Grey Sweater, Blue Bunnies

It's done. I'm in love. Here it is.

Kate was right. The hair conditioner worked its magic, and the sock yarn that was a little bit scratchy is now lovely and soft. Baby soft.

And thanks to Monique (my polymer clay guru), there are now buttons. Monique is very patient and generously answers my newbie questions. She says next time, I can buff my buttons with an electric toothbrush. I can hardly wait to try that!

Size 6 to 9 months. Buttons are 5/8 inch in diameter.

Progress

The Little Birdies sweater is coming along. Here it is with one of the buttons.

 I LIKE it!!

And here you can see it still needs a couple of sleeves, but they'll have to wait a while 'cuz I'm workin' on something special for a little Saudi princess.

Need buttons

I inherited a pretty big stash of buttons. Sometimes, when I go looking, I'm delighted to find just the right button in there. This is most likely to happen if I only need a single. For the baby sweater, I need 4. Hmmmm. There are 4 buttons that are pretty much the right colour, but they're too big. Do I have to make the trip to town for 4 silly buttons, I wonder. Well, not when I have a whole boatload of polymer clay on hand! I spent a couple of hours mixing just the right colours (because you can do that with polymer clay). Then I made some bull's eye canes.

I left them to firm up overnight, and then put them in the fridge so they'd slice easily.

I sliced the canes into 3/8 in. slices, and pressed them lightly between 2 pieces of parchment paper with slight pressure from my thumb. This rounded the edges off nicely and made them very button-y.

You can see the 2 bamboo skewers (taped together) that I used to start the holes. They're easy to position when they're taped together. I ended up with 8 buttons that would be perfect for my sweater, and 3 that are slightly larger. Those will be for a future project, since I still have lots of the same willow green yarn.

I even got daring and rolled out a square-ish cane. That one produced some really interesting buttons that are about 5/8 inches in diameter.

I doubt I'll ever buy buttons again. Why would you when you have custom-made buttons at the end of the hall?

Change is good

We've been collecting polymer clay supplies and tools for a while now. It's hard to just get started. Finally, we realized we needed a bit more guidance. Since we don't have any teachers or classes nearby, we bought a tutorial.... Rustic Beads and Components from Polymer Clay by Ginger Davis Allman from The Blue Bottle Tree. The tutorial is great. Very well written. However, we didn't have one of the tools she suggested, so we substituted another technique. This means the beads don't look much like the ones in the tutorial. However, since we were looking for a jumping off point, we got exactly what we were hoping for. A good teacher ought to show you how to do something, but more importantly, s/he ought to give you the creative boost to go in other directions. Ginger Davis Allman succeeds admirably at doing both.

Our beads are big..... an inch and a quarter long, or so. Two of them have embedded metal loops. The round one has a hole through the centre for stringing. We love that they changed from step to step, and we had no idea where they'd end up. We think they're like digital photos. We need to make a whole bunch of them and keep only the very best. But then again, isn't all art like that? You just keep playing, and you only show your very best efforts.

Polymer clay play

There are about a million ways to go with polymer clay. 

That's one of the great things about it, and also, 

one of the things that makes it hard to just get started. 

There are SO many options. 

We're pretty stuck on how easy it is to cover metal jar lids. 

We needed a pretty jar to store our tea bags in. 

We love the texture, and the totally spontaneous way the colours show up.

Up-cycling

We often talk about Hoarders, the TV show, and our fears of seeing ourselves there. It's an irrational fear because Mr. Coco would never let that happen. No, we mean he'd never let them through the door. :)  (Joke!) We DO tend to be a bit pack ratty. As evidence, we offer this, from the depths of our studio:

It's a perfectly good container made of glass (not plastic) with a metal lid (not plastic) that once held lip balm. It's tiny and doesn't take up much room so we figure why not put it aside to see what good might come of it? Right? You do it, too, don't you?

Well, here's what came of it once we applied a little polymer clay:

And just for the record, it has a new purpose in life. Can you guess what that might be? (Apart from being pretty, that is.)

We will never lose our thimble again.

Pack rats everywhere, unite!!

Red Hot Chili Pepper Bracelet

We've been playing with polymer clay. It's amazing. So cheap and you can do so much with it, so easily. We made these round, disk beads. We had thought there'd be a steeper learning curve but we're really happy with these beads.

They're about 1/2 inch in diameter. We didn't bother to sand them. We just jumped right to dipping them in Future Floor Wax. We had our doubts because, really, it just seemed too easy. But, look! They're pretty right?

So, we made them right up into a bracelet. Quick! Before they could get away.

And look at this lovely bead we had in our stash. Just one lonely bead and perfect for this project.

This bracelet measures 8 inches long.

Deeper and deeper

Ever notice how you get into a new hobby and suddenly all kinds of doors open to you? You know. You take up knitting and find yourself wondering about spinning your own wool, for instance. We think when you consider adopting a sheep you might be in too deep but otherwise, exploration is good for the soul.

We've been playing with beads for a while now and recently began to consider the possibility of making our own. Why not? It's the logical next step, right? We tried paper beads but that just didn't grab us and then we found polymer clay. Oh, boy. Inexpensive and readily available. You can cure it (bake it) in a regular oven or even (imagine how much this excites us!) in a solar oven!!!

So, without further adooooooooo...... Here are our first polymer clay beads. They are dainty at 1/2-inch long which is the perfect size and shape for a beaded macramé bracelet. We used black, cherry red, silver and white and the beads that we got are more of a mahogany colour. It seems a big part of the process is: Surprise!! This is what you get.

We also tried a disk shape with the clay and colours more mooshed together. This one is also 1/2-inch in diameter. The pink is a little more pronounced. Pretty, right?

For the record, we don't see sheep in our future 

but we do see more bead-making.