Trades « Polymer Clay Etc.

27 videos, step by step, beginner cane workshop

What people are saying about this tutorial. jennifer rose Just finished this first workshop on how to make canes, and I must say I learned so much. This is exactly what I have been looking for, someone who could explain cane making in a step by step that process that I could replicate. I watched the videos, went into my studio and began to create all of the canes Alice showed. I finally have results I can be proud of, and I say thank you so much for doing this workshop. My only question now is when do we get more workshops. If you are only going to take one online class let it be this workshop. Thank you Alice for your hard work, and your dedication to helping others learn the joys of polymer clay.

Helen Breil Texture and Stroppel Cane

A friend is having a birthday this month and several of us met for dinner and had a great time. This friend has so many of my “girls” in every form I’ve ever made so I thought it was time I’d make her something totally different.

I made this neckpiece for my birthday friend using one of Helen Breil’s texture sheets and a piece of Stroppel cane. The funny thing is the colors blended so well in person, you couldn’t see the blue tones in the cane as much as you can in this photo. I still like it, it’s interesting and different and hope my friend likes it too.

I’ve had the texture sheet for several months, I bought it at a retreat where I met Helen for the first time. What a talented lady, just take a look at her fabulous work.

I was lucky to be in a slide swap with Helen and this is the very cool slide I received.

Helen Breil and Alice Stroppel Swap

The back side of my piece is fun too because of the great texture from the sheets.

Trade With Julie Eakes

I had to share this trade with you. Julie and I met for the first time a couple of months ago and we decided to trade our creations.

This pendant is an amazing piece of art. Not only did Julie make this incredible face cane she constructed the kaleidoscope canes she’s used for the frame. I’m thrilled to have this wonderful piece but also to have gotten to know Julie and see her work on this piece. You can see more of Julie’s work on her blog Julie Eakes. Her most recent cane is a beautiful portrait of her grandmother.

This is my part of the trade, the picture shows all side of the bracelet. Once again I think I got the better part of the trade. Thank you Julie

Stroppel Sweater Girls

When Randee Ketzel sent me two of her Stroppel cane bracelets, well I was blown away by her thoughtfulness. I will always treasure them. I wanted to send Randee something in return so I decided to make a girlfriend wearing something well…..Stroppel! If you want to see her in her Stroppel cane sweater, she’s on Randee’s flickr site.

I sat down to make more girlfriend slides and thought why not do a series of Stroppel Sweater Girls. So now I’m just laughing and making sweater girls. I figured you can wear one or two or even three. You could collect as many as your neck will hold. lol… Okay now I’m just being silly.

Both of these girls are for sale in my Etsy shop and there will be more to come. Thanks Randee for the inspiration.

Artybecca’s Beads for a Stroppel Cane Pendant

Artybecca

Aren’t these beads just wonderful? Rebecca Watkins aka Artybecca and I made a trade and I think I made off with the best part of the bargain. Rebecca hand carves each one of these beautiful beads and now I have these to look at, wear and enjoy. Thanks you so much Rebecca, I’m so happy we got to meet each other in person, I had such a great time playing with clay!

This is my half of the trade, the first piece I made entirely from a Stroppel cane.

Thank You, Pen and Ink, Trades, and my Mount Dora Class

This might be a long post…just so you know….

Thank you, thank you, and thank you some more. All of you who left a comment, joined my newsletter list, emailed me, ordered one of my videos from my Etsy shop, left a comment on Polymer Clay Daily or just stopped by to take a look at the Stroppel Cane.

I was truly blown away by the amount of traffic that my funny little blog generated in just a few days. I owe a great deal to Cynthia Tinapple at Polymer Clay Daily and to my blog and newsletter followers.

I knew I liked my new cane, but really didn’t realize just how much everyone else was going to like it. I’m thrilled to be able to share it with everyone. When I first started with polymer clay, I learned so much from the generous people on the internet and it was all free. Now, just to keep up with all the fees out there one has to make a little money here and there, but I will always give away as much as I can, kind of a play it forward kind of thing. So feel free to share the Stroppel cane with anyone you think would enjoy it.

Again, it makes a big difference to know that there are people out there reading, watching and interested. The comments that you all left really meant so much to me. Thank you all.

