My Gallery Page Is Done!

I finished updating the gallery page on my web site and very proud of it! This is something I wanted to do for a long time. I decided to keep my web site as an on-line portfolio and a tutorial shop. There is a link on my site to my shop on Etsy.com for people who want to buy my jewelry, but I do not want to maintain a separate on-line shop through my web site anymore. In line with this idea, I removed the page with my sold items from the web site and replaced it with a portfolio (or gallery) page. Some of the items on this page had been sold or given as gifts to my friends and relatives, and some are still available. I just wanted to show all my favorite creations in one place, no matter who owns them right now. In the process of up-dating this page, I placed all my pictures in a uniform format – they are all the same size now and have a watermark with my company name. I am very pleased with the result. To finish this round of my web site update, I am now going to fix all pictures, including those on my free tutorial pages and in the polymer clay gallery. This is a smaller task than updating the gallery and should take that much of my time.

New Steampunk Heart

I started listing my new heart pendants in my shop on Etsy.com. This is one of them. I am experimenting with the backgrounds, too.

This is the new pendant in my Heart of the Mechanical Doll series.

The base of the pendant is polymer clay. One side is made with crackled silver leaf, the other with watch parts, and then everything is covered with clear resin. The pendant has a smooth glass-like surface, which I really like.

Faux Cloisonne Tutorial – Tips from a Student

Christine from Chicago, IL, bought one of my tutorials, Faux Clisonne, just before Christmas. She liked is so much that we exchanged a few E-mails over the holidays. I am publishing this E-mail with her permission:

"...I'd like to share with you a couple of things I did which may or many not help others: As a sugar artist - I fall back to what I know or the discipline I came from which is architecture and then food styling/cake design.

Often I have to roll out fondant -the same consistency as clay in perfect 36" circles - about 1/8 to 1/4" thick as well as smaller decoration all needing to be the same thickness. Not much fits in a pasta maker. I use two long dowels - the thickness I need, place them on either side of my fondant, My rolling pin glides over the dowels - the entire piece is the same thickness. I have cut dowels in increments of 6" long for smaller decorations and use a miniature rolling pin or my roller.

Shading elaborate flowers requires a lot of color and have always used food grade "Luster Dust" from CK - Country Kitchens. Beside the "mica" look it also comes in rich matte colors which I blended with the mica. Not a speck came off. The reds are richer, the plums are deeper.
Another tip - I use a lot of cookie cutters to cut or trace multiple same size basic shapes. I've found wonderful tiny shaped flower cutters in Chinatown, i.e., a 1" detailed seahorse. They use them for dikon.

www.foosecookiecutters.com out of PA has a large selection of miniature cutters, acorns, tiny leaves, bees, dragonflies etc. All sold individually so you can purchase just the shapes you really want. Clay and fondant are similar, the more you work it the more tired it gets and needs to be chilled. Shapes pop out with minimal distress marks.

I would like to say the tutorial I used today was so well thought-out with excellent direction.

Christine"

Quick Preview

I am re-working the gallery pages on my web site and want to show how the new ones will look like. Here is the link to the first page:

http://www.eugenascreations.com/n-orchid-necklace-4.html

I am on page 8 right now and have about three times as many to go.

Wish me patience!

My First Etsy Treasury

Last night I was lucky to get a spot in Etsy Treasury list.


This is my first treasury ever! I called it "Chameleon" for polymer clay, that is indeed a chameleon material. All things I listed in this treasury are made of polymer clay. I tried to show different objects that can be made, and different techniques. I am always amazed by the possibilities of this material!


Here is the link to the treasury page:
http://www.etsy.com/treasury_list.php?room_id=31422

It will stay up for three days.

Faux Cloisonne Tutorial,

3-d Edition

This tutorial was the first one I wrote, and it remains one of my most popular tutorials. Originally, I developed this technique for a combination of polymer clay and glaze, and that is how the the first version of this tutorial was written.

Later the glaze was recalled for re-formulation, and I had to search for an alternative material – both for my own art and to include it in the tutorial. The second version of this tutorial had step-by-step instructions for the glaze and a separate section (no pictures) explaining how to substitute it with resin.

