Friday 18 August 2017

Confessions of a Seadbeadaholic part 4

And it's story time again today.

The wire necklaces I made were ok. But that's definately not the end of my bead quest.
I was thinking what if I made my own beads with Fimo Polymer Clay. Then my necklace would be even more special.

So I started experimenting after a quick glance on the internet. Couldn't be that hard I thought. Haha wrong off course. I rolled my beads - nothing wrong at that time. But then they needed to bake in the oven. Ok no problem, I took some tooth picks and pushed them in the clay. But none of the clay beads kept their shape when being pushed on the tooth pick. But I managed to get them shaped again more or less. And in the oven they went.

Great my first badge was ready. After they had cooled down I put on the varnish and waited for a day to let them dry. Finally the next day it was time to get them of the sticks. What did you think happened? The sticks where stuck - couldn't get the beads off. There they went, all in the trash can. 😢

So I decided to buy this book on Bol.com - they even still sell it :)

https://www.bol.com/nl/p/making-jewelry-from-polymer-clay/1001004010363347/

After a bit of training I succeeded into making some reasonably nice beads. Like the ones in this necklace I still have 😊


But I must say making those beads is pretty labour intensive. First softening the clay and making shapes or mixes with them. Then rolling out the beads. And the step that I didn't know about before was putting them in the fridge for about 15 minutes to harden the clay again. And I used special bead baking pins to put the beads on. So then they went in the oven for 35 minutes.

After they had cooled down I put on a first coating with varnish. Then I had to wait until next day to put on the second coating. And finally the third day I could take them of the pins and start to use them in my jewelry.

Some people liked and others did not. And I did sell a few on markets. Yes indeed always enough to cover my costs and buy a few new materials. But I wasn't getting rich - no way. My business was still bringing in just enough to buy me some more beading stuff. And I was still happy with that.

The end for now - gonna tell you more about my bead addiction later

Hope you had fun reading.......Until tomorrow......Have a great day

Renata (Seadbeady)

9 comments:

  1. Looks like a great book! Isn't it great how we can find information about out interests through books?!

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  2. Wat leuk dat je van je hobby toch een beetje je werk kan maken. Dan is het niet zo een kostbare hobby

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  3. Wow, what a work. The beads look pretty though.

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  4. Ik vind het wel mooie kralen! En zo leuk om te lezen hoe je je ontwikkelt... En het is toch fijn als je in ieder geval je hobby kunt bekostigen van je hobby... :)

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  5. Dat is zeker een intensief proces! Wat zonde dat de eerste lading mislukte, best demotiverend lijkt me

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  6. Polymer kralen maken is heel erg leuk. In het verleden heb ik ze ook gemaakt, moet ik nodig weer eens doen.

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  7. Heel leuk dat je zo creatief bent!

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  8. Wat leuk om te lezen. Ik heb zelf ook sieraden gemaakt vroeger, maar dat kostte best wel wat geld vond ik zo..

    ReplyDelete

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