Now on to other things. This picture is of what I did yesterday between answering all the wonderful correspondence. These are bracelet blanks covered with clay and baked. I call them canvases because they are ready for the next step of ink, markers and TLC.

I have several reasons why I needed to make these blanks.

1. I need more stock in my Etsy shop
2. I made a trade agreement with two very famous delightful pc artists
3. I’m teaching a class on the 15th and need samples to show

I cover the blanks with a layer of black, then sections of white and in between I place black and white canes.

Laurie Prophater

The first trade I made was with Laurie Prophater and I already have the bracelet and have been enjoying it so much. It is simply gorgeous, I am thrilled. Laurie’s blog is that fabulous one we all love to visit Ornamental Elements. Here’s more good news, you can own one of these fabuloso Faux Ivory Bangle Bracelet bracelets for yourself Just visit Laurie’s Etsy site.

Laurie Prophater

Each side is different and so lovely, plus she makes the accent pieces herself. I need to hurry up and get her piece finished. I have a couple started and will probably give her a choice like she so graciously did for me.

I’ll let you in on a big secret. Laurie’s bracelet has given me so many ideas to try using my style and she has given me the okay to use the basic idea. But if you know me, you know my crazy mind will take me places no one else has been before. lol. I already have one (actually two) made, but am not ready to show you yet, when have I had time anyway? The past few days have been very busy and so much fun. And I’m all about the fun!

The bracelet on top is more colorful and I’ve added some canes for hats and accent pieces. The bracelets on the bottom uses more of the white background giving the faces a kind of gothic feel I think. Next group, I’ll do just black and white and red lips, maybe some color in the eyes, like some of the first bracelets I did when I developed my pen and ink technique.

Pen and Ink Class

I’m teaching a class on the 15th of the month in Mount Dora, FL at the Mount Dora Center for the Arts. Come on and join me, you’ll love this quaint southern town that loves the arts.

Here’s a link to the information and the phone number for registration is 352-383-0880.

Back to drawing faces. Thanks again for everything, you guys are the best.

Polymer Clay Cane Mapped Fish Slides

For the last few weeks I’ve been working on these fish slides for an exchange I will be taking part in. They really have been so much fun and each one is different than the next so I can’t say I was the least bit bored by the number. I still have more to go and hope to finish up in the next few days.

Even though you can’t see it, there is metal leaf on each one of these fish. I’ve recently begun to use the metal leaf with my cane mapping and have some other ideas that don’t involve fish, so stay tuned. By the way you can learn how to map out the use of your old canes by signing up for my newsletter if you haven’t already. Just fill in your name and email address in the spaces on the upper right hand side of this page. I send out a newsletter about once a month and a class up date from time to time.

Okay so I’m not telling the exact true about being bored with these fish. I can say that bored is probably not the right word anyway, I think I get tired of doing the same type of item for a long period of time and have to break it up with other projects or activities along the way. But I’m always excited to come back and make more because they make me smile. Okay so they don’t make me laugh out loud like my girls do, but they do make me smile a lot.

I usually sit down and make five in a row, get them baked and the holes drilled, then I do something else for awhile. Today I am playing around with how to package them. Most of the time in an exchange just including your card is enough, but I wanted to do mine a bit different this time.

I’ve used cards like this before to display my pins and I think I just might use them this time as well. These are smaller than the ones I’ve used before and I like them better for these smaller pieces.

I have soft wire that I’ve run through the slide and out the back of the card, twisting it together to hold the fish in place. I use a very small hole punch to make the holes so everything looks nice and neat.

The next thing I’m going to play with today is the design of the card. I think it might need some updating, I just signed my name on the top but I don’t think I like that. You never know until you try…words I live by.

Sarajane Helm’s 2011 Mini Mask Swap

WARNING!

If you were in Sarajane Helm’s 2011 mini mask swap and

HAVEN”T RECEIVED YOUR MASKS YET
STOP NOW

or your surprise might be ruined.

Whew, glad I remembered that some people might not have their masks back yet. But not everyone will be receiving these masks. There are 1,000 masks involved in this adventure and there are only 30 shown here.

I had the most fun yesterday opening my package of mini masks from Sarajane Helm and her husband Bryon. As I’m sure you know, Sarajane is the host of the annual mini mask swap and the author of A Collection Of Polymer Clay Masks.

