Creativity Tips - Creativity in the Morning

Did you know most people are usually more creative in the mornings before all those things you have to do creep in to your head? I do my best to get to a local coffee shop a few times a month to draw and drink coffee while I am still waking up. Try something creative first thing in the morning and let me know if you can see a difference.

How to make Ceramic Beads and Buttons

Good morning! I just updated the Jennifer Jangles Shop as well as the Jangles Etsy Shop with all sorts of ceramic goodies. When I was mentioning it on Facebook the other day, someone asked me about the process. I realized these days I talk so much about sewing that there are probably lots of you folks who would like to know about my process of making my ceramic items goes. Here we go, I will walk you through step by step.

I start by rolling out clay to cut out buttons and pendants. The edges are rounded and smoothed by hand so they don't chip once they are out of the kiln. I hand form all of the three dimensional beads as well.

If the beads and buttons are flat, they are sandwiched in-between two plaster boards to prevent warping as they dry.

After a couple days of drying, the beads go into the kiln and are fire to almost 2000 degrees F. This is called the bisque firing.

They come out bright white and no longer brittle. They are ready for glazing.

I used underglazes to paint my beads. They are like paints where they can be layered and they don't move in the firing.

The beads and buttons are out on skewers while I paint them. This way I can get all sides with glaze.

After they are all underglazes. I put a clear coat of glaze on top of the pieces. This is what makes them shiny. But when they go in to the kiln, they are all pink, the glaze isn't clear yet.

This time when the beads and buttons go in to the kiln they can't touch anything. The clear glaze runs and will stick to anything it touches. So everything is suspended on a wire in the firing.

The kiln fires for about seven hours and then it has to cool completely before you can open it. I crack the lid once it's getting to cooler to speed the process up a little.

Now they are all shiny and bright and ready to be unloaded.

I put them on a tray and then they are ready to be sorted, put on cards, and photographed for the shop.

This is my book, Ceramic Bead Jewelry, that teaches you the process in detail if it's something you want to learn. You can find it on Amazon.

Have a great day!

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Bugapalooza Strike Offs

Look what just arrived in the mail.... Bugapalooza strike offs. Whats a strike off, you ask? Well in the fabric printing world, the mill takes the design files that we (In The Beginning Fabrics and I)  send the mill. The mill does a first round of printing the designs on fabric. They screen print small pieces of the design and these are to make sure the colors are correct.

Think about if the mill just printed thousands and thousands of yards and it was the wrong color, yikes! Strike offs are usually sent once, notes are made about color changes and sent back. Then a second round of strike offs are sent. Usually that's all that needs to be done, every now and then a third round is required.

These strike offs are for my Bugapalooza fabric line that is arriving in stores in April. This is the first round of strike offs and they turned out really great. Every single one needs to be examined for printing flaws and color changes. 

Over the next few weeks, I will start planning out what patterns and projects I want to sew with these prints. This gives me a head start so when the yardage arrives I am ready and don't have to think about a thing and I can begin sewing.

 In the meantime, I will start sewing some smaller projects with these, because seriously, receiving strike offs is like being a kid on Christmas morning.

I always get questions about this.... how do you get these in your favorite quilt shop? Tell them to contact In The Beginning Fabrics for Bugapalooza or you can e-mail them this blog post.

                             

 Have a great day,

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Sneak Peek - A Walk In The Woods

Hello, I don't always give sneak peeks at upcoming fabric lines but I just can't wait on this one any longer. This one is close enough to landing in stores that I am going to go ahead and give you a little taste of it that will be in your favorite quilt shop in July.

It's called A Walk in The Woods as you can tell from the images it's got a fall theme. My favorite thing about this line....I have written a project book to go along with it. It's got the wall quilt shown above as well as placemats, a table runner, stuffed pumpkins and more. You'll have to wait until it comes out to see the rest, but I couldn't be more excited.

If your favorite quilt shop doesn't carry my fabric or if you are a quilt shop that wants to carry my fabric, In The Beginning Fabrics is who you'll want to contact. There wholesale information is here or you can print this page out and take it in to your shop.

And speaking of fabric, I did just list some of my basics line Hoopla and Everyday Fun in the shop yesterday. You can look for the entire collection in your favorite quilt shop but you can find a smithering of it here in the Etsy shop and on my website.


Have a great day,

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New Licensing Images for My Portfolio

Hey, Hey, Happy Spring! It's getting warm here in Georgia and so I've been dreaming of planting my garden. I can't wait to have flowers in my yard again. 

