New Studio Initiation!

The new studio is far from "done," but then again neither is the den, the living room, or our bedroom. At work I'm assigned to an intensive project and I ended up working extra hours this week. Last night (Friday) I was so beat and as usual the house was full of boyz. Nikia couldn't come out and play and my fingers were itching to get into something, anything creative that did not involve going outside in the heat.

So I said to myself -- you're going to make something. Before the sun goes down. And you don't have time to be perfect today. So the rule was -- it would be Crystal Clay and I would use whatever materials are within arm's reach. Oh yeah, challenge on, self!


Fortunately I had been to Thomason Stone recently so I had micro pearls handy, faceted banded agate eye beads (what else does a girl need???) and some really cool mini Indian head penny charms I bought online. I grabbed some silver lacy edge settings and originally planned to do six of these in one setting (overly ambitious, my creative self is). Naturally, I grabbed some rhinestones too. Gotta have a little bling.

I know I did that tutorial on measuring clay with your eyeballs, but since I have this nice scale I used it. It's important to get the right proportions with epoxy resin clay or it will stay soft and sticky, just like liquid 2-part epoxy.

The scale made it easy to mix just the right amounts for two settings.

After smoothing the clay into the settings, I started pushing things into the resin clay. My usual rule of thumb is to push objects halfway in. These wax sticks help pick up larger objects. For the teeny things, I use tweezers or the tiny waxed toothpicks that come with the Crystal Clay.

After the clay started to set up but before it was completely cured, I pried open a lacy loop at the top and bottom of each setting, to use later as a hanging loop. I'll straighten these later, I just wanted to release them from the clay for now. Later, I'll also polish the clay and wax off the tops of the beads.

An hour later, I had these two pendants curing (or cabochons for bead embroidery) and it only took that long for my jewelry table to look like this:

I guess my new studio has been christened! And look, the sun wasn't even down yet. Do I like the pendants? Not that much. But it's ok, I made something. Whew.

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