Michelle's Blog

A Little Knitting – Well actually quite a lot of knitting

Michelle Shrimpton — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 13:52:45 +0000

You can blame Claire Wallace, it’s all her fault! Sometime ago I saw her knitted polymer featured on Polymer Clay Daily. I just loved the effect and I had a go at making my own bangle using her lovely reverse stocking stitch tutorial. I was thrilled with it, but the stocking stitch took forever and I really felt mine wasn’t as realistic as Claire’s looked to be.

I put the idea away for a while until it got towards Christmas and I started thinking of ideas for baubles. I’ve had numerous goes at covering round objects and it’s difficult. Difficult not to squash one side while you work on the other, difficult to get the curvature right. Generally difficult. Which of course meant I absolutely had to try it!

I had some plain glass baubles so I decided to try covering those. The stocking stitch wouldn’t work because I wanted to be able to see through the openings in the weave, like you can with real wool. So for my first attempt I went for the plain knitted look. The top looked excellent but the bottom really wasn’t neat enough for me to be happy with, and it did look a bit plain. So for my second attempt I added some knitted ‘edges’ and polymer clay buttons. Much better!

Then of course I started looking at knitting on Flickr, getting more ideas, I even found myself photographing a friend’s jumper! My next 2 baubles were considerably more elaborate and I gave them as gifts to my family for Christmas. They were hugely well received!

For now I’ve run out of white clay and because it’s January, money too. So I’ll work on something else until I get another clay order done. Although the idea of making patterns somehow keeps nagging at the edges of my mind…..

More Cactus

Michelle Shrimpton — Wed, 19 Oct 2011 17:06:27 +0000

My mum loved my little cactus so much I made her a set of her own. My dad found the little pots in his shed, a bit bigger than my originals but still cute. Mum utterly loved them! We had the family round at the weekend and one of the little children (about 5) thought these were fascinating. He carefully played with them for ages, although when we left him unsupervised he broke a few bits and there were lentils everywhere!! Nothing a little superglue won’t fix

Paula Pindroh inspired polymer clay cactus

Michelle Shrimpton — Sun, 02 Oct 2011 16:26:40 +0000

Ever since I saw Paula Pindroh’s polymer clay cactus pots on Polymer Clay Daily I’ve been meaning to try making some. We’ve having a mini-heatwave right now so it seemed the perfect thing to try. Paula’s not wrong, they’re hugely satisfying and fun to make. I put them in tiny terracotta pots I’ve had for years, knowing one day they’d find a use. I’m so taken with them I just know I’ll make more.

Rediscovering the wonders of Flickr

Michelle Shrimpton — Thu, 29 Sep 2011 16:01:25 +0000

I rediscovered the wonder that is Flickr the other day. I’ve been putting more photos of my work on it, although I really must improve my photography skills.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/52559900@N02/

New homes for the mini snowmen

Michelle Shrimpton — Fri, 24 Dec 2010 10:28:12 +0000

All my lovely mini snowmen were snapped up with enthusiasm by my work colleagues! I sent a sort of ‘Charity’ style email encouraging them all to donate the space at the end of a branch on their Christmas tree to a needy snowman this Christmas. All jolly happy souls and guaranteed not to melt! Strangely enough nobody chose the ones I thought they would, but they loved them and they’ve all gone on to new homes and new lives. The one with the blue and white scarf was snapped up by a Portsmouth football fan, he’s now called ‘Eric’, another was given as a gift to a well behaved daughter, another is standing on a flat screen TV because he stood out better there. I hope they all enjoy them for years to come.

Merry Christmas everyone!

Mini Snowmen Christmas Decorations

Michelle Shrimpton — Sun, 19 Dec 2010 19:50:24 +0000

Every week seems to bring some other thing that needs doing, especially in the run up to Christmas. I hadn’t done any claying for a few weeks and my fingers were twitching. We’ve got lots of snow, couldn’t go out anywhere so I had my first proper clay day for ages.

I really fancied doing something simple, and given the weather, snowmen were the obvious choice! I made these for my office colleagues, one each, and each is different. The bodies are Sculpey Ultralite so they’re lightweight and hang easily on a tree. I’m so pleased with them, I hope everyone likes them! I’ve bought myself a halogen oven recently and it’s really good at cooking clay, although all my little snowmen laid out looked rather like some sort of snowy massacre!! My husband thought it looked like I was trying to torture them under the hot halogen lamp! They cooked perfectly though, no melting

They’re so cute! It was quite tricky to think of different hats for them that have shapes that aren’t too tricky to make. This is a better picture of the finished snowmen with their silver hanging thread:

A little crabby…

Michelle Shrimpton — Mon, 16 Aug 2010 19:50:41 +0000

Crab brooch

I’d been doing lots of thinking about Polymer Clay but I hadn’t actually made anything in a while and my fingers always get itchy when that happens. So a quick bit of sculpture fitted the bill nicely. This is my rather handsome Polymer Clay crab brooch. I’m so pleased with how he turned out, particularly his eyes! The colours are custom blended and I thought they turned out great. He’s about 7-8cm accross so a good sized brooch, and now I have the hang of the crab ‘body layout’ I might have a try at a smaller one in a more exotic colour.