I have a bunch of polymer clay sitting around from when I did sculpting (of dragons, primarily, if you’re curious) a few years ago.  Once the kiddo was born, my interest in it kind of waned because it was a bit of a challenge to try juggling work, caring for her in the evenings and trying to do any kind of sculpting with her in the room, especially once she became mobile.  Now that she’s a bit older and can either be entertained by a DVD or with playdoh, I have been contemplating pulling out my stash of clay and trying my hand at making beads.

When I first got into polymer clay, I tried making a few beads but found that I didn’t have much interest in it.  Now that I know how to actually make jewelry, I have revisited the idea of making beads, even if I don’t use any in my own jewelry, although I probably would.

I am still undecided though.  I spent a good deal of time over the weekend looking at polymer clay beads on Etsy, and decided that I like the boutique style of beads, since it combines both scuplting (in a way) and beads together.  The problem is, when I started sculpting dragons, I had it in my head that I was going to make “cutesy” dragons, but the closest I was able to get to that was with a bunch that I made as tree ornaments one Christmas, since we were pretty poor and couldn’t afford to buy gifts, so those ornaments were our gifts that year.  Beyond that, my dragons tended to drift more toward the realistic side (well, as real as a dragon can be I guess, since they are mythical creatures).

So, I don’t know if I could even MAKE cutesy boutique beads. LOL  I’ve always been a realistic artist – in school it was very difficult for me to draw things with a cartoonish look to them.  My brain kept me drawing and painting things as realistic as my hands could handle.  (I’ll post some examples later so you see what I mean)

Coupled with the fact that I can’t stand to waste art supplies, I tend to not experiment a whole lot.  Oddly I would rather see a supply sit unused for a length of time than risk a disasterous result in an experiment.  Which is ironic, since some supplies, like paint, will eventually dry out and become useless – and that is why I never really got into acrylic painting.  The tubes of paint would dry out and become completely unusable because I couldn’t bring myself to try them out on a canvas for fear that it would look like crap.   I stuck mostly to watercolors and pencil.

Anyway, I suppose in order to get into making beads with polymer clay I am going to have to accept the fact that there may be some disasters as I try my hand at them and shake that fear of waste.  Mainly because beads, being small, could also satisfy my deep rooted need for instant gratification, whereas sculpting, while fun, can take me hours and hours – which turn into weeks which turn into months, you get the idea – and in turn I have several works in progress sitting around waiting to be finished.  So not only am I a perfectionist when it comes to my art, I also get bored quickly if it takes too long to complete and I end up moving on to something different.

That explains why I have so many different types of crafts that I have tried out: cross stitch – takes too long; knitting and crochet – has potential to take too long if the project is big, but this one is easy to adapt for car rides and in front of the t.v.; web design – another one with potential to take too long, but I still dabble now and then; painting ornaments – can be a quick project, but morphs into a big one if I buy too many ornaments; creating cards – potentially a quick project, but for some reason my creativity falls flat on these; making hairbows – another one that could potentially be quick, but strangely I still got bored with it; polymer clay sculpting – already explained about that one; and jewelry making – still has potential but I have become a bit discouraged with it.

So anyway.  I have this innate need to create, but I just need to find something that will be relatively quick from start to finish, and as an added bonus, perhaps help earn some money, too.  Yep, when it comes down to it, in the end I’m looking for a way to make money with what I create.  Pretty much half of the examples above, I may have started out with just the intention of doing it for fun or for gift giving, but they morphed into “hey, maybe I can make some money out of this”.  And the reason?  Because I so badly want to be able to quit my job and stay at home, but I would need to either a) win a jackpot lottery, or because the chances of that are nil, b) find a way to make money from home.

I know that a lot of people are making money with blogging, too, and that is another thing I am trying my hand at, but it is very slow going so far, but, because I can sometimes take the time to do that while I am at work, which I cannot do with my other hobbies, I am going to try to stick with it.  And many crafters combine blogging for $ along with their crafting for $, so it certainly can’t hurt if I try as well.

Now to just dust off the clay and start creating… The Fear is large and looming, but I need to defeat it if I want to see if making beads will be something I can even do, and continue doing.

Tags: Boutique Style, Dragon, Etsy, Just Crafty, Polymer Clay Beads