Every Wednesday I work at home in my studio. As I only have one day a week in my studio, one of my goals is to be more disciplined with my time so I can get the most amount of work done in the time I have. The first step towards this goal is to create a task list for myself on what I’d like to accomplish in the studio that day. I’ll make my task list up every Tuesday night. Another step in my goal process is to establish a weekly blog post entitled “Studio Wednesday” where I will share what I’ve been creating in my studio lately. A big thank you to my friend Amy who has been a big inspiration to me in setting this goal for myself.

The photos are of some of the jewelry I created with the faux jade polymer clay I found in my studio when I was cleaning. The pendant above contains the Kanji character for “Beauty”. This was the word I chose for 2008.

Today I worked on my fringy bracelet and completed the first pass. On the second pass, I might add a couple more beads here and there but it will mainly be about reinforcing all of the heavier beads in the bracelet.

I also discovered that the sterling silver wires that I had super glued in the mokume gane polymer clay earring components weren’t staying put. When I opened the loop to add the earwires on some of them, the wire started to move. So, after some internet research to find out what type of glue would work better, I went up to Lowe’s and found an epoxy that works well on plastic which is basically what polymer clay is, namely polyvinyl chloride or PVC. Fine particles of PVC are suspended in a liquid plasticizer to create polymer clay. The epoxy has 2 separate tubes that are set side by side with a plunger that dispenses equal amounts of material for mixing. It is the mixing of these 2 materials that creates the strong bond. You can read more about how it works here. It will be fully cured in 24 hours so, hopefully, this will work to keep the wire in place in the polymer clay.