Learning some new things

Lately I have been trying to learn some new techniques, or revisit some I had tried a long time ago. I was getting kind of bored and burned out only doing millefiori work all the time. So I decided instead of just setting aside my work until I got "unbored" I would try a few new things.

The technique I revisited first was mica shift. I had made a couple things a long time ago that I didn't really like at the time, so I hadn't gone back to it. Just before Christmas last year I decided I'd try again. I made a bunch of people in my family personalized ornaments. This one was made for my granddaughter. I had a lot of fun with them, so I made a bunch of different things. Next on my list of techniques was mokume gane. Like the mica shift, I had briefly experimented when I first started in polymer clay. I decided to come back and try again. This time around the things I made came out much better. Like all things you get better the more you practice. Here are a couple of the projects. This is a business card case.

This is one of my favorite things I have made using mokume gane. Purple is my favorite color and the swirls just seemed to come out right.

The next technique I tried was taught to me by my good friend Linda of NKDesigns. This is from her tutorial on claylessons.com.http://www.claylessons.com/. It is a small altoid tin. It has several layers of shades of green clay, pearl clay and gold leaf.

The newest technique I am trying is using alcohol inks. I bought a tutorial from RiverValleyDesign from claylessons to try them out. This egg was covered using pearl polymer clay, gold leaf, mica powders and the alcohol inks. It is also a technique I like and will have to explore further.

Maybe one day soon I'll get back to my millefiori work, but for now I'm having fun with my clay again :)