Some new listings

I've been making more button-clay tile bracelets lately, as well as a few of the ones with the upcycled watch parts. I ordered a bunch of buttons yesterday. Also, Michael's had a sale on clay, so I bought something like 35 blocks of clay. When it's on sale at 4/$5, I try to stock up. And at that price, buying it by the pound and paying shipping is still more expensive. The only trouble was, they were out of a couple of colors that I wanted. I'll stop back, though, as the sale is all week.

First Clay Tile Brooch

The first of my clay tile brooches is for sale. They are fun to make and I very much like how each one is unique. 

Each measures about 1.75" (4.4 cm).

This is one kind of back that I have. I'll change this when I get the shipment of new ones. I like that design better - more sturdy.

They are stacks, but not too tall. 

Bits and Pieces

Another photo of stuff in progress. It's a lot of fun to have a box of "parts", in this case clay tiles I've made, and pick and sort through them to assemble things like these brooches and bookmarks.

Both items are a new thing for me. I have a lot of buttons that are too large for bracelets in the way I currently make them, but I still wanted to combine my clay tiles with them for something interesting. The bookmarks are nice little pieces, and I have enough variety in the clay tiles to match the buttons pretty well.

The brooches are also really fun to make. I've got striped tiles that I love to make, and I combine them with the solid texture tiles. They are about 2" (5.08 cm) across. I ordered a bunch of brooch backs, which are on their way from China as I type this. I like to buy "local" as much as I can, but findings like brooch backs all come from China anyway, it seems.

Inspiration

I try to keep my eye out for pleasing color combinations. Here's one from Design Seeds (a fabulous site full of awesome color combinations). 

I picked stamped clay tiles that matched the color palette, and I love how it turned out. I don't always see good color matches ahead of time, and this helps. I think it's a skill, though, something that can be developed over time.  

Olive striped tiles

There is a house in my neighborhood that has a color scheme that is olive green with navy and white accents. It looks different, yet it goes together really well and fits with the old style of the house. I decided to mimic the colors for some large clay tiles. Above, you can see where I have mixed the colors, cut them into strips and am in various stages of rolling them into thin ropes.

An overexposed shot of the sheet of clay with the thin ropes before I roll it through my pasta machine once. These ropes ended up being just a little thicker than I thought they'd be, but I'm still happy with the results.

The light green kind of gets lost agains the foil, but each tile has the three colors in roughly the same order. I like that effect of that, where the colors repeat, but the tiles don't look the same. I took the rest of the thin ropes and the strips of clay that didn't get rolled out, put them together, and made the mostly blue tiles. It's a good way to use up the leftover clay and it's fun to see how they'll turn out.

Tropical Texture Tiles (say that three times fast)

I made several of these over the weekend in different color schemes. I have to admit I do not have the sense yet to put colors together on the fly. I can't just look at my box of tiles and see what will look nice together. So I've been looking at other things - paint chips, flower arrangements, fabric, and have found all to be really good inspiration.

This one is in tropical colors. Warm and bold. Since I'm not replacing the clasp on these, I'm selling them for a couple of dollars less than similar ones with a fancier clasp. It seems good to see what people prefer. 

I'm also thinking of making some more monocolor ones, so a person could wear two together. I do like the look of two on a wrist.

Aqua Hues

What is is about aqua? I made several bracelets in this last batch in shades of aqua/turquoise/blue-green. It's restful and pleasing. I like how my eye just kind of goes around, looking at different elements of this one. 

I've laid out some smaller button-clay bracelets - minis - that I'm hoping to get glued today. It's a good feeling to have a bunch done so I can post one or two a day. I think Etsy's algorithm for searches favors listings from people who are active in that manner.  

New pieces

I've been working on a bunch of new button-clay bracelets and I'm very pleased with how they turned out. This one is just as red in person as it is in the photo. Bold and sassy!

I think I've solved my smelly button problem. Ha! That makes it sound like a hygiene issue, doesn't it? No, I ordered some buttons and they arrived with this weird small that made them unusable unless I got rid of it. So I first soaked them in dishsoap and water. Then baking soda and water. Then more soap. Finally, I put out a call on my FB page (which you can get to by clicking on the picture of the buttons on the right side of the page) and someone suggested vinegar.

Okey-dokey. I couldn't used them otherwise, so might as well give that a try. And it worked! They don't have a noticeable smell now, so I can use them. That's good because I really like them. The colors on a couple faded, but they all faded the same way, so it won't matter.

