Friendly Plastic - Simple and Stunning

Here's another piece I've made up using the samples from my demos at the Brisbane Paper Crafts Festival. This was a marbled strip in lovely shades of turquoise and purple which I cut with rectangular cookie cutters. I loved the colour combination, especially with the hint of red to spice it up and I knew straight away that it was destined to be made into a piece of jewellery. But when it came time to assemble into a necklace it proved to be a little bit of a challenge. The striking colour combination was competing with every bead and colour combination I tried, which is a lesson in itself - sometimes, it's better to simplify! So with that in mind, I came up with a simple stringing idea - just a few crystal set dangles in between the rectangles and it's become an elegant choker - simple but effective! Before I assembled anything, I gave each rectangle a coat of resin - that's five fronts and five backs and left them to cure overnight. Then I took a length of 18 gau......

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All that Glitters Giveaway - Winner

Thank you to all who visited my blog over the last week and left comments on the post All that Glitters..... Give Away for a chance to win a copy of the book Glitter Artistry . I know there were many more of you who visited but didn't leave comments and I thank you too - I hope you enjoyed your visit whilst you were here. But now it's time to draw the lucky winner........ And the winning comment was left by Rob K. Congratulations Robyn - you are now the proud owner of Glitter Artistry . Email your postal address to me and I'll have the book on its way to you straight away. That's all from me tonight folks.... check back later in the week to see what I get up to next. Cheerio! Myléne...

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Paisley Drops

Now here's a quick and easy project: Friendly Plastic teamed with silver jewellery findings to create a unique pair of earrings. Using Friendly Plastic and the marbling technique, I've cut out two leaves with a small cutter and given them a coat of resin. All that's needed to transform the Friendly Plastic from fantastic to fabulous is the glitz of a few Swarovski crystals - after all, what would drop earrings be without bling?!! Notice how the leaf shape mimics the paisley links - they're a good match for each other and because the leaf is slightly narrower than the paisley base you can see the outline of the paisley. After that, the only jewellery making skill you need to put these earrings together is knowing how to open and close jump rings. I've linked the silver paisley shapes to a teardrop frame. The fantastic paisleys are from the Organics range (Horizons Group) and the silver teardrop is from Plaid's Fresh range. I'll be drawing the winner of the Gl......

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A Change of Heart

They say it's a woman's prerogative to change her mind. It's something I do often when I'm designing a project. I have an idea, I start to put it together and then another idea comes into my head and I change my mind. It's a great way to explore new possibilities. Take this necklace for instance. When I first had the idea to incorporate the two silver hearts into the design, I was going to hang the small and medium hearts below the Friendly Plastic heart..... and I was quite pleased with the way it looked. But then, just as I began to assemble the pieces, it happened - I changed my mind! A different idea popped into my head: What if I changed the order of the hearts? What if I placed the smallest heart at the top of the design and the largest heart at the bottom? I like how that looks even better! Rearranging the hearts has completely changed the balance of the piece. And it's unexpected - you expect the design to taper at the bottom of the pendant - but revers......

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Handmade Friendly Plastic Leaf Bracelet

At the recent Brisbane Paper Crafts Festival show, I was demoing Friendly Plastic and I promised that I'd make up some of the samples I made into jewellery. So here's the first one: a stretchy bracelet featuring leaves cast from Friendly Plastic Designer Sticks. Regular readers will recognise the leaves from the tutorial I posted after the show. If you're not familiar with how I created them you can check out the tutorial here or on my website . Because the leaves are cast from Friendly Plastic sticks they are hollow and they needed to be filled with resin before I could drill holes sideways through them. I've strung them on Beadalon Elasticity to make it easy to stretch the bracelet over my knuckles. Drilling holes sideways was one heck of a challenge because the leaves are quite thin. Try as I might, I just didn't seem to be able to drill straight and I had to top them up with more resin where I'd accidentally drilled through to the back of the leav......

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All that Glitters..... Give Away

I normally reserve glitter for Christmas crafting, feeling that the sparkly metallic colours were a bit out of place during the rest of the year. But after having the chance to work with some of the Art Institute Glitters recently my eyes saw glitter in a whole new light. You see, Art Institute Glitter comes in an enormous range of opaque and transparent colours too - glitters that sparkle but don't look out of place the rest of the year! Just recently I shared several wooden bangles that I had decorated with glitter and each one looks totally different to the next and I think that up until then I'd been stuck in the "glitter is only for Christmas" mode of thinking. But with an entire range of non-tinsel colours and effects to choose from I realised how very versatile it is - glitter belongs in our day to day world and the world should be just a little bit more sparkly! That's how Barbara Trombley sees it too. Barbara is the author of Glitter Artistry , a b......

