Family Departure - and Claying Again

Well I've had a wonderful time with my family.  My daughter, son-in-law and 2 gorgeous grandchildren were here for too short a time.  My son-in-law was only here a few days but we packed them with outings! The children slept here,  parents at a local B&B.  We saw family and friends and did a little sightseeing too. A wonderful day out with family in Hebden Bridge included a lovely fire in the garden.

The children had a blast running round finding twigs and dead leaves to throw on the fire!
They left on Monday and the house feels very empty now.  
I'll be staying home for a while recovering my energy, and plan to get some more polymer clay beads done.  
I managed to do a little before the family arrived, so here's a little preview of some of my experiments.

A few canes used towards a kaleidoscope cane,

Not too bad for a first attempt I think!

I used this for some beads that didn't turn out too well.  Once reduced the colour difference wasn't very clear unfortunately.  I think I baked them too long and they went rather dark.

These were more successful.  I'm quite pleased with the flower cane I made.  I did a purple flower cane too, but didn't outline the petals so it wasn't so good.

I'm quite pleased with these, made up from various leftovers.  I plan to do a pair of earrings and a necklace of some sort to match.  Note the cat hairs in the photo - Monty, my neighbour's cat, insisted on 'helping' me.  (I use my neighbour's garden table to take photos).

I used some of the previous cane to make this brooch but I'm not too happy with it - too much glitter! I'm pleased with the leaf cane though.   I did make a brooch I like and that will go into my Folksy shop soon.

And here's Monty.  He gave up helping and decided to have a snooze.