Summer!

Hello there and happy summer!

I am sorry for being so infrequent lately, but I have been really really REALLY busy.

The stuff that I promised to post last time is still on hold, but rather replaced with a little summer celebration (most of it coming to the shop later today).

I hope you enjoy it and that you are having a smashing summer!

 Cheeep! Pendant

Summer in the City Pendant

Summer in the City Earrings

 Marine Burdies Earrings (private collection)

Simple Beach Life Earrings

 Ice-Cream Peacock Ring

Ice-Cream Garden Earrings (sold already)

The multiplying flock of burdies

Loads of burdies followed this one. Only a few will make it to the shop later today, since most are already chirruping away, and some I kept for myself. I think summer sun when I look at them. What do you think?

brooch

brooch (available)

brooch

brooch (available)

brooch

ring

pendant (available)

brooch

necklace

Images on polymer - and heeeeeeeeelp!

Hey there! I hope you are enjoying your spring. It's Koninginnedag here in the Netherlands, and the weather turned rainy last night and will apparently stay so next week, which spoils my plans a little, but oh well.

So, images in polymer - there are obviously a lot of ways that you can achieve them (caning, painting, transferring, carving, backfilling, etching) and I was experimenting a bit this past week with some of the techniques, mostly  carving and backfilling and transferring.

First, let me show you the carved pendants (they will be in the shop later today).

I love the flower one so much I almost kept it. The birdie one looks better in person than in the pic and was hard to photograph because of the varnish applied to it, but is not as pretty and vintagey looking to me as the first one. They are both carved and then antiqued with acrylic paints. But they were carved before baking though - I find it much easier (and obviously much more forgiving).

And now to transfers...

The only transfers I did before were on baking parchment with inkjet printer and those were good enough for what I wanted to achieve, but this time I wanted a proper clear transfer so I tried the toner one. I read up on it galore and then set forth to do what I thought would be a straightforward and quick process. Oh how mistaken I was! Seriously, I have no idea what I'm doing wrong and have been reading up on it afterwards as well to no avail. Let me show you my troubles:

1) Snakeskin ring

This transfer turned out the best of them all, but that is due to the fact that it's a busy pattern, so you can't really make out if there are mistakes. However, when I applied a layer of liquid FIMO and re-baked it, it bubbled up in tiny specks. In stuff that I wear I really don't mind little imperfections, but it is definitely a mistake and I can't figure out where I'm going wrong.

(I adore huge rings btw.)

  2) Fly ring

In this one you can clearly see two problems - first, there are still little hairs of paper that I couldn't get off for love nor money, and second, due to trying to @#Y^%% get rid of them I rubbed off a part of the fly's left wing. How do you get rid of all the paper!? I mean, if you leave it there, as soon as it dries it creates a milky film over the image, and if you rub more it smudges the image. Which leads me to

3) Japanese print ring

No picture since I screwed it up completely (and it was my favourite image!). Same thing as with the fly, I was trying to get rid of the paper from the black hair of the girl in the picture and at some point the black just smudged all over her porcelain face! And there was still a white paper film on the hair!

And finally

4) Liquid clay transfer (decal attempt)

Also no pic, since it was ruined.

I put Liquid Fimo onto a picture, baked it, soaked it in water, started rubbing paper off (it wouldn't peel in one go) and just straight rubbed off the whole image from the clay!

I really don't get it! Please do share your advice, if you have any, I am getting desperate!

In the meantime, I am itching to do some etching (hah!) but want to sort out this transfer rebus first! 

Spring gardens blossoming

Very flowery mood over here. I have even planted some flowers on the balcony! (I have a red thumb, hence my excitement). I am truly enjoying this spring and all the sunshine. The thing I love about Holland is the time the sun sets during the warmer part of the year - we are currently at 9pm! Woohoo!

Therefore, I give you a few gardens (some of which, you can also find in the shoppe)

Here I almost went into summer - think orient, sipping cold tea under a canopy on a fresh warm summer evening...

Hope you are enjoying your spring as well!

Busy bee

That would be me :-) I did some commission work (for the first time) for two people. One set is a combination of earrings and a ring, and the other - ring, earrings and a pendant. I hope the girls will like their pieces. And I hope you like them, too. I personally had trouble giving up those earrings from the second set. Alas ;)

I also added some new stuff to my DaWanda shop. They are not new pieces, just added for sale now.

That's it for now. I am having a splitting headache for two days now and I am keeping busy so it would go away, but it seems to be the wrong method. And now I'll go and add some cheese to that whine. ;)

Be good!

Autumn's back in town!

It really is, and I really don't like rain, not really...Unless I am inside doing my favourite stuff. Like, looking at colour, making thingies, having coffee, being warm etc. Which, as you can see, I have been doing these days. And I even got a window of opportunity to take some of the pics outside. And I am quite pleased with them, too.

Hope you enjoy :-)

(Btw. all of the stuff is for sale at my DaWanda shop, bar the two fridge magnets, one of which is a present for a friend - even though I still can't decide which one he would prefer :( )