My Work Will Be Published in a Book!

I do not want to reveal all the details yet, but have to share my excitement. Pictures of two of my faux cloisonne necklaces were accepted for a publication in a book about polymer clay. The book is scheduled for release in Fall, 2008.

Making a Business Card Holder (Continued)

The business card holder is almost finished. I put all pictures together in a slide show below. The sculpting part is complited. Now I will have to do some boring technical stuff (like baking, pouring in the resin, and applying the glaze). I think I shall have the final picture in a few days.

Making a Business Card Holder

I decided that cards as special as my new ones cannot be simply scattered over the table. They need a nice business card holder, and I am going to make it myself!

After some consideration, I decided to make a special plate for my cards. The plate will combine my two main styles, faux cloisonne and sculpted flowers. I want to have the smooth cloisonne part in the middle, and the leaves and flowers (in all colors of the rainbow!) to go around it.

Edited: See the slide show in this post:
Making a Business Card Holder (Continued)

Eugena, 01/31/08

New Business Cards

My new business cards arrived today.

This time I made them two-sided to show my two main styles - faux cloisonne and hand-sculpted flowers. I also used the back side to add some information about my polymer clay tutorials and classes. I need these cards for Synergy, a three-day polymer clay conference that will take place in Baltimore this February. I am hoping to learn a lot at the conference and to make new contacts. I will have a table at the teacher fair, and the new cards will be a part of my display.

For more information about Synergy, please check web site of the National Polymer Clay Guild:

www.npcg.org

Custom Order - Hand-Sculpted Polymer Clay Beads with Blue Irises

I made these beads over weekend and shipped them out today. The bases of these beads are 1" in diameter and 1/4" thick. I really like how the irises turned out - they have lots of color with smooth transition from lilac to sky-blue and to dark blue with some purple hues. Just beautiful, if I may say so myself. My customer is going to make hair sticks adorned with these beads. Great idea, isn't it? Beads like that would also make interesting earrings or focal beads for a necklace.

The Oven Is Working

Following my baking fiasco, today I was extra careful with the oven in its new location. I confirmed the oven temperature with a separate thermometer and checked on my beads every few minutes. The oven is working! Here is the result of my last experiment. Not only these sculpted orchids are white (which is always a challenge to bake without darkening), but they also have tiny delicate parts that are difficult to bake properly as well. I am very happy to report that they baked beautifully and have the purest white color after a full-time baking session.

New Idea!

Funny how an artist's mind works... This morning I woke up, remembered yesterday's burned pendants and decided to see if at least the wire work could be saved. So when my kids got up, they found me digging through the trash. This is not the point, though. The point is that when I removed the wire from my pendants and saw the imprints it left on their surfaces, I immediately thought of filling those imprints with some contrasting clay (not on these pendants, however; I will have to re-create those imprints, with adjusted baking temperature). Now, this is an interesting idea! I am not sure how new it is – I have definitely seen back-filled designs, and may be even some created with wire, not sure. But not in combination with the resin! I cannot wait to try this idea and see how it will turn out. Too bad I did not have time for it today...

Burned!

Tonight I am crying.

I was in a hurry to bake some pendants, and I burned them all. Yeh, I know, it happens to the best of us and we all have to make a sacrifice to our polymer clay gods every so often, but I feel so bad! Why did not I burn some experimental pendants I have been playing with recently? No, it had to be the faux cloisonne ones, including the ones with faces, which take forever to make. There were hours of work in that tray!

I could not force myself to throw this stuff away, even though it is good for nothing now – my husband had to do it for me. He also helped me to set up the oven in our spare bathroom now. I had been baking outside (polymer clay smells a little during baking, especially Kato – the brand I prefer). I hope the oven did not work properly simply because it was too cold outside and not because something happened to it permanently.

Well, lesson learned: use the oven thermometer EVERY TIME.

Eugena's First Squidoo Lens

So, I wrote my first Lens on Squidoo.com – both for altruistic and materialistic purposes. I am glad I found another opportunity to spread the word about polymer clay, which is of course my great passion. I am also hoping that the people who came up with the Squidoo idea (including Seth Godin, whom I respect very much) are right, and this exercise will indeed bring all the good things they promise – such as increased traffic, more Internet exposure, incoming links to my web site, etc.

If you have any experience with this stuff, please come and take a look at my Lens. I will appreciate any constructive criticism.

http://www.squidoo.com/polymer-clay-creations

If you do not what the heck I am talking about – well, come anyway and figure out for yourself. This concept seems pretty interesting, so take a look.

New Tutorial!

I just finished my second tutorial - this time for a set of focal beads made of polymer clay and resin. The beads made this way look really great. They have shiny surfaces and cool three-dimensional designs embedded into the clear resin. The beads are also very lightweight, which is a welcome bonus for anything to be used for making earrings, right?

This tutorial is extremely detailed. It has 37 full-color pictures to illustrate all the basic and optional steps. I also included explanations of possible errors and how to avoid or correct them.

The tutorial is currently available both from my Etsy shop and my web site.

New Earrings

I just finished two pairs of faux cloisonné earrings.

The first pair, Elegia, has a beautiful gradation of color from lilac to purple. This is my first experiment with color gradation as a base for my polymer clay cloisonné focal beads, and I am very pleased with the results. Now I want to try other colors.

