Ornament Thursday and the insects are out!

This month's insectia inspiration came from a class which I attended recently with Christi Friesen. Christi does some great things combining pearls and bakeable jewels with polymer clay. I created this leaf design using some green clay left over from a caning project. Attached to the leaves is a snake of clay, and in the curves and down one edge of the large leaf I wired small freshwater pearls into the clay. The ladybug – insectia! - is a small dot of red clay with black accents. I don’t think that leaves are ever quite complete without at least one ladybug attached.

The completed project can be finished with a pin back and used as a broach or, better still, a simple hanging mechanism can be added so it can be affixed to a necklace of polymer clay beads and pearls. HB




Michelle has been busy this month too. I snuck a look at her project and here it is. Nothing from her yet explaining her work – probably because she is wrist deep in a milk carton full of Mix and Mold molding compound. She's casting hands for a fun Halloween project. Hopefully her hand gets out in time for her to eat dinner!

If you're curious to see what other ornament Thursday artists are up to this month, click the links below to check out their wonderful work:


Art Bead Scene
Dragonflies are all the rage, art beads & brass combine in a 1920's inspired necklace.

Beading Help Web's DragonFly Anklet
Make this cute anklet for summer in just minutes!

Linda at Make It Mine magazine
Make your own dragonfly top--check out the instructions and video!

Savvy Crafter-
See some cute as a bug pins over on Candie's blog....

Humblebeads
Flying to a fashionable ear near you, a free project from Humblebeads.

Hali Chambers

Katie's Beading Blog
Make a fun little winged thing from a handful of wire and beads.

Swelldesigner
You'll get butterflies when you see this summer-inspired necklace with butterfly pendant

fromichelle
Insectica

Clay and CHA

We've all just returned from CHA where we not only had a wonderful time but also lots of success.

Michelle and I, together with Frank were chosen as finalists in the Amoco Bottles of Hope challenge and I won the Most Original award!

We got to hang out with lots of clay people and, at our hotel, we were next door to Gail Richie, Leslie Blackford, Kim Cavender and just two doors away from Donna Kato. Since we were all on the ground floor by the pool we got to hang together which was great fun.

Here are some of Donna's photos too. Check out the right hand side (5th image down), left hand side (6th image down - it was Australia Day after all!) and (right hand side second to last photo)

You can read about some of our discussions with Donna Kato on her blog, including that we seem to have talked her into a competition for CHA next winter - Yeah!

I also met Claudine Hellmuth who had done a commission piece for Michelle and me so that was fun too.

Took a class with Tim Holtz on inks which was great fun as his classes always are.

The show really was wonderful and Anaheim sure beats Las Vegas!