Look what I did with some remaining foiled and painted clay. This is a sterling silver bead that a friend gave me and I've used it to 'cap' a polymer column. Have also inserted a sliver of stamped pmc to bring the silver thru into the column body. If anyone can tell me where I can get these beads, I would be eternally grateful. I've wasted hours searching the net and haven't come across anything like it.

Pmc and polymer are made for each other. I've been playing around with some ideas I want to share at our first ever Australian polymer clay retreat in June. And because I'm in love with both pmc and polymer clay, I wanted to focus on marrying these two materials together. This is what I've been working on this week..

Sheesh. I'm not very good at keeping this blog updated. I wasn't very good at keeping a diary either when I was a kid. The spirit is willing but the flesh is busy earning a living! Anyway, I have some pics Pam took on their retreat here in January. We experimented with silk screening, made pillow beads using foils and paints on clay, went thru some basic wirework, tried our hand at ikaty type canes and took a whole day to make a butterfly cane. Fabulous stuff! Here we are 'hard at it, with a glass of red in one hand and our butterfly canes in the other! That's Pam on the right and her sister Sue on the left and me in the middle.

Happy New Year everyone! May it be filled with much laughter and joy, creative flow, support and co-operation in all your endevours, adundance of all the good stuff and peace within and without.
LOL...trust me to go the whole hog!
Anyway, I'm off to a good start. I've been wanting to make pillow beads for ages and I've been wanting to play around with surface treatments. These are a lovely meeting of the two. I used gold leaf and Stewart Gills yummy metallic paints...