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Jennifer Bezingue
I was born in Wheeling, West Virginia and have lived in the Chicago suburbs since high school. I graduated from the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign with a degree in advertising, and I've been a copywriter or editor for my entire career. I currently work at The Pampered Chef corporate headquarters in the marketing department.
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premo! Clay Embellished Buttons

Give a dull sweater a face lift by adding new brightly colored clay buttons!

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Stash or Hoard?

Examining the phenomenon of hoarding has become a national pastime. But not every large collection of something is a hoard. As a lifelong crafter, I've often struggled with the question, "Am I hoarding this?" I've decided, for me at least, the answers are:

 

  • If it's a supply for a craft I currently do or may legitimately try in the future, it's stash.
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  • If it's a supply for a craft I don't do any more, it's a hoard.
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  • If it's a supply for a craft I currently do, but I think it's too good to use up, it's a hoard that can be converted to stash.

 

Ah, we've all been faced with the decision: Can I bear to use this precious something I've been hoarding, and therefore not have it anymore?

 

I recently had an opportunity to convert a hoard to stash, and make a few brownie points at work to boot. I work in the marketing department at The Pampered Chef, and was helping out with a video script. The video was going to show our Consultants (the Pampered Chef ladies that come to your house to do parties) how to make a new recipe, and it was being produced in the style of a rap video.

 

As we were discussing costumes and props, the words popped out of my mouth: "I could make a giant Chef hat rapper-necklace with rhinestones."

 

Our company logo in clay and rhinestones? My coworkers were intrigued but skeptical. I assured them that if they didn't like the necklace, they didn't have to use it and there wouldn't be any hard feelings.

 

Making a pattern, I created a Chef hat with Premo! Sculpey Jewelry Gold, then took a deep breath. Reaching into the recesses of my craft stash, I retrieved a precious, yet tiny jar of brilliant glass rhinestones. I've had these rhinestones for more than 10 years, waiting for the perfect project. The time had come.

 

Pressing the rhinestones into the clay design, I was excited to see how it came to life. I baked the giant Chef hat charm, and hung it from a gold neck chain after it cooled.

 

Well, the necklace was a hit! It looked great in the video and it's been a conversation piece throughout the company. If ever there was a successful conversion of hoard to stash, this was it.

 

Now if I could just find a way to use 75 lbs. of acrylic yarn to further my career …

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JenniferBezingue 07:05PM February 19th 2012
clay, Oven-Bake, Polymer, Premo, Sculpey
Sharing My Love of Polymer Clay

Last week I held a 20-minute workshop on making clay buttons for 12 members of the Fox Valley Knitters Guild. As I mentioned in my previous post, I first discovered polymer clay as a way to make buttons for a knitted sweater, so I thought the guild members would like to see how this versatile medium could work for them, too.

 

I wanted to offer an easy but cool-looking button project that could be made with few tools, and was easy enough for someone with no clay experience. I decided on a marbleized button: only an acrylic roller and needle tool are needed to make this project. As you can see, the knitters loved making their buttons.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

If you haven't tried this easy technique, here are the steps:

 

1) Start with three or more colors of clay. You can choose your colors or use scrap clay – cane ends are great for this. Ideally, your colors should have some color and value contrast: in other words, light and dark in addition to different colors.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

2) Make a ball and marbelize the colors a little. You should still see sections of color, just not large areas of solid color. If the colors are starting to blend, the marbleizing won't work as well.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

3) Make the ball into a log. Twist the log ends a few times, roll the log on your work surface and push the ends together. You'll notice the areas of color are starting to become stripes. Keep twisting, rolling and pushing the ends together until your log is covered with stripes. They can be fine or wide stripes.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

4) Flatten the log with your roller until it's about 1/4" or a little thicker. Drag your needle tool across the surface, perpendicular to the stripes. I usually drag lines that are approximately1/4" apart. Rotate the clay 180 degrees and drag lines between the previous lines to make the zigzag pattern. Or drag all your lines in the same direction if you prefer a scalloped design.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

5) Use your roller to flatten the clay into the thickness you want. Make buttons between 1/8" and 1/4" thick. Cut out buttons with cutters or Super Slicer. Use your needle tool to make holes, or glue on a button shank after  baking.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

You can also use a marbelized sheet to cover beads or incorporate into other projects. The pattern is only on the surface, so don't sand it after it's baked.

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JenniferBezingue 01:10PM February 12th 2012
buttons, Embellishments, knitting, oven-bake clay, polmyer clay, projects, tutorials
We all have to start somewhere!

The sweater that started it allMy obsession with polymer clay began with my knitting, a craft I learned in childhood from my grandmother, and I took it up seriously as an adult. My husband gave me a very expensive Kaffe Fassett sweater kit for Christmas in 1992. The kit was light-years beyond my knitting experience level, but I didn't let that stop me. It was my first cardigan, my first colorwork project, and my first knitted project that required me to make creative decisions rather than just following directions. The kit instructions assumed the knitter had a certain level of talent and experience and didn't spell out every step. Lesson 1: never assume.

 

I can't remember (or perhaps, like childbirth, I've blocked it out) how long and how painful it was to make this sweater. As I was knitting the button band, I remember thinking, "What am I going to do for buttons?" My buttonholes too large for most of the buttons at the craft store. Lesson 2: get the buttons before knitting the buttonholes.

