The Mid-Southern Regional Branch
Of the British Polymer Clay Guild

Next meeting - Sunday, 20th July, at my house in Caversham, Reading.
Starting at 11am and we are doing a bring and share lunch.
For details please contact sallybuchan@bpcg.org.uk

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9th March Group Meeting Report

The Mid-Southern Group met for the second time on Sunday, 9th March for a bit of claying and chat.

We had a lovely time catching up on what we had each been making since we last met. Michelle showed us her circle necklace in the flesh and I must say that it's very lovely. Susan showed us her impressive necklace made especially for a night out and what she'd been experimenting with. Sally showed us the faux opal she'd had a try at and we discussed sanding and general finishing techniques and all agreed we'd very much benefit from some sort of lesson in finishing. There was excited chat about the Euro Clay Carnival that Susan is definitely planning to attend.

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Faux abaolone pieces by Sally Buchan	Faux abalone lariat necklace by Sally Buchan	Faux abalone heart pendants by Sally Buchan

After lots of chatting and show and telling of clay creations and books (we all agree we love our clay related books) we got down to some claying. The technique we were trying was faux abalone from Carol's book. Sally followed Carol's instructions exactly while Michelle and Susan decided they would prefer a darker look to their abalone and took some colour inspiration from Sue Heaser's book. We left our clay to harden a little in the fridge before slicing while we had a very lovely lunch with more chatting. The slicing stage was very interesting. Sally's faux abalone was looking pretty accurate to Carol's book but Michelle and Susan were not quite so happy with their results. The blocks of colour were a little too narrow which Michelle put down to excessive paintbrush end poking. Michelle and Susan are planning to make bracelets with their faux abalone and Sally is making hers into a few pendants and a lariat.

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Pair of bracelets made with faux abalone by Michelle Shrimpton

The date of our next meeting is to be decided and we've agreed to email each other with our list of things we'd like to try to see if anything on the lists matched up. We will meet in Reading at Sally's home very close to the Oxfordshire border. If anyone's interested in coming along they would be very welcome. Please e-mail sallybuchan@bpcg.org.uk for more information.

Sally Buchan
sallybuchan@bpcg.org.uk

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First Group Meeting - Sunday 13th January Report

Three of us got together for the first meeting of the Mid Southern Group on Sunday 13th January.

We had got together in the BPCG forum and realised we were all relatively new and doing our clay work in our spare time outside of our paid jobs and family responsibilities. However we didn't quite know what to expect - may be we would not be who we had seemed to be. However one look at each other and we knew that none of us were weirdoes and we would be quite safe meeting up.

We had planned to spend a couple of hours sharing ideas and experiences and may be even getting a bit of clay work done. 4 hours later and phone calls from husbands worrying about alien abduction (or wondering when they might expect dinner!) we decided we had better go our separate ways!

In 4 hours we had not done any claying - just a lot of talking. Each of us had lots of examples of our work to "show and tell". We realised that Michelle has been doing this a bit longer and had some wonderful Mokume Gane work to share. Some of it is shown in the forum, but they look even more striking in real life. She had even covered a piece of old plastic tube to make a great box for several of her tools. She had made quite a few focal beads in this technique and we discussed different colour options and why her most popular ones that people had bought were her least favourite. We realised that colour is very subjective and we should never completely dismiss a piece because we don't like the colour, because someone else may love it!

We also discussed pricing of our work and how to start building a reputation. Sally showed us her experiments with transfers, faux ivory and scrimshaw and her millefiori work. Again we realised the photos really don't do our work justice (perhaps we need to discuss better photographic techniques at a future meeting). Sally felt her ivory/bone had lines that were too thick or dark but we all agreed she had created a lovely wood effect with the technique. I explained how I had discovered polymer clay just a few months ago and how without any books or access to websites I had invented a way of creating different layers in the clay - only to discover that this was called Mokume Gane and was a well known technique! I also confessed to my lentil swirl addiction - we found we had all been through that stage! We also shared our thoughts on the different makes of clay, what tools we found particularly useful and we also leafed through each others books - making notes and resolving to spend some more money on Amazon when we got home!

As we realised how fast time had flown we decided to be a bit more organised for next time. At our next meeting (likely to be mid March - date to be confirmed soon) we decided we should have a specific focus. We are going to try making faux abalone. We are going to experiment with different colours and different clays to see how we get on. With that, everyone set off back to our families, with ideas buzzing round our heads and looking forward to getting together next time. Please feel free to join us!

If you are interested in coming to our next meeting, do e-mail me.

Susan
susan@bpcg.org.uk