Starry, Starry Night - Don McClean

This YouTube is mesmerizing. I must have watched and listened to McClean singing "Starry, Starry Night" several dozen times already. It is powerful in itself, but also could be an entertaining background vocal for surfing the net. It was originally made into a PowerPoint presentation, although not as accessible via email as the YouTube version above. Full screen and speakers tuned up, you can imagine the visual and auditory effects would be spectacular. This video, though, ain't bad!

In 2005, my National Scrabble Association tournament player friends and I made a trip to the British Isles. One of the stops on the cruise was to visit the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam. The above pictures are from the Van Gogh Flckr pool.

I've always been fascinated by Vincent Van Gogh; poor ear, poor dear.

Making Sculpey Beads for Jewelry

Yesterday's post was about making Sculpey (or Fimo) polymer clay beads with an overlay of colors, accented with gold leaf. With an arsenal of close to fifty beads from that batch, I made some up into earrings.

Here are a couple of pairs of earrings that I made from the beads using the Japanese silversmith method of "Makume Gane".

The beads could be a bit more glossy, which means that more intense buffing with wet sandpaper after the baking process would be required.

The earrings were made in the same manner as discussed in a previous post on making earrings. Here is an excellent video explaining how to string, wire and finish off earrings:

Making Beads from Polymer Clay - Makume Gane Technique

This website, Bead Making, gives an excellent tutorial on making beads using the Mokume Gane method of layering clays, alternating with a sheet of gold laminating paper.

If you are interested in the process of Japanese bead making using this silversmithing technique, this video is excellent to review and follow. Just click here: Makume Gane

I used that YouTube video to make about four dozen colorful blue, green, pink, gold and aqua beads. Following the steps in the video tutorial, here are my steps in making Makume Gane clay beads, shown in pictures:

First, I rolled five colors of Sculpey clay (available at craft stores for about $1 per cube, sale price) with my pasta maker machine. This machine saves your hands from a workout, and thoroughly mixes the clay while taking out air bubbles at the same time. (Use any of the clay colors to make scrap balls which will be layered with the Makume Gane processed clay slices.)

Next, I layered five colors of clay together. Different colors can be created by mixing the clays from their primary colors originally purchased; this is how I made the aqua and the pink colors from the purchased primary colors of clay.

Translucent clay is necessary to add to the layers of clay, because it gives a nice sheen to the finished bead. The translucent clay looks white, so make sure you purchase the clay clearly marked "translucent".

The gold leaf sheet was added last, then folded over several times (not in the pasta machine during this process) to make a stack of clays about 1/2 inch thick.

Then the stack of clays was shaved off to wrap around balls of clay. This makes the design on the covering of the previously molded bead from scrap clay. I made three differing sizes of beads. After trying to get them into uniform sizes, I learned that the trick is to take one round ball (again, scrap clay) which you have shaped, and cut it into two equal halves...ta da....each ball will then be the same diameter after rolling. This shaping was done by hand, but there are various little machines to purchase if you think you are going to get into this hobby in a big way.

The colors I chose to make are some of my favorites, and will complement some yarn recently received in a yarn swap on Ravelry.

Next, a hole was bored through the bead with a T-pin (used in jewelry making), or a large needle could be used to make the center hole. When the beads looked symetrical after poking the center hole and with a litte more cylindrical or round reshaping, I placed them on foil and baked them on a cookie sheet in the oven for 25 minutes at 265 degrees. After baking and cooling, the beads were buffed with wet sandpaper a few times.
Then I sprayed the beads with acrylic spray several times to make a shiny surface.

I'm in the process of making earrings with these beads and will show more pictures of the finished beads in the next post. There are enough beads to make another watch band with earrings to match, similar to what was posted a few weeks ago in this blog.

If this process sounds like work, I can only say that in my humble opinion (IMHO), it was a lot of fun. And it was rewarding to make beads in the colors I desired, while at a fraction of the cost to purchase ready-made beads. And I ended up with a slew of cool beads.