The Polymer Clay Smoosher’s challenge theme this month was “Space”.  I created two items and posted them late last night.

First, a rather irritated alien lady.  She has three eyes, and glows in the dark:

My second item, is a stylized Blue Moon pendant, which also glows in the dark:

They’re both made with glow in the dark polymer clay.  The alien lady’s eye stalks are clay covered head pins, anchored into the clay.  For the Blue Moon pendant, I shaped it by hand and added the crater shapes with some tools, then sanded & buffed it after baking.  Last I added some blue acrylic paint for a patina and re-buffed it after the paint was dry to bring the shine out again.

Sometime today, our guild leader will put up a post with the rest of the submissions by our guild members for the Space theme.  Go check them out!

This week’s featured Polymer Clay Smoosher guild member is Catswire.

Catswire hails from Germany, where she lives with her husband and four kitties.  She is an avid crocheter of wire.  Yep, wire rather than threads or yarn.  It makes for some really interesting pieces!  And recently, she’s started working with polymer  clay and is merging the two mediums together for some great items.  Go take a look!

Just look at this cute little fruit basket!  Polymer clay fruit, and crocheted wire basket!

And then this cute little “Sleepy Star”:

And here is a piece that is a wire crochet sculpture – a kitty!

This week’s featured Polymer Clay Smoosher’s guild member is Valerie’s Stuff.

Valerie creates jewelry, pendants, key rings, and bracelet cuffs all with polymer clay.  She also hand paints some pendants with inks which remind me of porcelain beads.  Here is just a sample of the lovely items she has available at her studio:

If you hurry and purchase something by the 24th, you can get 15% off using coupon code “THISWEEK” at check out.

This week’s featured Smoosher is Creative Critters.

Michelle creates whimsical sculptures, beads, ornaments and other items with polymer clay, and she also hand sews cloth dolls, cat toys, plush dolls inspired by World of Warcraft, and many other things.  And she knits, too! Quite the busy gal!

Here is just a small number of the various wares she has available in her studio:

She is having a Christmas in July sale, too!  Coupon code XMASINJULY in select studio categories, gets you 10% off!

Go and have a look around her store!

It seems I have crafting ADD – there are so many things I want to work on or try, that I work for so long on something, lose focus, and move on to something else.

I’ve moved from polymer clay, to making hairbows, to picking up some new watercolor paper blocks and even some nice tubes of artist paints so that I can revisit painting with watercolors, all in the last two months.  I blame the latest on receiving my new how-to book in the Dreamscapes series, Myth and Magic:

Every time I look at her work it makes me want to pick up my brushes again and dust off my rusty skills. Ultimately I would like to finish the portrait of my daughter that I started way back in, gosh, has it been that long already – October! After that post I did get some painting started on it, but I was using student paints then and while I probably should use student grade paints for practice, I came to the conclusion that if I want that portrait to last, I better use artist grade paints.

What I should *really* be doing with that painting is getting some artist grade paper too, and start over on it. Unfortunately I seem to have misplaced the original sketch I had of her on paper and tracing paper, so I’ll have to keep looking for those before I consider starting over. I will just use the painting I started and consider that one to be practice. The paper it is on doesn’t seem to hold up very well to lifting paint so I’ll have to be cognizant of that and not overdo it lest it end up looking like garbage. And if I still can’t find the original sketch after that, then I could probably just make a tracing of the first painting to transfer to the good paper.

Going back to the other two crafts that got put on the back-burner – polymer clay, I will need to pick that up again sometime in the next couple of weeks, the Polymer Clay Smoosher’s guild’s challenge for this month is “Space”, so I’ll need to get something made for that. I have some glow in the dark clay I could use for that project. I just have to figure out what exactly I am going to make.

And the hairbows – I’ll still make those, too, when I can fit them in. I made up several for my daughter to wear, made a set for the daughter of a coworker, and just gave a set to one of my daughter’s little friends for her birthday earlier today (I hope she likes them ). I still have several others that are in various stages of completion including some that are just in my head and I only got as far as cutting the ribbon lengths and heat sealing the ends. At some point I’ll try to get some pictures done and maybe even post some up in my Artfire studio to try selling.

