Hello,
I hope you have had a nice month and are ready for the February issue of The Jewelry And Poly News. I have quite a lot of news for you this time, as I have had a productive month.

Your feedback is very important to me. If there are things you miss on my site, or things you would like me to write about, please let me know. You can do so by responding to this mail when your receive the newsletter, or by using the -contact me- page on my site.

I hope you will enjoy this newsletter, just as much as I enjoy writing it for you!

All the best!

Anne Cecilie

In This Issue

• Coral - A Beautiful But Costly Gift From The Ocean
• Coral - Part 2 - Damaging Desire
• Wood Beads- Beauty From The Nature, Back In Fashion
• Victorian Jewelry - Fit For A Queen

New tutorials

• Make Lovely Candy Beads From Scrap Clay
• Persian Beads
• Seedbead Necklace In Lilac And Rose
• Color Full Flower Beads
• Dangling Necklace With Flower Beads And Silver

New Items In The Jewelry Store

• The Bead Store
• Vanilla Dream Necklace
• Copper Delight Necklace
• Crackled Silver Necklace

The Tip Of The Month

• Store Your Beads In Document Drawer Boxes:

News

Coral - A Beautiful But Costly Gift From The Ocean
Coral is beautiful, no doubt about it. It has been used in jewelry and for beautification for thousands of years. The ancient Egyptians and Romans used it for jewelry, medicine and for spiritual reasons, but also for trading with eastern countries like India.

Its use goes even further back in time than that, and jewelry with Coral has been found in graves from the Iron age and jewelry that is as old as 25000 years can be seen in museums around the world. Coral beads was brought to America with the discovery of the New world, and used as trade beads with the natives. It has been treasured around the world for its beauty and ability to be carved into beautiful ornaments.

read more

Coral - Part 2 - Damaging Desire
After its fall from grace in the late Victorian ages, this beautiful gem is again treasured for jewelry. But there is a price to pay for their beauty. As mentioned earlier in part one, these amazing organisms are important to marine ecosystems. They are however very sensitive to environmental changes, like temperature, ocean acidification and pollution as well as over harvesting for jewelry and home decor.

read more

Wood beads – Beauty From The Nature, Back In Fashion
Where trees grow there are wood beads. I believe that they are the most common, easy to come by and versatile bead types of all, and the best thing: They are fairly low in price. Most wood types can be used for beads, and trying to figure out the different types of wood beads you can get online, was close to impossible. There are SO many types of wood used with all kinds of exotic or common names, from all over the world. There are white wood types, light brown, yellow, dark brown, black, red, gray and even some with both dark and light wood. There is hardwood and soft wood, and even some wood that isn't really wood, like bamboo, which is a grass type. So whatever preference you may have, there is a wood bead for you out there. read more

Victorian Jewelry - Fit For A Queen
Victorian jewelry has its name after one of the greatest Queens in history, Queen Victoria of great Britain, who reigned for close to 65 years, making her the longest reigning monarch of all times. Becoming a queen at early age, she became the idol of how women should dress and behave and therefor had a tremendous influence on fashion from early 19th century and to the beginning of the 20th century. Queen Victoria loved jewelry and it is said that she even designed some her self. Due to her long time as Britain's matriarch the jewelry fashion changed over time, so the Victorian era is mainly divided into three periods, each hugely influenced by happenings in the life of the queen. read more

New Tutorials

Make Lovely Candy Beads From Scrap Clay
These beads remind me of candy, hence the name Candy beads. Have you tried making something, but no matte what you do, it all becomes a total mess? When you eventually call it a day, you sit with all this scrap clay from the intended project, and don't know what to do with it? Well here is one solution to the problem: You can make Candy beads. And despite being made with scrap clay, they come out quite nice too.

see the rest of the tutorial

Persian Beads
These beads remind me of a Persian rug, hence the name Persian beads. They are made from a very simple cane, created with smaller snakes extruded from a clay gun.

What you need: Fimo soft white, black, Christmas red, cognac Fimo Effect gold Bamboo rods Shape cutter Tissue blade Liquid polymer clay heat gun

Step 1: Condition the clay. Mix one part cognac with three parts white to make the light brown. Mix one part red with one part gold to mix the red color. see the rest of the tutorial

Seedbead Necklace In Lilac And Rose
This seedbead necklace was supposed to be a three stranded right angle weave necklace, but I ended up with round rosettes instead. It is strange how projects suddenly take a turn on its own, and become something entirely different than what you had in mind. I found the rosettes quite cute though, and made some more and the result is this necklace. It is very easy to do, so get your beads and needle, and I will show you how you can make it.

see the rest of the tutorial

Color Full Flower Beads
Playing with clay is fun. This time I wanted to make some flower beads, but that was all I knew. It never cease to amaze me how clay takes over and create something out of itself as if I wasn't even there. This was one of those occasions. I made some canes and started playing with them, and these flower beads are the result. Having nothing else than the colors and a vague idea of some flowery stuff in my head, I am pretty pleased with the result. see the rest of tutorial

Dangling Necklace With Flower Beads And Silver
Dangling necklaces, can you ever get enough of them? I certainly can not, and after having made these polymer clay beads, I simply had to combine them with some silver and wire work.
The small beads were made from the scrap clay I had left after making the big ones. You can see how I made these beads in this tutorial.
So, are you ready to start? OK! Here we go:

See the rest of the tutorial

New Items In The Jewelry Store

The Bead Store
You can now buy beautiful Polymer clay beads from the Bead Store. Each bead is handcrafted by me with different polymer clay techniques. I hope you will find something you like. Enjoy!

more information

Vanilla Dream Necklace: Charm like necklace with beautiful vanilla and pastel colored polymer clay beads.

more information

Copper Delight Necklace: Beautiful copper, cram and black colored Polymer clay beads with nut slices and black Agate.

more information

Crackled Silver Necklace: Colorfull Polymer clay beads with cracled silver leaf.

more information

Tip Of The Month

Store Your Beads In Document Drawer Boxes:
Making jewelry is fun, no doubt about it, and when you have done it for a while, you have built up a small supply of beads and findings. Although most of them are small and do not take up much space, the amount require some sort of storage container, unless you want them just lying around.

I have tried several approaches, from shoe boxes to tool boxes with drawers. The latter works fine, but the drawers are small and it tend to be a bit messy and difficult to find what I want, without emptying the drawer.

In search for something better, I found some document boxes with drawers. They are made of plastic and have four drawers, slightly larger than A4 sized paper, and you can take the drawers out of the box. They are designed for stacking and was quite cheap. So, I bought some and put my beads in them. Since the drawers are not so tall, I did not have to stack the boxes in the drawers, but could place them neatly next to each other. It makes it very easy to find exactly the beads you want, and you can sort them by colors.

So far, this is the best storing option I have found for my beads and findings. I keep the beads in their boxes (seed beads) or in zipper bags, so that it is easy to see what's inside, and put them in the drawers. So, now I have a storing system that makes it very easy to find what I want.