Judy Belcher’s class for the Polymer Clay Carnival 2009 “Canes and more Canes!”

Just got an email from a friend asking if I’d like to go with her to The 2009 Polymer Clay Carnival, I’m just amazed by the invitation as I’ve heard the event Is wonderful.
This year The Imperial Palace Hotel in Las Vegas, Nevada is holding the event in November 5-8.
All the Polymer Clay Queens that I love will gonna be instructoring there, among them Donna Kato and Kim Cavender. The cost for the carnival will be $485 with a $50 discount if you make the hotel reservations from their reserved block of rooms at the Imperial Palace. Registration cost covers 8 classes (32 hours of instruction) and the famous pizza party. Additional guest tickets for the pizza party can be purchased for $35 each.

From Cathy Johnston’s page you can have a little bit more of information.

Too long without posting, too much work and so little time do it all with perfection, so I sometimes have to sacrifice what’s at the time is not in an urge, in this case, my personal diaries.

I’ve been for so long making and testing my own ”gipsy style” jewelry, I make a piece, wear it and all of a sudden I see I’m ”naked” again, friends, family, neighbors, aquaintances, they want a piece of that and I , as the maker, cant deny they have a piece of me and that will be all an unique one, nobody else will have it

I never tried selling them, always gave as a gift but these days my son (the one who loves hemp jewelry) asked why dont you try showing your gipsy style online? It wont hurt….yeap, he’s absolutely right, it wont, plus I can make some money to put up more materials .

So there’s the first piece I brought up and hope many more will come

Peace and Love ^^

Couldn’t Resist to Post this Here

Look what I just got !!!

Natura, Brazilian most famous Body Care brand. Quality and Environment Concernment is what makes Natura a Top Brand. Their Products are made with 100% essential oils, vegetable extracted in a sustainable manner and Organic alcohol, tested dermatologically, no animal product used and no animal test made. I love Natura and I just use Natura. I use their oils, perfumes, bar and liquid soaps, make up, just everything. I do try another products but Natura is on top for me.

That Soap Set is composed of 03 soap bars, passion fruit, pitanga and andiroba, I wish you could feel the perfume of it,
they come hung by a handmade sisal cord in a very charming and elegand Natura gift box, this is a limited edition only, I got 5 boxes, guaranteed mine and going to post the rest of them at my ebay store

My new girl is a hand drawn and carved pendant with a hand braided leather necklace …. The pendant is polymer clay faux wood cupped to imitate a coconut shell with a tribal carved drawing ….

I sanded and polished it by hand, cos I think i gives you more control of how the piece turns out and it narrows your inner link with the piece bringing more of your personality….

This is featuring my thoughts of the Amazon life from the far Atlantic Forest to the great city flea markets full of hand carved and crafts made by their own creative natives …..

For more details here’s the trace

I tried this technique once with white flour, hehehehe and you figure out the mess I could make in moms kitchen, I was over in Brazil that time and no idea of polymer clay comunities so spread out but this girl was just perfect when finding out a way to build a no background cane, simple and easy and most importantly no messy at alllll …..

She’s Idit Kats, take a look at her flickr page here

Now here is the video with the tutorial for you to learn and having fun trying it (^_^)

Polymer clay can be formed with many shapes, one of the simplest shapes are the balls.

Since kids we’ve been playing with balls and making them left and right with an easy and no concerns whether it would come out a perfect round or not but, when it comes to polymer clay, some people just cant conceive the idea of forming a perfect round shaped ball.

We get so worried about making that perfect round bead necklace and that blocks us in a way we end up doing the opposite. Before when there was no bead roller on the market, it was a torture, I would spend hours trying to make a rounded bead and at the end it always turned out more like an egg.

Then, one day, I got my new bead rollers, what a surprise, I could make perfect balls the size I wanted but there was something missing: the rollers built the bead, not my hands and I wanted to make my round shaped beads without rollers, all by myself.

I stopped fighting and listened to myself, as I said: I spent most of my childhood claying around, I had to rescue that on my mind somewhere so, there I was going again.

