5th meeting

I made my way back to Debra's the other day(11/29/10-12:30pm) and took a few pictures of what she devotes her to.

4th meeting

Over a week ago (11/22/2010-1pm) Debra and I did my final product. Dream catcher earrings. Due to problems with my camera I wasn't able to photograph the steps at the time (at the bottom is a separate pair of earrings I made after my first pair).


First I took a copper spiral an cut pieces off of it and taped the part that wasn't touching together. Then glued the end of a long piece of leather to the taped part. Then I wrapped the leather all the way around the copper ring making sure none of the copper showed, and super glued the other end.

Taking a very long piece opf wax string I started knotting around the ring..and well it gets complicated right bout here....

Beads don't have the be added, but bringing color to the brown dream catcher couldn't hurt.

When I finally get to the middle I weaved the rest of the wax string up to the top and tied it off...BEAUTIFUL!


Time Spent: 1pm-4pm

3rd meeting

Yesterday (10/18/2010-1:30pm) I met up with my mentor for the 3rd time. This time we didn't do earrings though, we made BRACELETS! Leather bracelets at that!

First I had to cut two separate pieces of leather from Debra's 50lb ball of it and glue them together (the glue is only to hold them together temporarily). Then sew the two pieces together is securely hold them. Every hole was made with a hammer or a hand sewing punch.

After pricking my fingers to death I finally got both of the bracelets sewn and burned to tie the string off. Then I took a life time picking a choosing what beads I wanted and what design.


Picking a design for my first one was fairly easy, I knew I wanted the little bear bead I had found and just built around it. I designed the blank part of the leather with a cross pattern. I was pretty satisfied:]

^burning the bottom of the leather^

I used synthetic thick string to make the end pieces, braided them and simply just tightened the ends.

The second bracelet took much longer, even though it doesn't exactly look it. Those itzy bitzy beads are a pain and I successfully broke the bead needle so I started to have to do do it with my hands. I would have done more but it had already reached 6pm and I was getting pretty hungry.

I really enjoyed it though, next Monday (10/25/10) we plan on making dream catchers, which is pretty swweeeeettt.

Time Spent: 1:30pm-6pm

suns & spirals

Today (10/17/2010) I experimented more with my polymer clay. I found out that patience should be the first requirement to mess with this stuff. I took my time and carved out a design in the black clay, and as I attempted to move it from the tile it ripped, tore, and stretched to pieces. My luck.
I ended up with a tiny set of sun earrings and a pair of better looking spiral earrings.







Tomorrow (10/18/2010) I am meeting back up with Debra, and I am actually pretty excited.


"suns & spirals" continued on (10/19/10)...


(after being in the oven for at least 6 hours)
My spiral earrings and little sun earrings turned out pretty ok...with only one problem...I forgot to measure how big around a lobe would be to actually fit it on an ear. The spiral earrings are as good as dirt now. I'm not dishearted though, they look mighty good besides that.
Time to make more!

2nd meeting

Yesterday (10/10/10) I went to AC Moore and bought polymer clay in brown, white, red, black, and gold. All costing around $25 bucks. Today (10/11/10-1:30pm) I went back to Debra's house; there we took a shot of making a earrings with brown and white, putting the white in between the two browns like a cookie and carving out designs on the top of the brown once they were smashed together and smoothed.
This method did not exactly work, the brown on top was not thin enough were you could see the white and the scoring and carving wasn't going as plan. So we decided to score the brown before it was on the white and make it extremely thin. This worked well but with this being my first time my design wasn't really satisfactory. You win some you loose some.



My finish product turned out looking like an evil face. The next step is to cook the suckers in an oven. Which I will be doing tomorrow.
I left Barbra's house at 5pm. With all the talk, smashing, and concentration I was tired and my coffee had gotten cold. I plan to experiment more with my polymer clay until our next meet up (10/18/10), where we're going to make bead bracelets from leather.


I will also be looking up Christy Friesen and her methods of dealing, cooking, and sculpting polymer clay.

Time Spent: 1:30pm-5pm

Debra Robertson

Yesterday (10/5/2010-3pm), I met up with my mentor 'Debra Robertson' to see want all I need to start my product. We plan on making stick hanging earrings out of polymer clay and maybe even carving a few. We're also going to make leather embedded bracelets so she can show me more tricks of the trade. She's half Cherokee and it's not hard to tell. Pretty much every Monday we'll be meeting up together to accommodate both of our schedules. It doesn't hurt that she had Bob Dylan playing in the back ground :P
Time Spent: 3:30pm-4:30pm