Play

I had my ‘Play’ photo and post all set up and ready to go and then my sister Caroline sent me this photo of her dog Bentley, taken last Summer, which of course stole the show!

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Hide and Seek

Summer fun for dogs

In tall corn

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Joining in with Ronovan and his haikumily – prompt words this week: SUMMER and FUN

and our 52 week Photo Challenge prompt this week is PLAY.

As far as I know it is the only Weekly Challenge with the prompt words set out for the whole 52 weeks, allowing for photos and posts to be prepared in advance. That’s what we like about it.

This is my PLAY photo:

In the 16 for 2016 Challenge inspired by Cathy at Nanacathydotcom, I wanted to make 10 types of handmade beads and last week I gave myself a PLAY day and got out the Fimo Polymer Clay

Loved it – just me and the clay, glue, scissors and thread – takes me back to childhood. I made 5 types of beads and a few buttons using Fimo, and then some paper-and-thread beads.

As I tell you about it I feel like an excited child running to Mum.

“Look Mum, look what I’ve just made!”

POLYMER BEADS

There are some truly amazing and complicated designs using Polymer Clay on You Tube, but I wanted to do something quick and simple. So I rolled some thin ‘sausages’ of colour, then wrapping them inside a flattened ‘sausage’ of clay and then another. I cut that into slices to stick on the outside of a ball of clay.

Then roll around in the palms of your hand and it all merges together

More playing around and I came up with a couple of other ideas.

As an experiment I wrapped embroidery threads around the Fimo bead. I got very excited about this – do you like them? I can’t find any like them on the internet, but of course there might well be some. The threads are not damaged by cooking the beads in the oven at 120°C .

How to make them: Put the bead onto and thick darning needle or cocktail stick. Poke one end of the thread into the Fimo to secure and then wrap round pulling into the bead. Do a little squishing and shaping and the take off the needle to cook for about 20mins.

Idea number two was to put some Hamma Beads into the clay to see if they would melt.

The bead on the left has ordinary plastic beads, the one on the right uses Hamma Beads.

Once the idea of embedding beads struck I just had to try some more

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More playful experimenting produced another type of bead using paper.

PAPER BEADS

Crumple some old magazine paper to make it more absorbent, then put in a tiny bath of PVA mixed half and half with water (which I think creates a Modpodge substitute).

Then squeeze out and shape into a ball. Before the glue has dried wrap round with embroidery threads pushing the end into the paper with the blunt end of a needle to secure. Make a hole through the bead with a darning needle or a cocktail stick and leave to dry.

Our 52 week Photo Challenge is devised by 4 fab photo fiends: Cathy, Jane, Melissa and Me

Come and PLAY with us this week or join us next week when the prompt is:

REPEAT

repeat repeat repeat repeat repeat repeat repeat repeat repeat repeat repeat repeat repeat

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