Started practing my old skills with eyes closed and no worries of perfection in my mind, whatever shape would form I would accept and work with it in my projects.

First, my fingers formed a rough ball from a piece of conditioned clay in an easy size to play with, like 1/2” or so. Between the palm of my hands, without exerting too much pressure, I laid the ball and kept on circumvolving carefully and feeling the clay massage on my palms forming the shape and pressing according the softness and the size of it.

I could, that day, make a better round bead but not as perfect as I learned how to respect myself and my limits, the fact i dont have much coordination on my hands to draw a perfect line or to shape a perfect round doesnt mean I cant do it, it just means I need more practice and being focused works best for me.

Later, something I recalled my teacher showed me and that helped a lot too was to know that we must not only move the top hand to make the circular motion to form the bead, we must move both hands to make the process easier….

Living and learning ….. and I dont wanna stop doing both. (^_^)

When I was about to rolling the clay with my top hand, I remember something

The new Polymer Clay, released months ago in German, now here, is called Pardo and it’s an earth friendly clay that comes in balls packed in 2.7oz small jars in a range of 68 vibrant colors with even more mica in the metallics than the normal clays.

Pardo is also said to be durable, they say you can run it in a number 9 on your pasta machine and still will come out strong enough to tie a bow. Also minimum or no conditioning needed, soft enough but still holds the design of a cane pretty well and you will be able to do the normal sanding and buffing to a high shine.

More information or for purchases go to PolyclayPlay

I simply loooooooooooove stripes, and I looooooooooove polymer clay even mooooooore, I’m silly I know, haven’t grown up yet even after 35 years
The fact is Im putting together those 2 passions and trying to build up a nice set of everything I can think of, dreams apart lol ….

This one here is one of the many I already have, I made a lot of stacks with a lot of different patterns and I’m trying to put them in a nice way graphically speaking to work with one of my best habilities, graphic designing

This girl above has been set in a triangular polymer clay tile and covered with a sheet of narrow bands of clay color to assemble a classy, elegant, but still fun and sensitive femme. The final touch comes in form of a black silicon necklace or leather according to each one’s taste closed with sterling silver clasps.

Anyways, if someone come around here and wants to give me a hand with new and unusual ideas I would sincerely appreciate cos I am a team person and working in team is amazing too bad working in a studio with clay or computer leave me most of my time alone but I enjoy the moment…..

I will bring up more of them in a while Appreciate very much thy visit, see ya…

A sequence of the best definitions I could find for it is listed below, but antecipating it I leave my own simple and humble definition of Polymer Clay: -The most versatile of all the mediums I’ve ever touched or put my eyes on.

Now, by the Gods and with all my respect:

A polymer clay is a soft modeling clay that can be baked to a ceramic-like hardness at a much lower temperature than terra-cotta or water clay. The clay consists of a suspension of microscopic beads of polyvinyl chloride in a petroleum-based fluid. …
mannartgallery

a synthetic material consisting of tiny polyvinyl chloride particles suspended in plasticizers and mixed with various pigments. It is soft and pliable when raw, and becomes hard when cured. Items sculpted out of polymer clay are waterproof and fade-resistant.
eugenas creations

Polymer clay is a manmade material that remains pliable for long periods, but bakes or “cures” to hardness at fairly low temperatures. …
suncoutrygems

Polymer clay is a sculptable material based on the polymer polyvinyl chloride (PVC). It usually contains no clay minerals, and is only called …
wikipedia

A modern modeling compound composed primarily of PVC resin, plasticiser, and pigments as well as other fillers including mica
Polyclay

Polymer clay is, as the name implies, a pliable, blendable polymer compound for artists and crafters. It’s not a true clay – clay is fine particles of silicate suspended in water, whereas polymer clay is fine particles of polyvinyl chloride (PVC) suspended in plasticizer – but it can be used much like clay.jaedworks

Now that you have enough of definitions, why don’t you go get yourself some colorful blocks of clay to start working with and draw your own conclusions, you will be amazed how none of the best definitions arent still enough to describe Polymer Clay.