If you noticed that “making jewelry” was nowhere in the list of things I’ve been dabbling in the last few months, a gold star for you. That activity has taken an extreme back seat in the bus for now. My jewelry muse went on vacation it would seem. Depending on what I come up with for the Space challenge, she may make a reappearance, but who knows. For now it’s enough that the other three muses are having it out in my head over whose turn it is to inspire me. I think the watercolor muse has the others beat at the moment. So I’m off to do a little more painting before bed. ‘Night.

The featured Polymer Clay Smoosher this week is EmilyClairCreations.

Valerie has some excellent items in her studio, and she is having a Christmas in July sale, 15% off, and always has free shipping in the U.S. and Canada.

It’s so hard to choose a few items from her studio, but here are some of my favorites:

This weeks spotlight artisan at Shops with Less than (10) Sales is DesignedByAudrey.

I have her ArtFire Rapid cart over on the right hand side of the page if you happen to see something displayed and want it right away – you don’t have to go to ArtFire to purchase, it can be done right from that cart!

Here is one of her beautiful items:

The featured guild member for this week at Shops with Less than (10) Sales, is Designing Rose.

Rachel Rose is a mother of five and an artist of many talents.  She paints, works with pastels, does bead weaving & beading, knits, and creates jewelry items with sterling silver and wire-wrapping, among other things.  She seems to be quite the busy bee! Go take a look around:

This week’s Polymer Clay Smooshers’ spotlight artisan is Into the Dawn Designs.

Dawn is a dabbler in many crafts, including calligraphy, rubber stamping, candlemaking, and glass etching, just to name a few. Her current focus if of course on polymer clay, although she incorporates some of her other crafts into her polymer clay items to enhance and embellish them.  Here are a few of my favorites from her studio:

This week, the featured Polymer Clay Smoosher is CNewcomb.  He does woodwork with a scrollsaw and uses polymer clay to backfill some of his creations.  Check it out!

And gosh, I nearly forgot to mention he is having a sale this week – 10% off!  Go visit!

I’m late this week on this week and last week’s featured guild member – Craft Baby Hope.  This studio is a member of the two guilds I am in and she’s featured at both – this week it is at Shops with Less than (10) Sales, and last week was the Polymer Clay Smoosher’s guild.

Since she is(was) featured in both, I’ll share a few more items than I typically do.  Also, make sure to visit her, she is having a 10% off sale, and all proceeds go toward her fertility treatments.

She only needs one more sale to reach the magic number of 11 to graduate from the Shops with Less than (10) Sales guild – won’t you help her get there?

This week’s Shops with Less than (10) Sales featured guildmember is Critter Crafts.

The gal at this studio makes durable dog toys (and a few catnip toys for kitties), after she grew tired of her own cockapoo destroying store bought toys in as little as a day.  She says the lifespan of her toys is about a year.

Here are a few of the dog & cat toys she has available at her studio:

She’s five sales away from graduating from the guild, please go help her out to reach that goal!

This weeks Shops with Less than (10) Sales featured guildmember is On Pens and Needles.

Don and Jan head up this studio and they both contribute items for sale.  They’ve added a few things since I last featured them here. They’ve added some pens that Don makes as well as a wooden pendant, and there are also some new paper embellishments, some of the cutest flannel washcloths, and a nifty item dubbed the “potato bag” which can be used to heat up food items such as potatoes, corn, cauliflower, dinner rolls, tortillas and the like, in the microwave.  Go take a look around! They have seven sales so far, and when they get ten they will graduate from our guild!  A little sad in parting but, well deserved.  Please go help them reach that magic number.

This week’s featured Smoosher is Sassy Clay Creations.

Dori has a variety of lovely items made with polymer clay at her studio.  She makes pendants, clay covered votives, pins, cell phone charms, zipper pulls, and even has a cute little ring shelf.

Here are a few items from her studio:

Please go give her a visit today! Her studio, blog, or Facebook page.

It’s not deja vu. There aren’t a whole lot of members in the Shops with Less than (10) Sales guild, so repeats will be happening eventually. However, I have chosen some different items this time, to feature from Trish’s shop, SwirlJewels. And to recap, she lives in Adelaide, South Australia.  And she’s having a 20% off sale right now!