Thanks to my friend Leila Bidler I found out about the swap in enough time to join in. And I will be forever in your debt Leila, because these masks are all incredible. I have to step up my game to be in it next year I can see that.

I was in three groups of 10 and that meant I sent in 30 masks and got back 30 masks including one of each of the ones I made. Here’s group one.

Sarajane Helm's 2011 Mini Mask exchange 1

Group1

Are these not the best??? I just enjoy each one so much, looking at how they made them and believe me they are all different.

Of course you could pick my brightly colored crazy design out of the line up I bet. Nothing earthy and tribal for me. Okay so I tried to be tribal with this next one, but couldn’t stay away from the color.

Group 2

Again……a wonderful group of fabulous faces. If anyone knows who the gold masks with all the cool faces belongs to, I’d love to know.

In this next group I combined sculpting, mold making, pen and ink and markers. Lots of fun.

Group 3

Aren’t these all so interesting? I wish you could see each one up close, the details are what grabs you. I love the time and effort that went into every one, and now I get to look at them all the time.

Here’s a picture of all of my masked man, just because they are all different even though they are all made from the same mold.

Sarajane Helms 2011 mask swap - Alice Stroppel

My guys

Now I know exactly why Sarajane wants to be the hostess for this swap. there are 1000 masks exchanged and she gets to keep one of each. If the ones I’ve received are this fantastic, I know the rest of them are just as wonderful.

Thank you, thank you, to all who took the time to be in this swap and for those of you whom I managed to be lucky enough to get your mask, I’ll be emailing you personally.

A special thank you to Sarajane for hosting such a fun exchange and Bryon for helping her.

Inchies International Swap – Polymer Clay Italia

Leila Bidler from Polymer Clay Italia hosted an international inchies swap and these are the inchies I sent in to trade. Queen of Hearts, lots of them.

It was a Valentine’s Day Swap and we had to make our inchies with a Valentine flair. So these crazy Queen of Hearts were my contribution.

Leila said that my return set of 20 inchies have been mailed, so I’m waiting as calmly as I can. It took almost a month for my queens to reach Leleila, in fact I was getting worried that they had decided to tour the world on their way to Italy. I hope it doesn’t take that long for her package to reach me.

For those of you who haven’t ever heard of inchies, it’s like ATCs (artist trading card) business size cards that are traded between artists and rarely ever sold. Inchies are the clay and mosaic artists version, altho there have been many ACT made from clay.

Inchies are 1″ x 1″ little works of art. I sent in 20 inchies and I will get 20 different one back from artists around the world. A swap takes a willing hostess to have everything shipped to them and then they have to sort and sent all the packages back out again. It takes a lot of work and I send my thanks to Leleila for giving me the opportunity to be in touch with so many others that love polymer clay.

You can take a look at a slide show of this years swap here or go to the Flickr site here.

Trading With Fabulous Mosaic Artists Doreen Bell and Laura Pattison

I’m doing two trades with two incredible mosaic artists, Laura Pattison and Doreen Bell. It all started when I saw the rainbow mosaic above that Laura made for a trade with Doreen. Polymer Clay canes are similar and have long been compared to glass millefiori canes so it’s no wonder that I was drawn to their work. Laura is living in Spain and Doreen is here in the U.S..

I loved the rainbow, it was so colorful and fun, I asked Laura if we could trade too or if I could buy one. Happily she agreed to a trade, she wanted my funny girl business card holder below. I’ll post a picture of my rainbow when it gets here.

Laura does some really wonderful work, you should see the cat she’s making for her parents, plus check out all the other cool things on her flickr pages.

Funny Girl

Then Doreen emailed me about buying some of my girls for a project she has in mind. I had already seen her work and loved all her crazy women and off the wall pieces, so I was delighted when she said she’d trade.

I sent her the 7 girls below to use in her work and I am so excited to see how she’ll do that. How interesting to be combining the two mediums. It certainly has my head spinning with possibilities.

I’ve seen a few pictures of my prize from Doreen, but will wait until it’s completely finished before I post her here. You can check out Doreen’s so cool work on her flickr site

Thank you Laura and Doreen for making these trades a highlight for me. You are making me laugh and giggle and that’s the most favorite thing I do. But most of all I’ll own some wonderful pieces of artwork from two incredible artist and make some terrific new friends. What a great experience.

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