Linnea 'Ea' quilts...

Too bad that I was in Italy the second-to-last day the course was held. Actually, I missed the last day too, but that was because I had the flu... but the teacher suddenly had to call in for some sick-leave, so everyone else missed it too. Which was so not what I wanted. I wanted to make more stuff, and see how the salt-dough pieces I had made turned out. Anyway, today and next Monday one of the other teachers were there to supervise, so I went and got my salt-dough stuff and dropped off all the jewelry that I wanted to show in the course's own arts & crafts exhibition. They're in the photo here under; some buttons (both in Millefiori-technique and in plain modeling clay), two necklaces (one without a lock because I've run out of nice ones...) and two pair of earrings. Not much, but the rest of my pieces were... not up to such a standard that I would like to show off with them. In short - they're ugly . It's my technical term for things-I-did-some...

Okay, first things first with this technique. You'll need a fridge, something to form it with (clay tools or thing you happen to have in your kitchen, like cocktail sticks and your rollling pin), and an oven. The mass needs to be heated up in order to become hard. You can use many types of acrylic masses for this technique, since there seems to be quite a lot of brands around. The ones that seem easiest to find around stores here in Turku are Cernit and Fimo. However, there seems to be a difference between brands, regarding the plasticity of the mass itself. Fimo, at least, is much more temperature stable than Cernit. This means that the mass doesn't "smear" as much and doesn't get too sticky and get stuck to things (read: you, the tools, the sheet of baking paper you use to protect your table...). It also means that you can use it for longer without it becoming too "droopey" and ruin the thing you're creating. It helps if you can put it in the f...

I'm sorry if people are, by now at least, feeling as if I'm spamming their rss-feeds. Feel free to jump ahead, if you're so inclined. This Saturday was spent with Ida and Mimi, first having a super lovely Austrian-inspired dinner of bratwurst/potato salad and wine, then doing crafts until 3:30 in the morning. Tiring, yes, but oh so satisfying. There's much you can do around a dinner table. While Ida was kept busy writing her BA-thesis and cursing her computer * , Mimi was sewing on her Star Wars hat and I was just fooling around with making jewelry. I told them about the button challenge , and later on Ida and I came up with some really cool designs. Here's some pictures of what we made during the evening. * I later helped her, by pointing out that she could increase the virtual memory amount for Windows. Suddenly, the computer started working like a charm :) I was so glad to be able to help! Green wooden necklace with Chinese button knots. Charm bracel...

These are my contributions to "the button challenge"or MaMa haaste nro 1 : Red button necklace. Red button ring. The necklace was a trial and error kind of thing; it started out as one thing, but ended up as a blend of ' satin cord meets jump rings '. The button knot on the cord is one I've used before on jewelry, and I learned it from the book by Suzen Millodot. You can see similar stuff on her webpage :) The ring was inspired by two things: ArtsyCrafty babe's flower button brooch , and Jokkemaa's rainbow ring . Although I only noticed first now, while writing this down, that I think Jokkemaa might have used a very similar macramé-style of making the 'ring around the finger part' of her ring.