Total Art Soul - for artists

We take inspiration from myriad sources for our polymer clay beads. Clay is a wonderful material to use. It's versatility allows for making any shape you like and for reproducing all sorts of colour schemes.

The pillow beads pictured here were inspired by the Persian carpets in a friend's shop. Mike spent an afternoon photographing various carpets before going into a colour mixing frenzy! Normally we make very small amounts of beads using a specific theme but Persian carpets have resulted in more beads than usual! So plenty to sell to jewellery designers and plenty for us to use in our own designs

These pillows are in very rich coppers, golds, reds, blues and purples with the gold adding shimmering depth. They are perfectly complemented with the copper findings and facetted Carnelian but would look equally stunning with golds and Sunstone.

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I love making handwired jewellery with a theme. Sometimes I can make two within a couple of days then it's months before another one appears. This one took about a week. Mike's nautilus beads set me off on this one plus looking at photographs of beach pebbles. I popped the nautilus beads on to a saucer and the others were slowly added. Next came the jade beads..then the seaglass and pearls. After wiring and stringing I had an asymetric single strand bracelet but it didn't look quite right. It wasn't until I made up the second strand that the name came. The bracelet became the Selkie's garden full of all the things she'd collect in her human and seal forms: shiny pebbles, seaglass, flowers, beads, pearls, shells and of course a captured human heart or two... I hope whoever ends up owning this one loves it as much as I loved making it......Pat

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