Every week a member of Polymer Clay Smooshers guild will be featured on my blog.  This week, it’s our hardworking guildmaster, ColtPixy.

Star lives in Tennessee with her husband, and has been working in various arts & crafts mediums for years.  She’s worked with acrylic and watercolor painting, stained glass, mosaics, and currently her focus is with polymer clay.

She has a variety of jewelry and miniatures in her studio.  Here are a few of my favorites:

You can also find her at her blog.

I missed last week’s featured studio due to my blog issues, so onto this week’s – featured studio of the week for Shops with less than (10) sales is Mad Moravian.

Scott runs this studio and does beautiful woodworking, creating pens, wine bottle stoppers, and more.  He also does a little work in stained glass, chainmaille, and makes beaded wine glass charms.  Go visit his studio, you may see something you like!

I have my database files back and a clean install of wordpress.

If you see any problems let me know.  I know there may be some photo links on featured studio posts that are not working, but that is really the least of my worries at the moment.

Last week after reading how artificial sweeteners like Splenda and Aspartame could potentially goof around with one’s triglyceride and blood sugar levels, I decided to give up diet sodas.

The week before, my gynecologist ordered cholesterol and other similar blood tests for me as I’d never had them done before, and while everything else was within normal ranges, my triglycerides were slightly elevated at 185.   All I’d had to drink that morning – because I did not know I was going to even have a blood test done and so I did not do any fasting – was about 3-4 oz of Diet Dr. Pepper.  Normally I also have coffee, along with some type of cereal and 2% milk, but that is usually once I’m en route to work for my 45-60 minute commute (I take the cereal dry in a baggie, stuff like cheerios so is easy to eat in the car), so those I had not eaten yet.  She did not order a retest so I have no idea if that slight elevation was “normal” for me after a fast, or if it was due to the diet soda.  Either way, I read up on things afterward and decided that day that I was going to stop drinking diet sodas or anything sweetened with those artificial sweeteners – after I finished my last crystal light, and last soda that I already had open and was drinking, of course.

This is not to say I am giving up caffeine, also, oh no. I still have a morning coffee, and instead of soda now I am drinking iced tea, using Truvia as the sweetener.  But, I have not had one drop of soda since last Thursday, nor any crystal light.  Instead, I’ve been trying VitaminWater by Glaceau (both the “zero” and the regular stuff, the “zero” is supposed to have the same stuff that is in Truvia), and sometimes, Gatorade.  I’m not reverting to regular sodas because they contain high fructose corn syrup (HFCS), which I’m also trying to cut out of our diets.  That is turning out to be much more difficult than avoiding splenda or aspartame.  They sneak that stuff into pre-packaged frozen foods that are supposed to be “diet” foods, did you know that?  For shame.  I’d much rather see straight sugar, or cane sugar in foods, than HFCS.  At least with the former types of sweeteners, it takes longer for the body to break them down than HFCS (or so I’ve read).

The hardest part so far is trying to explain to my four year old that we’re not buying such-and-such cereal anymore because it’s “bad” for us (she prefers Lucky Charms and it’s various brand equivalents).  She seems to like an alternate cereal I bought for her (an organic brand) that has a minimal amount of ingredients in it, but not enough to forget about those marshmallow cereals. Not yet, anyway, but I’ll keep trying.  I’m just glad that her preschool sticks to the relatively low-sugar stuff for breakfast like cheerios and chex and the like.  Then again, they probably don’t want a bunch of toddlers hopped up on sugar for the morning, either. LOL

So that’s our goals so far – cutting out HCFS as much as we can, and, at least for me, dropping diet sodas and crystal light. For hubby that last part is probably going to be a bit more challenging, I think.

The Shops with less than (10) Sales guild’s featured studio member of the week is Jewelry by Sherry.

Sherry hails from Iroquois, Ontario, Canada, and creates earrings, bracelets and necklaces using natural gemstones, Swarovski crystals and lampwork beads.  Here are a few samples from her studio – go visit!