London Polymer Clay Group

Despite the gloom of January we welcomed twenty members to the first Clay Day of the new millennium. It certainly wasn't gloomy inside. It was great to see many old friends and to welcome some newer members. 

We are so lucky to have such talented demonstrators within our group so thanks to Theresa, Ruth and Jude for showing us how to make interesting canes, some simple, some more detailed.      

Because we were asked to use only blue and white clay for our canes we were able to share slices, giving us the possibility of mu...

We had a delightfully busy and buzzy Clayday on Sunday.  It was great to see so many regular friends, and to welcome five new members.  Alex, Diana, Marion, Mel and Pauline - we all enjoyed meeting you, hope you had a good day and that we’ll see you again next time. 

Demos were given by Ann, Ruth and Theresa using a range of products for surface effects.  People then got creative trying out Pan Pastels, ultrafine glitter, nail foils and others together with different texture sheets and stencils. There was a fair amount of golden gleam and silver sparkle in evidence on the many pieces so it was all very seasonal.  As someone said “you can n...

Hello everyone, Hope that you are all looking forward to our Clay Day on 24th November, the last one before Christmas, with an opportunity to try out some interesting SURFACE TREATMENTS.

We will be exploring a range of products available for use as surface treatments on polymer clay and experimenting with their use.

These will include Pan Pastels, Pearl Ex, Cosmic Shimmer, Derwent Inktense pastels, Ultrafine Glitter, Gold Leaf (sadly imitation), Nail Art Foils and maybe more.

These will be used along with stencils and texture tools.

We will also be looking at ways to seal these products - possibly Renaissance Wax  etc...….

Examples of the products will...

Our September clayday with Clare Mcknight was, as always, a jolly and convivial gathering.
Clare demonstrated her Christmas Heart tree decorations and tea light holders.

It was so lovely to see the innovative ideas members brought to their creations. That is always the
joy of claydays – the originality of the response to the work demonstrated. So we had everything
from traditional Christmas to very subtle designs and utter bling! All were fabulous. Thank you Clare
for your friendly demo plus delicious recipe.

The Show and Tell table also held some treats for us all so please take a look at Bridget’s photos.
It was very difficult to have to inform y...

September's clay day will help you get ready for Christmas!

 Clare McKnight will be sharing two Christmassy options for our September clay day.  Pretty tea light holders and heart tree decorations.  You can choose to do one, or both.

Tea lights holder will be formed using translucent clay over a glass jar, with a pierced pattern, allowing the light to shine through the tiny holes.  Clare uses empty 200g Nutella glass jars,  (See her Nutella Brownie recipe below to use up the contents).

Heart are made using scrap clay.  These make attractive Christmas tree decorations. with a subtle sheen finish.  Clare will also show a very simple way t...

Clay Day 28th July  

We had a super day on Sunday learning all about clasps, closures, toggles, hooks – you name it - with all the demos by our lovely members.

Ann showed us how to create intricate wire clasps (which she claimed were quite easy really), Ruth showed a selection of simple link closures and toggles and even I managed to finish one of these!

Following this Theresa’s embedded magnets were a hit, with one new member, who does not have pierced ears, discovering that the magnets were strong enough to hold earrings together through her ear lobe. Who knew? Finally, Jude demonstrated how to make wire pins for a large “statement” brooch.

(See...

July's clay day is all about clasps, hooks and toggles​

 A lovely matching closure can make all the difference to a necklace or bracelet.  A polymer toggle, a bead clasp with embedded magnets a handmade wire hook, bail or link is just what you need for a perfect finish.  At our July clay day we will have a series of short demos of different ways to make your own clasps, hooks and toggles, and Ann will also demonstrate how to make best use of her products.

The Show and Tell table will have this as a theme, and we hope everyone will bring pieces with elegant closures they want to show off, pieces where the do-up raised a problem they’d like t...

Sunday 26th May clay day was our regular ‘focus on colour’ session, with Jude demonstrating three different options for people to work on their understanding of colour and colour mixing in polymer clay.

The three exercises were:

• instinctual colour mixing – a reliable way to get the colour “recipe” of any colour you want.

• pivot tiles – an exercise in seeing how colours shift when colour-wheel neighbours are added in controlled quantities, and then how they shift again when white, grey or black are added.

• mosaics – Jude brought along some really beautiful mosaic beads with colour shifting “tiles” running around them – a very effective tec...