July Meeting Followup

KCPMC Guild members - meeting update from July. 

Wanaree Tanner will be in Kansas City this fall, teaching her techniques. Susan Silvy will  have a signup sheet at the August meeting. Watch for more info on this class with a fabulous metal clay designer.

CongratulationS to Susan Breen Silvy for winning 2nd Place for Metal Clay in the 2012 Saul Bell Design Awards! Sadly Susan had to miss the awards banquet due to her recent hospitalization, but we're glad she's back now.

Also congrats to Robin Young who was the 2011 Grand Prize Gold Medal winner with her "Family Stringer" necklace of polymer clay fish. 

Schedule swap: The August meeting will be ETCHING Copper, led by Pat Kuehn and team. (More info will be coming later. This may help you with your Name Tag Design Challenge which is due in September.) The September meeting will be looking at Hadar Jacobson's powdered metal clays. (If you have any experience using her clays, we'd love your help with this meeting. Contact Lynette.

KUMIHIMO links

Thanks to Michele, Pat, Cecilia and Janice who teamed up and had everyone busily braiding away on our kumihimo looms last week! We saw a wide variety of braiding materials, lots of samples (with and without beads) and got lots of tips from them.  Check Pinterest for lots of great pics 

Note: We had 3 small (4” diameter) foam looms leftover. They are available for $3.50 each if you want one. After trying this, I can see that the plastic bobbins or spools are really important if you are adding beads to your braids. Here are some of the suppliers I found online if you want to order some:

FireMountain Gems in Oregon (they have the best bulk rates if you are ordering 15 or more of something) http://www.firemountaingems.com/search/?Keywords=kumihimo+disk

They sell bobbins: pkg of 4 2.5” for $4.95

WeirCrafts in Michigan

http://www.weirdollsandcrafts.com/kumihimo/braiding-disk-braiding-plate.html

8 EZ Bobs for $3 or pkg of 100 for $34.95

LythaStudios in Virginia

http://www.lythastudios.com/123bead/kumihimo.html

bobbins: pkg of 8 2.5” for $4.35

Kumihimo Braiding Class

Kumihimo braiding - the demo for our July 18, 2012 meeting.

A team of experts from our membership will teach us how to do this versatile Japenese braiding technique. (Team members are Michele Wineland, Cecilia Rosales, Pat Kuehn and Janice LeMasters.)

Tools: Kumihimo braiding disk (if you have one, bring it!) KCPMC Guild will provide one for each member. Non-members may purchase one at the meeting. ($5 for 6" disk, $4 for 4" disk)

Materials:

• 12 yards (or more) of your chosen string, ribbon, floss, rattail, cord or other non-stretching fiber
• Beads (optional) - and they need to be pre-strung on your thread. If you are new to this technique, like me, you might want to learn the braiding without beads first.
• 8 spools to hold thread (cardboard or plastic floss bobbins, foam hair curlers, old spools, etc)
• we'll have cardboard floss bobbins on hand for everyone

• weight (metal washers,  large beads, small baggie with a couple coins inside, or ?)