The second pair, Mria, is an experiment with different thickness (gauge) of wire. I wanted to try it for a long time. I think this experiment went right as well, and there will be more designs with these elements in the near future. By the way, “Mria” means “A Dream” in Ukranian.

Happy New Year!

I am starting the new year with an updated and cleaned-up website. Here is the page I am the most proud of:

http://www.eugenascreations.com/eugenasgallery.html

It is a sort of a portfolio – a page that shows my most favorite sold pieces. I enjoy designing each of my pendant, necklace, or a set of earrings as much as the process of actually making them. That is why each of my creations is unique and obviously different from the others. When a piece is sold, it is sold together with my thoughts and ideas that led to its creation. Parting with some of my things is particularly difficult, and these are the designs shown on that page.

Recently added items

Necklace Purple Moon, Earrings Purple Moon, Necklace Spread Your Wings, Earrings Spread Your Wings, Necklace Wild Fire, Necklace Peacock Shimmer, Necklace Peony, the Royal Flower, Necklace Midnight Dream, Earrings Midnight Dream, Vase Sculpted Oak, Pendant Forest Secret, Pendant Amber Orchid, Pendant Elven Queen, Green and Gold, Earrings Elven Queen, Green and Gold

Instant Gratification!

My faux cloisonné tutorial for polymer clay is now available for an immediate download from my site:

http://www.eugenascreations.com/t-faux-cloisonne-tutorial.html

Ruby Lane – My New Shop

I spent last week setting up a shop at Ruby Lane. It is an on-line gallery of virtual boutiques selling collectables, jewelry, and fine arts. The site exists since 1998 and has good reputation both with customers and shop owners. They have very strict regulations about which items can be sold through their shops and how they can or cannot be described. It took me extra time and effort to have all the pictures and descriptions done exactly to these specs, but I like the accuracy required by the site. I also like how fast and professionally the site organizers communicated with me so far and all the great tips and advice they shared as soon as I began working on my shop. I am looking forward to having my work displayed through Ruby Lane and hope to reach some new customers through this venue. Wish me luck!

Below is one of my necklaces listed on Ruby Lane and my new shop address:

http://www.RubyLane.com/shops/EugenasCreations

A “No” from Lark Books.

Lark Books returned the slides that I submitted earlier this year to be considered for their new book “500 Resin Objects”. Bummer! Even more – they enclosed a standard letter that does not explain the reason for rejection. I imagine they had lots of jewelry pieces submitted, and mine are not exactly “resin” – they are made using sort of resin in addition to polymer clay, wire, beads, and findings… Still, I really liked the three pieces I suggested for this publication. No wonder two of them were sold very quickly. The third one, a fairy pendant, is still available (hint, hint!).

O well, I will just have to send my pictures to another book, right?

Oak Vase - Finished

Here is the promised picture of my finished oak vase. The vase has been antiqued and re-baked again. I applied some patina to make all the little sculpted details to pop against the darker background. If you want to learn more about this finish (or about lots of other techniques available for polymer clay), please check out my Polymer Clay Glossary:
http://www.eugenascreations.com/polymer-clay-glossary.html



On a side note. I need to get my time organized! Right now, I have no idea how I was able to work full time (and even travel quite often on a job) and still have some jewelry made, photographed, and displayed on my web site. Not to mention all kinds of other projects and activities I had been doing... I thought as soon as I have all this time free from my scientific work, I would make an enormous progress in my sculpting. It has been three weeks since I returned from my trip, but I hardly see any progress at all. True, I cleaned a few places around the house that were allowed to get messy over the last year or two (I knew I would get to them when I quit my job, see), I finished a few sewing and knitting projects... I also made a bunch of new 3D-sculpted pendants with flowers, but it does not show on my web site, does it? I officially promise myself to make regular listing of the new items on my web site my #1 priority. No, actually, #2 priority - after listing both new and existing items in my Etsy shop. I am going to gradually re-stock my shop on Etsy.com over the next month, so please come and visit. I will have some bargains there!

Almost Done!

My sculpted vase is almost finished. The last step is to "antique" it. I shall have the final picture tomorrow.

Sculpted Vase, Oak Tree (continued)

Here is picture #2. The sculpting phase is almost finished. I say “almost” because I may still decide to add or move around a couple of details here and there.

When I started working on it, I thought of big roots to give the vase more support and balance, and the idea of an actual oak tree came later. I think I was influenced by my son re-citing Pushkin’s poem (we teach him Russian):

An oaktree greening by the ocean;
A golden chain about it wound:
Whereon a learned cat, in motion
Both day and night, will walk around;
On walking right, he sings a ditty;
On walking left, he tells a lay.

(English translation by Walter Arndt)

Now I am thinking about adding an actual “golden chain” to make this vase look like the oak tree from the poem… No, I am not going to make a cat to go with it. Viewers will have to use their imagination.

An Oak Tree Vase

A few of my friends asked me what I am working on right now. I decided it is easier to show my work than to describe it with words. Besides, I think it is interesting to see something like this in progress, right?

So, here is my new sculpted vase. Obviously, it is still unfinished. I had been working on it on and off for about a week. It turned out to be more complex and time-consuming than I expected. It is in a shape of an old oak tree, with huge roots and lots of acorns. The roots are climbing over rocks (pieces of Baltic amber) and the acorns are made of fresh-water pearls. I still need to shape and attach the rest of the leaves and acorns, than cure the clay, apply patina, and re-bake the vase. I will show you more pictures of this vase as it progresses.