Had another meeting today of the new London Polymer Clay group. We met in Waterstones in Piccadilly and it was great to see everyone's work and the completely different variations in how people use Polymer Clay.

Some of the people there were:
Carol Blackburn,(who I met up with recently) who brought along some of her lovely bowls and beads for us to see.
Debbie Carlton, (who I actually bought a pair of earrings from a couple of years ago!) who brought along lots of great, colourful work to show us.
Kotomi Yamamura, who brought some of her wonderful Russian Icon/ Medieval inspired jewellery, which uses Polymer Clay in such a different way. Full of jewels, precious stones and beads, this really is very covetable stuff!
Sarah Maloney, who makes miniatures and brought along some food and goldfish for us to see- extremely cute and finely detailed work.

We had a lovely few hours chatting and catching up on any Polymer Clay news. If you're interested in coming along for our next day please do contact me.

It always surprises me when people assume that because I make jewellery, I wouldn't want to buy any. Surely you wouldn't assume that because someone likes cooking they'd never want to go out to a restaurant? I love jewellery- and don't think you can ever own enough!

Back in December I saw a ring in the Sunday Times Style magazine. It said it was made by LLadro - which completely threw me as I knew them for their porcelain figures etc, but I didn't manage to see one at the time. Now of course the LLadro shop has just moved back to its newly renovated premises just a couple of doors down from Waterstones where I was today, so how could I not take the opportunity to pop in and have a look?!? I was only planning to look at the ring but as soon as I saw it was adjustable, and part of a range of jewellery, I ended up with the ring and the Pendant Necklace. Now I just need to save my pennies to buy the rest of the range!

I also popped along to St James' Church where there's an interesting market. I was really pleased to find the amazing work of Demec. They use Tagua Nuts to make their own beads which they combine with silver, silver and gemstones. I've never seen the nuts used in this way and they really are beautiful to look at, and feel. If you like contemporary, simple jewellery I'd really recommend checking them out. I may have to add one of their pieces to my ever-expanding collection!

Back home and on with beading- just to show that the beaded bead I finished yesterday wasn't a fluke, here are some of my current beading works in progress.

The piece at the top is a beaded cuff that has come to a stop. It uses two pieces of Dichoric glass, made by Marlene Minhas, that I've beaded around. But I've added them to the backing material and am now not sure whether to continue with the coloured lines. The plan was for the rest of the background to use the same 'tealy' coloured seed beads as used on the cabs, along with the coloured stripes you can see. But now I'm not sure about the stripes. I've been pondering it for over 2 months now, so all suggestions welcome!

The pieces at the bottom left are the start of the new beaded bead I'm working on.

The piece at the bottom right is the next piece in my Geometric Beadwork Series. I abandoned the piece I started last year as I had the urge to change the sizes as I went along.