A new Fimo bead necklace

When I run Fimo demonstrations and workshops I end up with quite a few single beads or maybe 2 or 3 that match. I have a large bag of these beads now and I fancied making myself a new necklace.

This is my everyday necklace. I get lots of lovely comments about it and it works as a permanent advert for what I can make. I find it particularly handy when I am explaining my job to people to just take it off and hand it over and say "I make these"! There are four different types of beads on here from a workshop and a demonstration.

I am feeling bright and sunny now I can see blue skies again and so I decided I wanted a more colourful necklace to wear. I chose lots of different beads from the bag and strung them together with some metal spacers beads.

As all the beads are different, I found the spacer beads that match make the non-matching beads look more intentional.

Happy bead face!

A Fimo owls workshop

Yesterday was a busy Sunday working, which is unusual for me, and it was great fun. Four lovely ladies came along to my Fimo owls workshop at the fantastic fabric/wool/ spinning/felting/ lovely craft goodies shop Spinning Weal in Clevedon. We spent most of the day building up three different millefiori canes which were then sliced up to become feathers around a core of kitchen foil.

I love how each owl has his own personality!

So egg-citing!

Woohoo! I'm on the front cover (well, my fabric eggs and Easter chick are) of the March issue of Sewing World.

My Fimo celtic knot beads feature on the front cover of this month's Beads & Beyond too ( third box from the left on the top row).

Fimo bracelets and a peacock feather cane

These are the final finished project from my Fimo weekend and I'm so pleased with how they've turned out. I attempted a peacock feather cane for the first time. I could definitely refine the technique a little but it does look like a peacock feather. I wanted to have gold and coloured circles around the feather so that it would look a little like it came from a painting by Klimt. My circles look a little more like fairy lights. I seem to have made a disco peacock feather!

The construction of the bracelet was taught to me years ago in a workshop by Sarah Shriver ( a seriously talented polymer clay artist). I remembered the technique quite well.

This is what it looks like when I'm wearing it...

This is my second attempt at a bracelet. The sections aren't quite as even on this one.

The pattern is made using a layered technique with a Fimo texture sheet pressed into the top. The top layers are then carefully shaved off to reveal the colourful pattern. There is a helpful tutorial here. It was really fun to do and it's very exciting when the pattern starts to appear.

I've had so much fun working with my Fimo over the past couple of weeks and I'm feeling a little sad as I pack it away for a bit so I can get on with my sewing. But I have an exciting new sewing project to work on and I get to immerse myself in fabric so I'll be happy in no time!

After a Fimo demo

I had great fun this weekend working alongside the lovely people from Boxes and Busts at the craft show at Cardiff City Stadium. We had lots of people come and learn about Fimo and everyone was fascinated with how to construct millefiori canes.

The day after a demo I sit down with all the canes I've made and work out how to finish off a project before baking. This sunflower bracelet was one of my favourite makes from the weekend. I used my scrap multicoloured clay as a core for the beads before applying slices from the sunflower type cane I'd made.

I made a few kaleidoscope canes too. I love showing people how to make these patterns as it starts out as a few sausage shapes, but gradually changes into these intricate patterns by a series of cutting and reforming the cane.

There were quite a few finished flower canes by the end of the weekend. I've rolled them to be quite small and sliced them up before baking. I've had an idea for a mosaic with lots of millefiori slices and so this can be the starting point for that project.

I've got another couple of projects just baking in the oven and so come back to see how they worked out.

A Fimo pen

This week I've been having fun playing with my stash of Fimo. I've been working on a project for Beads and Beyond, but you,ll have to wait until December to see that one. This weekend I will be demonstrating Fimo at  the Craft and Hobby Show at Cardiff City Stadium with Boxes and Busts ( who sell jewellery supplies and run fantastic jewellery workshops in South Wales).

I've been asked to demonstrate the new Fimo Pen. It's a plain metal pen - with a great quality Staedtler pen insert - and it can be decorated with Fimo before the metal cover gets baked. I used four new Fimo Effect colours - ruby quartz, agate blue, citrine quartz and blue ice quartz. These gemstone colours have a lovely subtle sparkle to them. I hope you can see that in the photos.

I made a flower millefiori cane and it doesn't take much Fimo to cover a pan and so I had lots left to play with. I made  these beads with the leftover cane. The beads have been threaded onto memory wire to make a bracelet. I don't usually varnish beads, but the varnish on these beads have brought out the sparkle beautifully.

Beads and Beyond

I've been meaning to mention this for a while, but the time has slipped past and this is already last month's issue of Beads & Beyond. I was over the moon to see my Fimo beads on the front cover. Beads & Beyond have a feature showing 8 "recipes" for making beads and I was asked to make 8 different polymer clay beads using a Skinner blend technique. There's a little peak into my craft room at the back too and I'll let you into a secret - it doesn't normally look that tidy!

Fimo flower beads

It's been so hot here for the past week and so I spent a very pleasant two days demonstrating Fimo in cool air-conditioned rooms at Cardiff City stadium over the weekend. I was working with the lovely people from Boxes and Busts from Barry, who run a range of great jewellery workshops including polymer clay.

