Fishing for Purple

You all know I've been playing with polymer clay recently.  The object, of course, is not simply to have fun with this medium, but to use it in my work.  (of course, if I didn't find it fun, I wouldn't do it!)  I thought it would be fun to wildly embellish a cuff with some polymer clay beads.  I started by trying to match seed beads to some already made beads, and chose a dark purple which was at the center of some blue beads I'd made.  

I faithfully started netting (the obvious stitch choice for these purposes), and quickly realized that would need to make a whole new set of polymer clay beads to match the cuff. (what a drag, right?)

Well, here's the end result!  How 'bout that expanding ruffle at the end?

Gotta admit I'm a little bit pleased with this effort.  It was just.. fun.  You'll probably be seeing more combination of polymer clay and seed beads in the near future, what with it being my new kick and all. ;)

I would also like to acknowledge an award: Stormee has given me the Lemonade blogging award, and just wanted to say thanks!  She does some pretty inventive sewing.  

Now, there's certain 'requirements' for this award, such as picking other blogs to pass it on to. Being a bit of a rule breaker (not really...  I have an overactive conscience) I'm not going to specifically pick blogs to pass this on to.  But if you're itching for an award, consider yourself tagged. ;)

Scorpion Fish

It's done!  

For your viewing pleasure, my Scorpion Fish necklace.  I went with a herringbone rope, and hung the polymer clay strips along with strips of peyote for the fins.  You can vote for your favorite entry in the February challenge entitled 'Tropical Holiday' beginning Feb. 9th at the EBW blog.

Just for fun

Over Christmas break, my mom put on a home show for me.  It was my first, and went quite well!  As a result, I had a little extra, so I went and collected beads from folks I've been admiring from a distance for a while.  Aren't they fabulous??

We have, generally from left to right, two fun varieties of disk lampwork beads from HMB Studios, a fabulous pendant and two surprise raku beads from MAKU studio, and two types of playful fiber beads from Ebrown2503.  Feel free to check these folks out for yourself. :D 

Of Poisonous Fish and Polymer Clay

Warning: lots of pictures ahead.  For the summary, just look to the left! 

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Just before Christmas, I started playing with some white Sculpey I had leftover from a raised relief saxophone-playing jackalope I had made a little while back.  (What??  Yes, sax-playing jackalope - as a Christmas present for my sax-playing and figurine collecting Grandpa.)

I picked up more polymer clay at the store over break.  I stood in the aisle for a while hypnotized by all those colors.  But being the good budget-keeper that I try to be, and having taken enough art classes to know how to make more colors out of what I had, I went with red, yellow, blue and silver of one type, and sienna, silver, and translucent of another type.  I've been playing the last few days!

Task 1 was to figure out how to imitate scorpion fish fins (see post below for fishy picture).  Here's the final result, using the sienna alternating with mixed translucent and silvery clay.

And here is the final result with the prototypes.  I used the lower cost stuff to figure out how to make it work.  And I might end up using some of the prototypes in the necklace.  (This is for the February challenge - tropical holiday, remember?  Don't worry, there will be plenty of beadweaving as well!)

And then I just played with the clay to see how it worked and try out different stuff.  I like this blue set!  The largest is ~ 1 inch across.

These were the fin-making leftovers.  I like the stripedy one just beside my pinky.

These are red themed, I promise.  (Okay, so they're pink.  sigh...)

Just for fun!  I baked a little disk of reddish clay, then chopped it up and mixed it into the light blue clay for baking #2.

Purpley beads.  We'll have to find a use for those spirally beads.

And random leftovers.  The white spiral has some of the silver mixed in, so it actually shimmers a little in real life.  
...Now I'm inspired to go make more!  I know, these are pretty rough, and have fingerprints on them, but I'm having fun playing.  And besides, some of them need to be a little rough.  It's in their nature!  

Inspiration strikes!

I've continued to ponder the 'tropical holiday' theme, and I know where I'm heading now.  In my last post, I spoke of spending time at the coast every year.  During those holidays, we explored the reef whenever the low tide was at the right time.  Some of my favorite memories involve snorkeling in pools around brain corals.  The big ol' blobs hosted the most abundant and fantastic array of fish.  

Most days, we would be fortunate enough to see at least one scorpion fish.  When we saw these, we would always back up slowly and admire these very poisonous and fantastic fish.  The bold stripes and the long, ribbon-like fins always inspired awe and respect.  

I want to make a necklace inspired by these fantastic fish.  I just picked up some colored polymer clay to play with, so I think I'll use a mix of hand made beads (woohoo!) and strips of peyote to imitate the fins.  Of course, by the time it's done it will have evolved somewhat from this original brainstorming!  

I'm excited. :D  

It's time to vote again in the Etsy Beadweaver's December challenge!  Visit the EBW blog and cast your vote.  

My entry: This choker fit for an icy queen!

Tropical Holiday

The next Etsy Beadweaver's challenge theme was announced a couple weeks ago or so.  The theme is 'Tropical Holiday' and pieces will be submitted by February 5th (an extra month for the busy holiday season!)  I haven't had much of a chance to think about this theme until today.  

Today, I did start to think about what a 'Tropical Holiday' means to me.  As mentioned previously, I grew up in Kenya.  (The picture to the left is my dad, sister, and I - holding the stick - in Kenya back in the day.)  We lived first at latitude 2 degrees North, and later at latitude 26 minutes North (~ 1/2 degree).

The pin shows the location of our first home, in Logologo, Kenya (Google Earth got the spelling wrong - at least it is improved from the previous spelling - Lokuloko- yikes!).  The picture below shows a ground-level view, during the rainy season.  Normally, you wouldn't see any green on the ground. 

The picture below shows our house where we lived later, at the bottom of the Kerio valley, a very steep valley within the East African Rift system.  We were on an agricultural development project, with a yard full of papaya, mangos, bananas, pineapples, and oranges.  I grew up thinking of apples as an exotic fruit.

I went to school at latitude 55 minutes South (almost 1 degree South).  (It was a boarding school, which I totally loved.)  We crossed the equator every time we went home.  If that ain't a tropical childhood, I don't know what is.  The picture below was taken when I went home for the summer after I had started college.  I swallowed my pride, and took a very touristy picture at the Equator sign.  (I'm on the left.  We wore long skirts because it would have been totally culturally inappropriate where we lived to wear pants, shorts, or short skirts).
So, what does a tropical holiday mean to me then?  Well, a very normal holiday to say the least.  Every year, we went to the coast for a couple of weeks.  There were cottages available for us to stay in, and we could stay there making our own food and cleaning ourselves for two weeks, or stay in a fancy hotel for maybe 3 nights for the same price.  We took the 2 week option.  My dad would walk down to the fish market and find something fresh to grill.  Coconut trees grew in the yard, and the fruit was free for the taking.  There is a fringing reef just off the beach that we would snorkel in almost daily.  By just off the beach, I mean that at low tide, you could just meander through very shallow water to the front of the reef.
Another bonus of staying in the cottages is that we essentially had a private beach.  It was technically public, but the only public access was by walking from farther down the beach.  We were able to avoid the most intense of the hawkers, and more importantly the very frightening western tourists (think large frames, sunburnt to maroon, far too little in the way of swimsuits, and very little understanding of local culture, all on a crowded beach).

I'll have to keep thinking about how I can translate all of this into a beadwoven piece!