I'm Elaine Robitaille, currently living in Swift Current, a small town in Saskatchewan, Canada. I'm originally from Calgary, a less small town in neighbouring Alberta.
2) Why do you do what you do?
That's sort of asking like 'Why do you breathe?' When I'm in a healthy place in my world, I make things - beads, jewelry, pictures, programs, fancy baking. When I'm not in a happy place, I don't. It was never a conscious decision but came along naturally a lot like breathing and walking.
3) When did you start your craft?
11 years ago, around the time I finished college and was pregnant I was making some spending money selling my handmade jewelry at shows and to friends. It was a lot of fun but I had increasingly expensive taste in beads and it came to the point where I either had to stick to inexpensive beads or learn to make beads. Not quite ready to talk myself into getting a torch and learn lampworking I bought a few packages of Fimo and made beads.
4) How do you go about making a bead? I read about mapping, so: When you make the canes how big are they? Do you make the beads first and then cook them?
All of my beads are made from polymer clay. Most of them are made with canes or millefiori which is like the glass bead makers version of the same - long logs or canes of glass are built up together to make images then slices are taken off the canes and applied to a base. Polymer clay allows you incredible flexibility in what pictures you make.My flower canes start out about 4 or 5oz and 1.5" across but some people makes canes that are several pounds and more complex canes are larger because they are usually many smaller canes put together. I then reduce the cane to a smaller size, often about 1/2" across (the size I sell segments in my other shop). For most of my beads I make a base bead then apply slices of cane designs to it, bake it, drill a hole in it, sand it, buff it and usually varnish it. Some of my beads are just thick cane slices.
The canes start off large for the most part and because it's clay you can just squish and pull it longer and smaller across. The glass version is heated and stretched, the clay one is warmed and squished and stretched. I wrote / write tutorials about how to do the caning and other technical parts of polymer clay art because in my non craft life I'm a technical person but usually the one who gets to mediate between customers and programmers. So I wrote instructions on how to turn any image into a cane or how to measure and mix colours or how to predict the size and quantity of cane you make. Polymer clay is like jewelrymaking - there are tons of project tutorials out there but not a lot on general but higher level technique.There's the whole (clay) life story!
5) If you were a tree what would you be?
If I were a tree I'd probably be a maple. When I was very little, before we moved out west, there were maples in our yard and I have the most vivid memories of leaves in the fall and syrup on the snow in the winter.
6) What is your favorite item in your shop?
My favourite items in my shop are almost always the beads with little faces. They're an example of beads I made even knowing they're a little (or a lot) odd. I mean, faces on your beads. Still, they've been well received online and people buy them at shows so I guess odd appeals. My favourite of the current batch are my blue green girls:
7) What do you think of the phrase "Handmade Revolution"?
Sounds like I should be lifting my pencil crayons to the air in a salute and saying 'Viva la Revolution!' I've been a bleeding heart liberal community minded misfit my whole life. I've had respect and appreciation for what people make, grow and dream up about the same amount of time. I'm happy to see how much DIY and handmade has become a part of culture again.
8) Online you can find me at:
http://www.tooaquarius.com/ (my blog lives here!)
Here are just a few of Elaine's beautiful creations. I'm agog at her skill.
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