Thought I would pop in and show you what's been going on behind the scenes here. It's become the time of year where I am working on my licensing portfolio, freshening it up with new work. The image above is appliqué and free motion quilting, I have a whole series of these I am working on with fun phrases. I had to buy a super small and very sharp pair of scissors to cut out all of those tiny appliqués. 

I've been painting as well. Birds, flowers, little animals and more. Of course "springy" things...

I hope you're hanging in there waiting on spring yourself, it's been a rough winter for a lot of folks. Soon enough, soon enough...

Have a great day,

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New Gifts and Holiday Shipping

Hello, Hello,

Hope everyone is getting there shopping, crafting, and baking done. Uh...can't say that I am, but it's on the list for this week. I thought I would do a post on shipping dates, if you're still shopping like me. :)

The last day for shipping is Friday Dec. 20th at noon EST. Everything in the Etsy shop is in stock and ready to ship. If it's ordered before noon it will ship on that same day. Always e-mail me if you have questions, I am happy to help. The Jennifer Jangles store products are usually made when ordered, so patterns are the only thing that I can ship from there between now and the 20th.

As for shipping times, any order with a shipping fee of 4.50 or more will be shipped priority mail. Priority mail is 1-3 days, usps has a handy map now to let you know exactly when it will arrive. Anything under 4.50 in shipping fees is sent first class mail and it arrives somewhere between 2-7 days. If you need to upgrade send me an e-mail and we'll get it out sooner.

After all of those details, I can sum it up with, it's not to late to get gifts shipped, wahoo! I just added some ornaments, wall hangings, dishes, etc to the Etsy shop. I even put in four key keepers that were just featured in Stitch Craft Create as a project. 

Christmas has been marked down over at Etsy too. Jennifer Jangles Studio will be closed from Dec. 21st through Dec 26th. Orders placed during that time will ship on the 27th.

Happy Holidays!

Jennifer

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Shh....don't tell anyone

Hello, hello,

I feel like I haven't talked to you forever. It's true but I have been working very hard lately. It's that time of year where I am in full swing preparing for the holidays, designing new fabric and patterns, and coming up with new products. It kills me to not snap photos during the day when I am busy in the studio. so if you folllow me on facebbok, the blog, instagram, twitter, pinterest....you get the idea, I just haven't been there lately. Well I can't take much more of this so I am breaking my no photo policy and showing you a few things, it's just between us okay?

Been working on a new sewing pattern. I've gotten a hold of my strike offs for Everyday Fun and Hoopla. It ships to stores in November. Strike offs are the color proofs in the fabric world. They are usually pretty small samples so I have to be very strategic when sewing.

As you saw in the first photo, tons and tons of holidays beads and projects are being designed right now. Can you believe that the holiday projects are less then a month away? As I've been preparing holiday things, I've also been working on new gift ideas as well. I have been painting lots of pottery in new styles and I cannot wait to show you more.

I hope you're doing well, well chat more soon,

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Not So Spooky Fabric

My new Not So Spooky Halloween fabric and It's Christmas! is arriving in stores right now, and since the day I turned this line in I have been wanting to sew my Okey Dokey Owl and Friends Applique Quilt from the fabric. 

The quilt pattern is for a smaller quilt measuring 36" x 48". I wanted this one to be bigger so I added a couple of borders to the quilt. The outer border is a 3" strip of the black candy corn fabric. The 10" border is the border fabric from Not So Spooky and I added the Halloween Cat fabric for corners.

In other news, Therm o Web has dedicated a week to sewing with my fabric and patterns over at their blog. To celebrate my week on the ThermoWeb blog, my patterns are marked 20% off this week in my Etsy shop. I haven't seen everything that's been sewn yet, but what I did see was super cute.

I'm sewing like crazy this week so I will keep posting projects here in the new fabric as well.

Enjoy!

Beads, Camper, and Painting

Hey, Hey, How are ya? Summer is in full force here and one minute it is loads of fun, lots of parties, get togethers, vacations, and trailer re-dos. Then... it's trying to cram a full weeks work in around all that fun that gets me frazzled. I peaked in to the Etsy shop last week and realized there were no beads. Yikes! I couldn't believe it. No worries, there are lots in there now.

I couldn't believe all of the comments about our new camper Lucy, thanks! Around here I have coined the term "camper brain" it's where you should be doing things like cleaning, laundry, or working and you can't do anything but camper stuff. Nik and I have a huge case of camper brain right now. We have been ripping out wet and smelly paneling lately. It's a gross and dirty job but it's the first thing that needs to be done.

One thing I am doing for work is painting. There's a deadline coming up for some design work. It's not a done deal that this company will use my work so I am doing lots of painting and designing to present to them. But I am excited about the opportunity and am having lots of fun in the process.

Hope you're having a great summer,

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