Friendly Plastic is not only for Jewellery

It's well known that Friendly Plastic is a great medium for jewellery making but being such a light weight modelling medium it's especially suitable for card making and scrapbooking too. There are many techniques that are suitable to incorporate into your paper crafting projects such as marbling, stamping and moulding. In mid September I'll be demoing and teaching a workshop at the Stampin' Daze Rubber Stamp Club in Brisbane using a couple of these techniques which we'll use to create the focal piece on a card front. I'll be offering two colour alternatives: an all occasion card in girlie pink........... ...... and for those of you who want to get an early start on your Christmas cards, a green version. The choice is yours. Please pardon the slightly blurry images. My trusty little point-and-click Ricoh camera is having a little stay in camera hospital at present and I've used an unfamiliar camera to take these photos. The images simply don't do the card...

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Friendly Plastic Earrings

One of the wonderful things about working with Friendly Plastic is how such simple techniques can transform the foiled strips of Friendly Plastic into really eye catching pieces. Take these earrings for example - their striking appearance belies their simplicity. Both pairs are examples of marbling but using different tools to create the effect. The first pair was marbled with a marbling comb and the second pair with a needle tool to create two totally different looks. You can use either a heat gun (as in the first pair) or the griddle method (used for the second pair) to melt the strips together and then slowly draw the tool of your choice through the surface. I used a cookie cutter to cut out the leaf shaped earrings but the chevron earrings are made by layering black and gold rectangles together which have been allowed to melt into each other before using the needle tool. To finish off the earrings and to add extra bling I've added some Swarovski crystals because they work so we...

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Friendly Plastic Radio interview

CHA is a true showcase of the craft industry and it provides a meeting ground for every facet of the industry. As you walk around the booths on the show floor you will see many video taping segments going on. These usually feature well known designers and craft personalities who are taping TV segments and videos to feature on both TV and the internet throughout the coming months. So on to highlight number 2 for me from this Summer's CHA show. It was certainly an unexpected one! During the show, the lovely Linda Peterson (designer behind the The Art of Friendly Plastic blog) launched the first Friendly Plastic Blog Talk Radio Show and I was amongst the invited guests. Now I can tell you, this was a nerve racking experience. Having never done a radio interview before I wasn't quite sure how this would work and found myself jumping my cues to speak several times. But at the same time it was an exciting prospect as I was joining well known designers Lisa Pavelka, Michelle Zi...

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Summer CHA

I've just returned from Summer CHA in Orlando, Florida - the craft industry's twice yearly trade show in the US. I'm not going to give you a full rundown of the show but instead I'm going to share some of the highlights from my trip. I was really excited to be taking a workshop with Bead Queen of the Universe and craft personality extraordinaire, Margot Potter . Some of the many hats Margot wears include being a DT member for Beadalon, and an ambassador for Create Your Style with CRYSTALLIZED-Swarovski Elements. She is also author of 5 books including The Impatient Beader , Beyond the Bead and Bead and Wire Jewelry Exposed (co written with Fernando DaSilva and Katie Hacker). There is another book in the pipeline at the moment and it's sure to be just as delectable as the others. Amongst her other credits she is also a public speaker and TV host - in short, Margot is a very accomplished designer, so you can understand why I was so pleased to be taking her class ...

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Soy Silk Fusion

Right now, I'm in the middle of designing pieces for two collaborative projects with artists from around the world which is an exciting prospect. One project is hush, hush and secret but the other is..... well, it's a bit hush, hush too but I can at least share a step-by-step on how to make the background I'm using for the project. I'm creating a sort of "fabric" from soy silk fibre - a bi-product left over from the manufacture of tofu. It's really soft and very colourful. When you fluff it apart, it looks like fairy floss! It comes from a completely renewable resource making it environmentally friendly. So let's get started! Gather the materials together: soy silk fibre (mine is from Conjoined Creations), Textile Medium, freezer paper, tulle, paper towel and water. Pour the textile medium into a cup. How much will depend on what size piece of fabric you want to end up with. I've just used enough to cover the bottom of the cup. Dilute with...

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Butterflies Take Flight

Brrrr..... it's been a cold winter here in South East Queensland. Yes, I know, I know, we have no idea what cold is here in our little corner of the world, but then, we are not geared up for cold weather. Night time temperatures have regularly hovered just a few degrees above zero and that's pretty chilly when you don't have any heating. But spring is not too far away in the southern hemisphere and to banish away the winter chills, I've decided to bring spring forward a month and let the butterflies take flight in search of spring blossom. My butterflies are all breaking free of their chrysalis - their winter nest, so to speak - in search of all the wonders or spring..... blossoms, love, sunshine. Yes indeed, warm sunny days. I'm looking forward to those! The base of my butterfly chrysalis is a Pavlova Magic container. Now you have to be an Aussie or a Kiwi to know what that is. Pavlova is kind of like our national dessert and we both lay claim to having invented i...

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