Guild holiday swap

As always, the holiday season was a busy, crazy blur.  I can't believe it's been almost three months since I last posted!  I'll start the catching up with showing you what I made for my polymer clay guild's annual holiday gift swap, back at our December meeting.

At the time, I had a stack of clay sheets in a nice palette left over from my guild demo on "Lizard Tails" (from Julie Picarello's book).  Her book also covers makume gane techniques, so I decided to use one of the small stacks for that, using my square and rectangle clay cutters for the impressions.

We currently have one male member, so I always try to make something unisex.   I decided to make a nice, chunky key ring, using the makume gane as a veneer.  The result is below.  I sanded and buffed to give it a nice feel.  I ended up not liking the metal key rings I had, so I made kumihino cord in matching colors as a loop and added a tassel on the end.  Not your typical key fob, but I like it.

I received the lovely little box below made by Celeste Mouchebouf.  The whole top slides off from the base with a nice snug fit.  Celeste demo'd her technique for making those at the January meeting.