On Saturday 17th of March I will have a stall at North East Pet Expo. As this is PET expo I had to create something related to animals. I decided to make needle felted animal brooches and little toys. I hope customers will like them. 

Working on a website is a time consuming process, but the one which has to be done. I am doing quite well, I think,  and in some days will be able to present you its new look.  At the same time I have  lots ideas of new designs  and some commissioned  jewellery pieces to finish. 
And still have no time for working with porcelain... 

Cold porcelain is not a porcelain at all. It is a kind of dough which can be prepared at home. Main ingredients are white glue (PVA glue) and corn flour. Sometimes I use potato flour. There are thousands recipes online so it is easy to find one you like. The dough you get is smooth, easy to work with. It is air dry "clay". You have to give min 24 hours to dry the item you create. When dried cold porcelain is very hard and it is possible to make even very thin pieces. The biggest problem for me is shrinkage. You have to be prepared that dried item will be approx. 30% smaller than the wet one. Also in thickness. So if you make something 3mm thick, you ventually will get the thing only 1mm thick. The other problem is keeping the shape of drying items. For example if you cut a circle you will never get flat circle if you leave it unpressed. If you press it it will not dry. Now I am trying to dry some items between to layers of plastic. It has been 24 hours now and they are still wet. Because of big shrinkage, you can't make a cold porcelain creation on the core of something. Some days ago I made a ring on metal band. It was perfect and suddenly after a week the big crack appeared.
The cold porcelain dough has nice ivory colour and I would be happy if it will look the same when dried. Unfortunately dried cold porcelain, specially this one based on corn flour looks like dry pasta, which is not really attractive. The solution would be to add some paint and knead it to cold porcelain. I used white acrylic paint but you can use any colour you want. Dried cold porcelain is not very good for sanding a surface, so it is better to smooth your creation in the wet stage. Thin edges can be sanded and thicker items can be drilled but you have to be careful not to put too much pressure as you can brake. To finish my jewellery pieces I paint them and varnish. Acrylic paint and varnish could be used. Today I've got Pebeo Porcelaine 150 paints. They can be bake in the oven if applied on proper fired porcelain but don't do it on cold porcelain. The next time I will try to bake slowly cold porcelain in the oven (put the item into the cold oven and warm it up to 170 degrees), than paint it and bake again. We will see if it will be any better...
Here is a link to the website with recipe and tutorial for cold porcelain. I recommend to read comments as well, some other recipes there 
http://www.craftstylish.com/item/2802/how-to-make-cold-porcelain/page/all

And here are some of my cold porcelain jewellery:

I was experimenting with some air dry clays to choose the best one for my new jewellery collection "Clay and Wire". The most I would like to work with proper porcelain, but first of all I don't have a kiln and don't have an access to any yet and the other thing is that I want combine clay and gold or silver plated wire, so rather not possible to fire the item. 
So air dry clay - first I tried Newclay. Not good for my projects at all. It is nice to work with and dried piece keeps shape and details, but it is not strong enough and cracks after even light pressure. And I don't like the greyish colour and visible nylon fibres. Newclay could be fired in a kiln and maybe after that the final product could be better. But I don't have a kiln...

The second clay or material I tried was Sculptamold. I followed the manufacturers rules for mixing (2 part of dry material + 1 part of water) and ended with very soft, sticky paste which probably could be good for filling the mould, but too soft for making any shape. Another disappointment.

The third clay was Art Paper Clay - with 3 parts of dry component + 1 part of water I supposed to get a dough which I could knead, but it was too soft and sticky again, even after the hour or more. Did I something wrong? I will try this material anyway again, maybe changing proportions will help.

So my final clay was home made "cold porcelain" - finally product I like. Smooth, easy to roll and cut and sculpt.

Next experiment will be to use porcelain oven baked paints to colour and glaze my "cold porcelain" jewellery pieces. Fingers crossed...

Winter is coming! Evenings are long, dark and cold, mornings are frosty. You need something cosy, soft, funny. Why not to try felted jewellery?
Here it is! Quirky rings, earrings light and soft to touch, cute animal brooches.
Welome to winter marra jewellery!

Now my felted jewellery is available in Artique@The Marina, Amble

I have just came back from Artique @The Marina, Amble. They sold 5 pieces of my jewellery. That's nice 

During Alnmouth Arts Festival in the end of June I have been invited to have a stall at Berwick Arts and Crafts Festival. As I sold a few items I had to prepare more to be able to present them during craft day Sunday 28 July. I also have designed and printed leaflets about marra jewellery . My stall will be in The Granary, Dewar's Lane.
I am looking forward to this day especially as we are going to stay the previous night in the nice hotel nearby (I don't know which one - it is a surprise).
I want to invite anyone to visit Berwick Arts and Crafts Festival this weekend.