It was a good two days with lots of people sitting by my desk and finding out about Fimo. A lot of people were particularly fascinated by the flower canes I was making and I ended up making quite a few canes with whatever colours I had on my desk. At the end of the day I put the beads together and I love how these colours work together. They are so summery.

Cardboard box castles

We have been making castles in our house. The blonde one had to make a castle as a school project which was followed by a castle exhibition at school. The kids work was fantastic with a huge range of castles including cardboard ones, lego ones, ones from a kit and huge, pink, sparkly ones.

This was our castle. We included a portcullis made from cocktail sticks and I found some iridescent tissue paper which made water in the moat.

We made a door in the back of the castle so we could see into the Great Hall. We got a book on castles from the library to help know what to out into the castle. My daughter thought this was cheating! I think we need to work on learning research methods.

This was our Great Hall. The blonde one really enjoyed colouring in a peel-off sticker on acetate for a stained glass window. You can see her colouring in, which make the tapestries on the wall. We used Fimo to make a table, fire pit and candle stick.

A very large cardboard box arrived in our house recently and was too good to waste. The Boy and I had a fun morning painting and sponging...

All three kids like playing in it now!

Fimo class fun

Last weekend I spent a fun day teaching Fimo workshops at a local craft shop called Spinning Weal. It's such a lovely shop with a wealth of fabric , wool, felting, spinning and or course Fimo. It's also a great place to go for advice and help and has a fantastic "have-a-go" atmosphere.

I had 9 pupils across two workshops and we spent the day making millefiori canes from Fimo, particularly looking at kaleidoscope techniques, and how to make beads and buttons. This came in handy when one lady cut into her rose cane to reveal the finished design and was immediately convinced it looked like intestines instead of a rose! I showed her how to cut up the cane a transform it into a repeating pattern, which she was more pleased with (phew!)

I have classes coming up in April and June if you'd like to come and play. The information is all here.

2011 - a crafting year in review

I was having a little look around on blogs and I saw a great review of the year on the Attic 24 blog and so I thought I'd have a go as well. It's been a very interesting exercise.

I can see that...

- January and September aren't great months for crafting, usually as I am trying to get the house back on track after school holidays.

- I'm happy that my August photos aren't about crafting but about getting out and about, building sandcastles, watching balloons and finding gorillas.

- I really enjoyed my scrapbooking from June onwards as the things I had learnt in online classes with Donna Downey, Julie Fei-fan Balzer, Christy Tomlinson and Emily Falconbridge all started to come together on my pages.

- It looks like I did little crafting in November or December, but actually I was crafting non stop making things for a craft fair and to sell to raise funds at church. My conclusion is that I can't manufacture items for sale like that at the moment as I don't have enough time.

- My kids are very photogenic!

You may notice a little robin just above - there's more on him to come soon.

Wishing you all a very happy crafty 2012 xx

Millefiori - inspiration and beads

While we were at the "Power of Making" exhibition at the V&A, my friend and I had a little look at the glass gallery. I was very pleased to find traditional glass millefiori as I have spent a lot of the past month teaching people how to make Fimo canes. I am always amazed at how the glass makers can produce the canes as I am used to making my canes in a malleable clay, not boiling hot melted glass!

I love the stripy edges of these canes.

This plate is made using large stripy canes.

And here's my version! I took the Fimo canes I had made at classes and demonstrations recently and made them into beads. It's my new favourite necklace and when people ask about it, I get to do my Fimo sales pitch. The assistant on the coach to London my be coming to one of my classes after our chat about my necklace!

A Fimo Owl and a feather cane

I've started teaching Fimo workshops again recently (after a long gap) at a fabulous local craft shop called Spinning Weal. The shop is known for fabric, wool, felting and spinning with great workshops and a while ago they added a stand of Fimo. I had an idea to make one of my owls to sit in the shop and apparently he has prompted lots of great comments. A lot of people have thought he's fabric and get a surprise when the owl feels hard to touch. I felt that a knitting owl sitting on a quilt would feel very at home in the shop!

Here's a closer look at how I make an owl.

I start with a big ball of scrunched up kitchen foil and then wrap a layer of multicoloured leftover Fimo around the foil to smooth it out. When I make millefiori canes with Fimo I always have a distorted image at the ends, but none of it is wasted as you can see here.

The next step is to construct a feather cane for the owl's tummy. For this can I used transparent white to make a sausage shape (cane) with white Fimo wrapped around the edge - this is known as a bullseye cane. I squashed the cane into an oval shape and cut it into short lengths to build up the feather pattern, including some tiny canes of black with white wrapped around it. As I used transparent white, the appearance of the feathers will change once they have been baked.

I cut lots of slices from the cane and covered the front of the owl.

Here's a closer look at the other feathers. There are three different canes on the back as I kept running out of feathers!

Then it's two white circles for the eyes and black eyes, beak and legs.

Can you see how the transparent Fimo has changed now it's been baked and the pattern becomes more obvious?

The millefiori cane for the wings is made up from a selection of bullseye canes.

The quilt is made up from millefiori canes that I made when I was doing a Fimo demonstration at Spinning Weal in September.