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Moulding with Friendly Plastic Scraps

Earlier in the week I showed you how to mould with Friendly Plastic Designer Sticks. But today I want to show you how to use up all the scraps and offcuts you have left over from other Friendly Plastic projects to make your own unique embellishment for your projects. You'll need scraps of Friendly Plastic, a mould (I've used Krafty Lady art mould AM298 Lge Paris), a heat gun, Tim Holtz Tonic scissors and a bowl of cold water. Cut the Friendly Plastic into small pieces. Place the scraps into the mould in a single layer and heat with the heat gun until they are softened. Dip your fingers in cold water and press them into the softened plastic to press the pieces together. You are trying to pick up all the detail in the bottom of the mould so allow the pieces to spread across the bottom as you press. Place another layer of scrap on top and heat. With wet fingers press the pieces together. Keep adding layers in this fashion until the mould is full. You can even add the bits from th......

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How to Mould with Friendly Plastic Designer Sticks

As a card maker and paper crafter, I love to create embellishments to add to my projects. And being on the Krafty Lady Design Team I have access to some of the best moulds available for that very purpose. These moulds are wonderful: apart from the fabulous array of designs, and the fact that they are made from silicone so nothing sticks to them, they are also very flexible, making demoulding a breeze. I've used these moulds to cast every kneadable or pourable medium I could lay my hands on including soap, wax, polymer clay, air dry clay, resin, Opals and UTEE. They've stood the test admirably and are as good today as they were when I first used them, literally hundreds of casts ago. So today I'd like to share my method of moulding with Friendly Plastic using a heat gun. So let's begin: Gather all the materials you'll need: Friendly Plastic, Krafty Lady art mould (I've used AM247 Leaf Med), Tim Holtz Tonic scissors (because they cut Friendly Plastic so easil......

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Friendly Plastic Demos - Brisbane Paper Crafts Festival

It's been Paper Crafts Festival time in Brisbane this weekend. Spending time at a paper crafts show is always a fun way to spend a weekend. I spent a few hours each day demoing Friendly Plastic: a slot on the stage each morning and then a stint on the Stamp Antics stand each afternoon. So I thought you might like to see what I got up to. What you see above is just a small sampling of the all the pieces I created during the demos - I did a lot of marbling and cutting, casting, bead making and texturing so now I have a big pile of pieces ready to be turned into other creations. I've already begun to turn some of the beads I made during Friday's demos into jewellery. Firstly, a pendant..... and then a matching bracelet. I'll try to get a few more pieces posted over the next week or so. But my, oh my, oh my...... look at the big jumble of cutouts I have left! I'll show you one way to use them all up in the next couple of weeks, so look out for a tutorial on how to mould......

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Bangle No. 7 - Glitter Brocade

Well, here we are at the final day of the bangle assignment. When I think back to the first day of the challenge and the scary moment when I realised that these were not my materials of choice, I had no idea that some of these designs were hidden inside the supplies I would be using. Even I'm surprised by how well some of the bangles have turned out. So let's see how I did with the final bangle of the challenge. You can begin by painting the inside and top and bottom edges of the bangle with Bright Gold Lumiere paint. You'll probably notice in the photo below that my bangle isn't painted but that's because I forgot to do it first and had to carefully paint around glitter later on. So, to make things easier for yourself, paint the bangle first. Then cover a section of the outside of the bangle with Designer Dries Clear and spread it out evenly with your finger. Sprinkle it with Vintage Glass Glitter (903 Alexandrite) from Art Institute Glitter. Repeat all ......

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Bangle No. 6 - On the Boardwalk

Today I'm going in a completely different direction to the bangles that I've created so far in this challenge. Courtesy of Graphic 45 , I have papers to work with. I have always enjoyed the soft, aged appearance of their paper imagery and whilst it's not a style I use a lot, I can appreciate the romance of a more gentle, bygone era. I think that's what draws a lot of people to this style. I'll be working with one of their new releases, On the Boardwalk. This 12 x 12 paper pad has 22 double sided papers in 12 different designs including 2 sheets of pre scored tags and borders. I've selected a stripe, a bottle cap as my feature, and a couple of smaller motifs from a border. So let's get started. Cut a square from the striped sheet and the bottle cap image leaving a small border. Layer them together using a glue stick with the stripes running vertically. Apply a small circle of Diamond Glaze to the centre of the back of a glass pebble. This one is from ec......

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