Polymer Clay Swirl Beads

 Creating Polymer Clay Swirl Beads

I have a wedding to attend tomorrow and I have been playing with the idea of creating a necklace/pendant to go with a new dress I am keen wear.  Below is a close up shot showing the print and colour my dress.

Print of my party dress with colours on red/orange, black, mauve and hints of white and green

The print of the dress is very bold as you an see and is almost animal like, but rather than replicate the print and colours I have decided to take some of the elements of colour in the dress and create some polymer clay swirl beads.

Polymer clay with gold metal leafing applied

To create my beads I have decided to use alcohol inks for my colour which will be applied over gold metal leafing on two sheets of black clay.



 

Polymer clay applied with metal leafing and alcohol inks

 
Here I have applied alcohol inks over each sheet of clay.

My first sheet has been applied with alcohol inks in  Wild Plum with hints of Stream and Pearl.

The second sheet has been applied with Stream and Buttercream.

My polymer clay sheets are covered with a thin translucent clay sheet

The clay sheets are allowed to dry and once ready I apply a thin sheet of translucent clay over each cover.  I do this as I have often found that it protects the colour and leafing from rubbing off when applied to beads.

Polymer clay lentil swirl beads prior to cooking

Here are my swirled lentil beads prior to cooking, these are two test beads to test two types of application styles for swirling but also to test the colour once cooked. 

Polymer clay lentil swirl beads after cooking

Now the beads have been cooked, some of the translucent still remains and unfortunately the Wild Plum colour has become more pink after cooking,







So after some more experimentation with swirling here are my final swirled lentil beads... as you can see I have included a red and gold bullseye cane into the swirl to give the bead more depth in colour as the wild plum colour was not strong enough. 

My Polymer clay lentil swirled beads, my final design

They now need a good sanding, buffing and polishing before I decide on my final necklace design.

Updated sometime later that evening ....

Here it is my finished necklace and I'm delighted with how its turned out, initially I was worried that the beads would look slightly dull but after a good polishing, buffing and varnishing they are perfect and the Fire Opal Swarovski Crystals I have teamed them with give the necklace that extra sparkle, I can't wait to wear the necklace tomorow.

Polymer Clay Swirled Lentil Necklace

Polymer Clay Swirled Lentil Necklace combined with fire opal swarovski crystals

Polymer Clay Swirled Lentil Bead (largest bead)

Polymer Clay Swirled Lentil Necklace wire wrapped in gold with swarovski crystals

Have you visited our website lately?

Turquoise Millefiori Oblate Necklace

 The last couple of weeks have been a busy mixture of making, claying and updating my current website, and I am pleased to say it is finally complete.

Prior to my website update, www.LottieOfLondon.co.uk was designed as a showcase to display my past and present jewellery work/commissions.

Monochrome Millefiori Floral Brooch

But I am happy to say that I have now updated the website and our Bespoke Handcrafted Jewellery is now available for purchase direct from the website Lottie Of London

So please pay my website a visit, share like and tweet away to your firends and let me know what you think.

www.LottieOfLondon.co.uk

A Busy Week - Queens Diamond Jubilee

I must apologise for my lack of blogging absence this week, I have had a very busy crafting week with the run up to the Queens Diamond Jubilee.  I have been busy completing orders for my Limited Edition Jubilee Pieces, along with restocking my shelf at Things British.  So for now have a fantastic time celebrating the Queens Jubilee whatever it maybe that you have planned .

Jubilee Red White Blue Elasticated Bracelet

Jubilee Red White Blue Brooch

Jubilee Union Jack Charm Bracelet

Jubilee Fever - Facebook Cover Photos

Facebook Cover Photos

Jubilee fever is kicking in, so I have designed a new Facebook Cover Photo to celebrate, What do you think?

If you'd like to know more about creating yourself a cover photo for Facebook here is a fantastic link that I used to help me along the way.

Getting Creative With Your Facebook Fanpage by Handmadeology

Its a fantastic post, a great blog to boot and provides all the sizes and dimensions you need to guide you along the way.

Lumiere Paint on Polymer Clay

Jacquards Lumière Paint 

I finally got round to ordering myself some Lumière paints for my polymer clay, I've had my eyes on these gorgeous colours for quite sometime and once they arrived it dawned on me that I don't actually know what Lumière paints really are.

Jacquards Lumiere Paint - Exciter Pack

 What are Lumière Paints

Well turns out they are acrylic paints, Lumière paints are a range of paints that are metallic or pearlescent in colour.  They appear quite thick and are said to 'brush on like butter' and have been designed not to spread unlike alcohol inks.  They are also usable on many types of surfaces such as silk , fabric, paper, leather, wood and of course polymer clay.

Testing Lumiere Paint on Polymer Clay

I am using the Jacquard Lumière Exciter Pack and tested each colour on cooked and uncooked strips of clay to test application and check for colour difference, I also tested on both black and white clay to see the difference in colour.  The drying time for these samples was quite quick, most where touch dry within 30 mins, I expect this will vary depending on the thickness of application.

Uncooked Clay Application

Uncooked Clay Application - testing Lumière paints

Cooked Clay Application

Cooked Clay Application - testing Lumière paints

As you can see there is no difference in the colour when applied to either cooked or uncooked clay, some of the paints really stand out on the black clay.

Lumière Paint & Polymer Clay Project

This project comes from the Polymer Pizzaz - 27 Great Polymer Clay Projects by Bead & Button called Painterly Polymer by Dotty McMillan.

Lumière paint application on 3 clay sheets

I decided to stick to similar colours as those used on the project photos, and took the opportunity to test the application using three different methods   

1. Far left was created using the coarse side of a sponge.
2. Middle application was created using my finger 
3. Far right application was created using a sponge

For my project sheet I settled with the sponge application below

Lumiere paint on polymer clay sheet

 After allowing to dry I stamped onto the clay sheet using a black ink and a small decorative stamp, which was hard to distinguish on the sheet due to my initial colour choice of paints.

Lumiere paint on polymer clay beads

 Again after allowing to dry, it was time to make the beads for the project and this is unfortunately where I ran into problems.  Each bead I made would crack, despite my reducing the centre to a smaller side when it came to sealing the edge together it would still crack, I do think this is because the paint had somewhat dried out the clay making it less flexible a way around this maybe to make the beads first, even cooked before the paint application is applied.

And so I scrapped them so that I could use the remain sheet to have an experiment and play around.  Heres what I made

Lumière paint on polymer clay pendants

 I created some pendants with the remaining sheets and painted some Lumière paint onto the clay directly, much like its description says as the paint is quite thick and does not spread i was able to create this dotted pattern along the length of the last pendant.

Painting on polymer clay with Lumiere paint

Painting on polymer clay with Lumiere paint

You can see above I had a little play with some other colours and wanted to try out some simple painting with the Lumière paints

 

My Conclusion

Much like my first experience with alcohol inks, I've not been greatly overawed with the results from this project, I do think this could be due to my colour choice, it is too muted for my taste and I was disappointed that the beads cracked when I tried to put them together however little test with painting  holds promise and a few other tests I'd like to do are to see if a crackling effect can be achieved and also to try with metal leafing and foils.

 

Can You Help

I spent a lot of last night googling many pages trying to find projects or even links to others experiences using Lumière paints, but my hunt was somewhat fruitless.  If you have covered or now of someone that has wrote about Lumière paint and polymer clay but not excluding the paints other applications such as silk, wood and paper, I would be most grateful if you could share you links.  I think it would be great to see what else this paint is truly capable of, Thanks.