Now I am happy to announce that I rewrote my Faux Cloisonne Tutorial one more time, and now it includes both sets of instructions in a step-by-step format, with corresponding pictures.

So, if you ever bought this tutorial either through my web-site or through my Etsy store, and would like to have the new version of it now, just E-mail me, and I will send it to you for free. Please use the same E-mail address as in your PayPal account, OK?

Smeshariki

I am still in a holiday spirit and would like to share my recent discovery. Just before Christmas, my friend told me about a very popular series of Russian cartoons, and my kids and I have been watching them all holidays. These cartoons are very funny, yet philosophical. Here are two of my favorite ones:

Mountains and Candies


The Run of Bad Luck

Apparently, they have been around since 2003, and there are more than 150 episodes by now. Here is more about the series:

Merry Christmas
and
Happy New Year,
my friends!

Steampunk Butterfly Tutorial

My new tutorial is now available! Find it on my web site: http://www.eugenascreations.com/

What's Steampunk? In short, it is a fiction genre that celebrates steam power and machines. Think of Jules Verne and James Blaylock. This style is continued in visual arts and even music. For more information - Google.

In this tutorial, I explain how to use polymer clay, resin, pre-fabricated filigree, and (the most fun!) parts from an old mechanical watch to create a unique pendant. As always, this tutorial teaches a technique using a project as an example. This means that if you follow the tutorial step by step exactly as it is written, you will end up with a pendant very similar to the one shown here, but you will also master a new technique that can be applied to many more projects of you own. That is when the true creativity begins.

Steampunk Twist

I am having so much fun playing with the old watches! It 's like a treasure hunt – all these little parts somehow have been put together in some complicated and beautiful pattern, and discovering them is amazingly exciting. I re-arrange them to make pendants like the one pictured here. I've seen quite a few necklaces, earrings, and rings with the whole watch movements. My pendants are different, because they show off separate parts and those parts are covered with multiple layers of resin to make the whole pendant smooth like glass.

I have a couple more pendants in my Etsy shop, and I am working on a tutorial, which I am hoping to finish within a week or two.

Filigree, Polymer Clay, and Resin

I added a few new items to my Etsy shop today - five sets of earrings and a pendant, all from my new faux enamel line. I tend to separate faux enamel from faux cloisonne (although, technically speaking, cloisonne is one of the types of enamel). While items in my faux cloisonne line are all one-of-a-kind, with lots of hours required to create each design using pieces of wire, the faux enamel line is made using commercially-evailable brass or silver filigree. This line is more affordable since it is so much easier for me to make. I can also make multiple copies of the same design, if needed, and explore different color combinations within the same or similar design.

Recent Publications

Couple of my works have been recently published in beading/crafting magazines. I had these magazines around for a few weeks now and finally found some time to scan them and post pictures.

One picture shows my miniature hand-sculpted polymer clay orchid beads. I sent it to Polymer Cafe a a few months ago, right when I was working on my first tutorial in the miniature orchids series. I now have two of them available and about to finish the third one.

The other publication is a picture of my faux cloisonne set of beads. I wrote about these beads in my blog earlier this year.

There should be another publication, I think, in December issue of Polymer Cafe. For some reason, I cannot catch this magazine in stores (and they do not send a contributor's copy to people who's work is in the reader's gallery)...

Big Sculpted Orchids Tutorial

A new tutorial for sculpting polymer clay orchids is now available on my site. The tutorial shows how to make three different types of orchids and contains nearly fifty color full-size pictures.

Sculpting Orchids
Video on http://www.youtube.com/

A couple of weeks ago I had this wonderful (or so I thought!) idea. I decided to make a short video that would work both as a tutorial and an ad for my new line of orchids and then post it on youtube.com. I also wanted this tutorial to be quite original and artsy. I did not want to sit down in front of the camera, recite all the tools and materials, and then demonstrate every step with my comments and explanations. It was supposed to be different...

So, after 2.5 hours of videotaping and two weeks of clipping and editing, I am happy to report that the video is ready and it was uploaded to be seen by everybody interested in polymer clay, sculpting, and/or orchids (in any order).

