The dangle had t

 In my last post, I shared my adventure of making a complex polymer cane using fabric as an inspiration and the design in the fabric was inspired from Mexican tile.  I decided to make a necklace to celebrate Cinco de Mayo, (May 5) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cinco_de_Mayo and use some of the canes as beads. It was fun to give the beads dimension by curing 2 halves, assembling the halves into a whole bead and creating a way to hang them.  . Focal Bead Front of Focul Bead The focal bead looks like a pillow with the two convex squares over the four sides of skinny ovals The mobius bead above the focal pillow bead is attached to the necklace with a lobster claw. Each large bead is decorated front and back to give a finished interesting look to the necklace.  Polymer beads are lightweight and durable.  The back of the beads shown in the first photo above. Margaritas, mariachis, chips and salsa and a colorful one of a kind necklace should

One sunny fall day while walking by Willow Lake I took some photos of lovely translucent white seed pods.  They were worn by the wind but still standing.  Their shapes were ragged and lantern like.  They hung from straight white dried stems and I just had to see if I could recreate them in translucent polymer clay.  I've been thinking about how to do that for a few weeks and decided it was time to jump in and experiment.  I thought I’d share some of the steps I took. First I bought my 3 packages of Pardo Translucent Clay at Hobby Lobby (all they had).  I had not worked with Pardo before and I love it!  Not sticky like some of the other brands of translucent.  I’m hooked! After making the lantern pattern, I found a great texture plate to give a cell like organic texture to the clay.  The clay was rolled to #6 on my Atlas machine because I really wanted the translucent quality. The first time I did not use wire and I like the look but it was not strong enough.

Tansy Back of Pendant After completing Christi Friesen’s polymer class last week, I wanted to make a pendant using some of her techniques.   I also wanted the pendant to be my style (whatever that is!). The face of the girl in my creation was a bead given me by a friend and I knew someday she would call to be part of something.   I picked her up, held her, looked at my mix of clay and started creating.   It was fun to figure out how to place the polymer shapes to make her part of the forest and have personality.   Many years ago, a close friend and I corresponded.   We wrote to each other in our imaginary forest girl’s personalities.   Mine was named ‘Tansy’ and I think Tansy may have infused some of her personality into this pendant.   I just had to share her.

One of the best things about Facebook is being in a special interest group.   I belong to a polymer clay group and a metal clay group.   The polymer clay tutorials are listed and I always look.   So when Emma Ralph’s (EJR Beads) tutorial was recommended, I looked at it on her etsy site.   http://www.etsy.com/listing/113890791/polymer-clay-tutorial-by-emma-ralph I thought it was expensive and so I looked several times before I decided to buy it.   Wow! Was it worth the money.   It was well written and documented with many interesting pictures, techniques and tips!   In this blog, I want to show you some of what I learned and the ‘Illuminare’ beads I made. I followed her directions and took a couple of side trips!   The Thistle Medallion was one of the side trips. http://www.lindabrittdesign.blogspot.com/2013/02/thistle-medallion.html     This bracelet was another.   http://www.etsy.com/listing/124530104/dragonfly-bracelet I made the flat clay sheets and embellished