"The best part on seeing other clayers is the opportunity to see how they work"
- A thought while "they all" were in Ravensdale conference and I was not-
Ever wonder how others do it ? I do.
So here is a small demonstration of what I do. To be honest I don't necessarily do the actual sketching part at all: that all happens really in my head. I call that dreaming about claying "dry claying" and I do it a lot while doing ordinary everyday tasks. I only recently went back to sketching. I don't do it daily, but when I happen to have the book around I may doodle something.
So here is a sketch from 2nd of July. I had an idea about falling flowers necklace. If you look closely you notice that the language I use in the sketches is half Finnish, half English. Its mostly because I don't have words for some crafting terms or materials in my own language. Besides most of my crafting happens at least partly in English language. (That's a long story too). I refer to a stamp idea that Sue Heaser has on her book to make the "leaf" decorations on the beads.
My original idea is mist green beads and white sort of "calla lilies" flowers with something very feminine to string them. But I don't have the materials for it jet. As I did not even know if the idea works at all, I had to try it out. So I just took what I had and made some beads out of the clay I had. I mixed three colours out of the metallics I had, violet, green and orange thinking I might even use both orange and violet "flowers" in one piece. There is also some black glass beads and black waxed cotton thread that I use a lot in my jewelry as it is non allergic material and makes a nice float.
Naturally the beads have been sitting around for few weeks as I have been way too occupied with other creations, life and summer to do any actual beading/stringing.
Here is a detail of the beads on a cheese tray. Those are wood and pretty handy to use, BTW. I don't have necklace stringing board, but I use a lot of table space and trays.
As you notice I concentrated on the violet beads thinking that I would make the necklace out of them. But when I actually started doing the thing today, the orange beads whispered so softly and asked if I really was going to use violet colour AGAIN.
Having been flapping my mouth saying that "I am going to use more colours now" I just had to choose the orange ones... Not bad as this orange is made out of red and light green (I bet you did not guess that one !)
So here is the necklace done. The idea is OK, and it feels wonderful on neck. There are one or two little things that need to be corrected and adjusted, and I want to try another stringing materials with this design, but I love the idea. This is something that I am going to work on getting better.
So now you know a little bit about how I make my stuff. How do you do yours ?