 

Thumbing through a woman's magazine, I found the answer. There was a project for making a photo frame out of a kind of clay I'd never heard of, one you could bake in your oven. The pattern was a quilt square that mimicked the pattern in my sweater, and the design was made by pushing the different colors of clay through a tool that looked like a little spritz cookie press. You assembled the extruded pieces and sliced off pieces to cover the frame. I figured I could do the same thing for buttons!

 

the buttonsThe clay section of the craft store was a puzzle to me. There were several brands of clay in different kinds of packaging, and I couldn't tell if there was any difference. I had no art background at all, and it didn't occur to me that I could mix the clay colors I wanted. So I picked the brand that had the colors that most closely matched my sweater. A trip to the sewing section yielded metal shank buttons meant for covering with fabric. The magazine instructions specified a "wallpaper scraper blade" to cut the cane, so after a trip to the hardware store I was ready to start.

 

I assembled the cane according to the instructions, but then was stumped with the instruction to "cut a thin slice" of the cane. What's "thin"? I went with about 1/8", which was about the thinnest thing I'd ever cut. And the wallpaper scraper blade didn't really allow a lot of finesse. First, I covered the metal button with a layer of clay, wrapping it around the edges to the back. Then I pressed the cane slice into the backing and smudged them together. Needless to say, these were some seriously bulky buttons. And I was a crafter who'd just become seriously addicted to oven-bake clay.

 

I still knit, make things from clay, do beadwork, and occasionally try my hand at other crafts, too. This week I'm teaching a clay button mini-class at the Fox Valley Knitters Guild meeting. I'm excited to see how the knitters take to clay, and I'll talk about my experiences on my next blog post. See you then!

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JenniferBezingue 01:41PM February 5th 2012
butttons, knitting, oven bake clay, polymer clay
Reworking Canes

       I've been cleaning out my cane stash and thinking about ways to inspire myself to use up some of my old canes. I decided to re-work some of them into new canes.

       I had an abundance of chrysanthemum canes that I gave a makeover. I changed them into rectangular shapes and put them back together as square canes. The square shapes inspired me to make some square pendants and some tube shaped pendants.

 

 

 

       Starting with another chrysanthemum cane, I re-shaped it into larger rectangles and put them back together in a basketweave pattern. I think I'll have some fun designing with this new shape.

 

    

 

I had yards of this Skinner blended jelly roll cane, so I thought I would change it into squares and use them to create a mosaic window. Now I have some good ideas for using the new cane.

 

 

What about you? Do you have a box full of old canes that need re-styled?

 

 

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AmyKoranek 01:52PM January 23rd 2012
cane, millifiore cane, pendant, Polymer, polymer clay, skinner blend
And Now a Word About Organization

             Now I've done it... I've basically invited the whole polymer clay community into my studio, and you know what they're gonna find out... I'm just not that organized! You'd think with 3 filing drawers, 26 storage drawers and 30 cabinets, I'd have "a place for everything and everything in its place." Well, I do have a place for everything, but rarely is everything in it's place. Are you like this? I think there is a grand collision between the creative spirit and the ability to manage stuff. I don't know about you but when I'm in a creative mood, stuff just seems to come right out of all those drawers and it never finds its way back. I think that if I put something away, I'll forget I have it, and then I'll forget about the great idea I had about it.

 

             But I do have a few schemes in place that I fall back on if and when the spirit of organization comes upon me. You just might find a few of them helpful.

 

 

         Millifiore cane storage: I've invested in stacked drawer units from office supply stores. I sort my canes by design: jelly rolls in one drawer, faces in another, striped and basketweaves in yet another drawer.

 

 

         You might find organizing canes by color to be a better method. Inside each drawer I stand the canes on end so the patterns are visible at a glance.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

           Keeping multiple projects separted: I often work on more than one project at a time. I love using the Sculpey Clay Mats for this purpose. I work on each project on it's own mat and then if I need to move a project out of the way quickly, I can do so by just lifting the whole mat. These mats are also great for storing mokume gane sheets or skinner blends in stacks in drawers.

          The Sculpey Clay Mat is silicone and can even go into the oven if you get a project stuck to it!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

          Storing open clay: Once clay is opened, I separate it basically by color in small baskets which fit into a drawer. I store opened Sculpey III in it's own drawer, Premo! Sculpey in another, and so on. That way I don't need the wrappers to tell me which brand is which.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

         Tool storage: My tool drawer, with tools separated by type and function.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

             All that sparkles: glitters, chalks, embossing powders, mica powders, applicators, it's all in there.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A must have contertop tool: The tape measure that's a sticker! I have these measuring tapes stuck to the front edge of all my counters. My husband found them at JoAnn Fabrics. You get at least 25 running feet marked off in 12" increments in a package.

 

 

 

 

 

 

       But for now, I'm feeling especially creative, so the mess is piling up. There are slices of canes and clay scraps everywhere and Sammi Sculpey is begging me to get my act together. Later, Sammi, I'll clean it up later...

 

 

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5 Comments
AmyKoranek 11:31AM January 13th 2012
clay, millifiore cane, mokume gane, polymer clay, Premo!, Sculpey, skinner blend