Ponsawan Blend

If your passion is Polymer clay, first thing in the morning, after your first cup of Joe, you turn on your computer and check out Polymerclaydaily. Every time I see my work featured there, I fell like I just won a lottery.
This time Cynthia gave the title "Ponsawan Blend" to me. I can't help but laughing. This blend, I have to say, I dreamt it. No kidding. I was planning a bead making class for members of Indiana Bead Society at their monthly meeting which means we will make some beads, baked and they can take the beads home within 2 hour. A few of them took a workshop with me before, most are clay virgins. I want them to make beads using blend sheet, but learning skinner blend is a class by itself and I only have a few pasta machines. So I went to bed worrying and the clay fairly came and told me to simplify the blend. The idea is to line up the color from light to dark, overlap them a little bit, fold and run the sheet through a pasta machine. With a few run, the sheet will be blend, almost perfectly.
The class went well with the help of Le Ann, Kathy and Ann. I divided them into 3 groups, 3 tables with a few pasta machines and each of us take turn teaching different technique at each table, then we rotate. At the end of the night everyone went home with a handful of beads.
I am using the blend to make these mini roses, you can see the tutorial at http://www.polymerclaybeads.blogspot.com/

Here I used the petals to make a cute flower for clip-on earrings.

Pebble-like beads

Back then when it seemed like everyone was making Pebbles, I was hesitant. You see, when they were so worried about who made it first, who was the originator. After all, we just copy of Mother Nature.

My goal this year, with the TADA365 Group, is to make a Collection of Jewelry and my theme is "Lush garden". I am working on elements and things that we will find around the garden. I wish to have a small garden in the backyard where Ada and I can enjoy it together. This way the jewelry that I sell will be more meaningful to me and my customer.
I gathered few stuffs together to use as inclusion; real sand, embossing powder, diamond flake and salt. I rub the salt into the beads to get extra rough texture and poked a few holes. I really like the result.

Fimo translucent clay gave out flakes or bubbles, so they look different. I like the Pardo translucent the most and I only have 1 box left, help me.

I decided to try Inka Gold paint from Viva Decor. The result is different kind of color, more metallic look, but yet, earthy.
So, here's my take on Pebble -like beads, and more colors to come. They are fun to make :)