It is still not ideal in my view, and I would really like to work on its sound track some more, but I simply cannot take it any more right now and need to step away from this project for a while. I may polish it some more later.

While I am waiting to hear people's comments, I shall say that I had lots of fun and have tons of ideas for the new films.

If you cannot see the embedded video, here is the link: Sculpting Polymer Clay Orchids

EnviroTex Lite, Two-Part Epoxy Resin

I was repeatedly asked by people who like my polymer clay tutorials whether they can buy any of the resin I recommend in some small containers. I understand that some people would like to do the project described in the tutorial only ones or twice. They do not intend using this technique often enough to justify the purchase of a quarter gallon of the resin.

To answer these inquiries, I decided to list a trial-size resin kit in my Etsy shop. To try things out, I have only one set in my shop for now, but I can always add more if there is enough interest. Here is the link: my Etsy store

Fire Mountain Gems Contest Results

I've got my necklace with sculpted orchids "Les Fleurs des Fer" back from Fire Mountain. It took the third place in the polymer clay category!

The necklace is in my Etsy shop now.

I realized recently that I am drawn to the Etsy shops that show their jewelry on models. I think it is a good idea, since it is so difficult sometimes to imagine how a necklace would look like on a person. So, here is the result of my experiments in this direction.

Catching Up

So, I've neglected to write in my blog for a long while, and now have too many news for one post. Blogger's wisdom tells me I shall spread my news over a few posts...

The last two weeks of summer I spent in Washington and Oregon. I have not been to these states before, although I've seen lots of pictures and wanted to go there for a long time.

I brought back tons of pictures myself, and eager to share them, but no picture can reflect what I felt standing behind a 170' waterfall in Oregon or wondering through the mist at Artist Point in Washington.



We drove from Seattle, WA to Portland, OR, then Corvallis, New Port, Florence, Eugene, Bent (all in Oregon), back to Portland, through Seattle, up north to Bellingham and Mt.Baker, and back to Seattle. Every day was absolutely different from the day before and from everything else we ever saw before.



In Portland, my 10-year old daughter was enchanted by some particularly friendly squirrels (never mind the hordes of them in our backyard in Maryland). The Portland squirrels were readily eating from her hands, and one even chewed on the edge of her pants.



In Yachats, OR, we dined in a local restaurant with an amazing coastline view, and the gulls were walking outside on the windowsills begging to share our lunch with them.



But my favorite images were the many waterfalls we saw during this trip. I do not want to use any cliches about rugged beauty and such, but they were widely beautiful indeed...



I guess this experience and these images shall influence me as an artist in some way. I cannot report any connections yet, but I am sure I will be able to draw them in time.

Meanwhile (a note to myself) I shall post more often. Check back in a day or two - I have more interesting pictures to share.

...See more pictures from the Washington and Oregon trip in my photo album.

New Tutorial!

I just finished writing this new tutorial, Easy Faux Enamel.

This one is really easy, honestly, it cannot get any easier than this. Designed for people who is looking for their first polymer clay or resin project, this tutorial has ten pages of extremely detailed step by step instructions and sixteen full-size photos.

Here is the link: http://www.eugenascreations.com/t-fimo-resin-tutorial.html

Custom Order

Sandy's Orchid Necklace

I am very pleased with this necklace. Sandy saw a picture of two miniature orchids in one of my previous posts. The orchids were white with gold highlights. She asked me to make her a necklace with a similar orchid, and this is what I came up with.

The orchid was hand-sculpted from a mixture of white and translucent Kato polymer clay. This brand works great for the applications like this with lots of small details and protruding parts. The golden highlights were made with Perfect Pearls mica powder.

I suspended the orchid from a chain of mother-of-pearl chips and seed beads. Sandy had a choice between two gold-plated toggle clasps, and she picked the one with antique finish and granulation.

Thank you, Sandy. Enjoy your necklace.

New Tutorial, Sculpted Orchids, Polymer Clay

The second tutorial in series "Miniature Sculpted Orchids" is available now. Here is the link:

www.eugenascreations.com/t-polymer-clay-orchids-tutorial-2.html