In the meantime, I ordered few more lots of buttons in colors I didn't have. Squee!

Have a good rest of the weekend, all!

Easy Teals

Sometimes, the pieces sort of come together seemingly on their own. This was such a piece. I seemed to have a lot of teal (aqua, aquamarine - what would you call these colors?) colored buttons and clay tiles, so it went together easily. I really like this one, but I'm like a mother with multiple kids - I love them all. :-)

Vintage button and clay tile bracelet - yellow khaki neutrals

These are pretty substantial bracelets, but I love the visual interest of them. Lots of subtle changes in color and texture. $16.00 in the Etsy shop. 

Mixed media bracelet

So this is the sort of design that got me into making jewelry in the first place. I saw something similar (more metal hardware on it and no clay tiles) at a consignment store when I was waiting in line to purchase some clothes. It's got upcycled watch parts on it, face, mainspring barrel and gears. It also has new things, like a funky charm, and the clay tiles, which I make myself. The clay tiles are kind of meditative for me and I love to make new colors. I'm starting to get the color thing down such that I'll make several shades of a particular color when I work, so I'm guaranteed to have 3-4 shades that go together (even if I don't put them together on every piece). 

For some reason, I haven't sold a lot of these. It's funny, when you think you've got a unique something that people would want to buy, yet I've got about 30 of these on my Etsy site. The people who do see them think they are swell, and I fully get it that it's not a style for everyone. I suppose it's a matter of setting the right price and getting the word out, and that's an evolving thing.

Mixing it up

I haven't gotten my 600 buttons from the Ebay purchase yet, but I had a few laying around, so I went to work on a new bracelet style. I really like it. It's easy to assemble, which is always a plus, but also has the very engaging and interesting (to me) part of picking colors, shapes, and locations for the various components. 

I knew I wanted to combine my hand-stamped clay tiles with buttons, and also really like the look of layers of buttons. So the first incarnation of this had layers of buttons, and just the larger clay tiles. I was eating my morning cereal, looking at the bracelets, and the muse, that little creative something came along and I thought, "add another layer of tiles". I'm very happy with the result. 

Experimentation

I made some buttons with this sheet of clay and had enough left to make circular tiles for a bracelet. I like the smooth look to the tiles and it's a light bracelet, even though it's kind of chunky. I'd like to fool around more with color combinations to see what looks nice together.

R & D

The professionals (like in this really good book I got from the library) suggest that doing some work seeing how your colors blend together is worth the time and effort. I like to use Premo. It has a couple of kinds of red, yellow and blue, so I wanted to see how they blended together at known ratios. I worked more or less in fourths. I sheeted some of each of the three primaries, plus a second shade of blue, and cut them into 1/2" squares. Then I blended ratios starting with one square to three squares, two to two, and so on. 

The results were interesting! With the orange at the bottom, I was surprised at how little red it takes to make orange. The blend on the right in the last row is something like 5/4 yellow and 1/16 red. 

It's hard to follow on the picture (I have notes, though, honest!) but the blue-green and blue-purples are using two different blues, and they gave different results. The end of the second row are the cobalt-yellow samples, and the third row is ultramarine blue-yellow. The cobalt made much more pleasing greens, I thought. Same kind of thing for the purples. The top row and the first five of the second row are similar ratios using the two different blues. 

You can see how the possibilities, while not endless, are many and I just scratched the surface of making a record of color combinations. I could also tint them with white and/or black. I use metallic accent clay, too, which changes the color, so that's another set of possibilities.

Now if I can get my act together, and I really should because this can serve as a reference kit, I'll sheet each of these, cut out a circle , etch a number on it that corresponds to my notes, and poke a hole so I can string them on a piece of yarn and keep them nice. 

I mixed colors later to make more small clay tiles and used what I had learned to make a serviceable copper color. Time well spent. 

Checking in

Has it been since November?! I've got lots of stuff to say, and jewelry designs to share. I'll start to post more regularly soon. In the meantime, here are a few links to my pieces on Etsy:

Texture Tile Bracelet
https://www.etsy.com/listing/104128535/stamped-polymer-clay-bracelet-orange-and

Mixed Media Bracelet
https://www.etsy.com/listing/103665909/mixed-media-stamped-polymer-clay

Polymer Clay Buttons
https://www.etsy.com/listing/103792317/polymer-clay-buttons-shimmery-blue-green?ref=v1_other_1

Mixed Media Necklace
https://www.etsy.com/listing/100966773/stamped-polymer-clay-mixed-media