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.

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.

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.

Anyway, after the morning’s events, everyone went to a pizza place down the street that has lots of games and stuff. I ordered our food and stood in line to get our drink cups filled. When it was my turn, I set my car keys down on the metal countertop. I filled my daughter’s cup first, then mine. It probably took all of one minute to do this. Then, I go to pick up my keys and immediately toss them back down, because they were SCALDING hot!!!

I kid you not. At first I thought maybe I had imagined it, so I picked them up again, but yep, they were definitely hot! I ended up getting some minor (well, superficial is more accurate) burns on two fingers, from my keyrings. I had to carry my keys to out table holding the plastic part of my car key and my gym membership badge to keep from getting more burns.

I didn’t go to the manager right away, i sat at our table contemplating what had happened, and was trying to figure out how it had even happened. I know the surface the keys sat upon was cool to the touch, I made sure to double check that before I left the counter with our drinks. They were at least 12 inches from the warming device that keeps the pizzas warm, and weren’t touching the soda dispensers either. The only thing I could think of that would do that SO quickly was maybe an exposed wire somewhere within either counter.

After my daughter’s kiddie pizza was done, and while we waited for it to cool off, I went up to let the manager know. He filled out an incident report, and kept asking if there was anything he could do or get for me. I was really less concerned about what was in it for me, and more concerned about it happening to anyone else, particularly any children. In the end I ended up with 20 free tokens and later, a certificate worth 500 tickets to trade for toys.

Later on in the evening after we got home, I decided I should probably see a doctor just to make sure it was just a contact heat burn and not an electrical burn. The doctor was also a little baffled at how it had happened, but said they were superficial heat burns, and that I only needed to use an ointment like Neosporin and bandaids until they healed up. Oh, and because for some reason “they” recommend getting a tetanus shot after burns, I was the lucky recipient of one of those too, since I have not had a tetanus shot since the one I got at 15 years old. Oh goodie. Achey arm, here I come.

Anyway, aside from the freak incident at the pizza parlor, it was a pretty good day. You can bet I won’t be setting my keys down on metal countertops anymore!

I will be glad when this is over, I’ve had ideas brewing in my head for things to work on, and I signed up for a membership at beadsandbeading.com so that I can learn a few techniques with polymer clay that I don’t know how to do yet, and I’d really like to get started on some of that!  But this project has left me little time in the evenings after work to do much of anything but get dinner, relax a little while eating, then get my daughter ready for and into bed, and then start working on some tasks for the project at work, and finally go to bed myself.

The exception was yesterday, since I had completed some extra tasks on Friday (2/3rd of my set number for Saturday), I decided to leave the last 1/3rd for Sunday and take Saturday for myself.  Well, it was also because my daughter was invited to a birthday party across town, and I knew when I got back from that, since she would be staying overnight at her grandmother’s house, that I sure wasn’t going to want to do any work-work… So I went out to dinner with my husband and we hung out for the evening.  I couldn’t muster the motivation to start any jewelry or polymer clay work that evening, knowing I wouldn’t be able to pick it up again who knows when.  So when my husband started playing a first-person shooter video game (I can’t handle watching those, they make me nauseous), I went back to my office/craft room and started reading some of the older posts at Beadsandbeading.com, and noting which back issues I may want to order at some point.  And I also did a blog post here for a Crazy Train rider.

So anyway, if we keep up this speed on how we’re getting through our task list, I am hoping that maybe by this weekend, or early next week, we won’t have to worry about doing any extra work from home and can actually get our own lives back to do with as we choose.  That will be nice indeed.

This pertains to my full time day job. Short story, we’re salaried. As thus, if our company wanted to make us work 16 hour days with no compensation other than our regular pay and a clap on the back, they could. The edict is to do “this task” by “this date”. On paper, it is probably doable, IF everyone does a little every day, including weekends (so, I’m talking maybe 1-3 hrs a day, seven days a week, five weeks straight – on our own personal time). And most likely that is how the upper echelon sees it. That’s not really how real life works though, everything always looks good on paper, so we’ll see. I predict some burnout before it’s over, though.

Anyway. My point is, not really knowing how much extra time this task is going to take out of my off-work life, I will still try to do my best to keep up on the Crazy Train promotions and my guild promotions, but please don’t hate me if I fall behind a little.

Speaking of this task, guess what I need to do now? Yep. Can you see me jumping for joy yet? No? Don’t count on it.

On a positive note, I worked several hours on Saturday making eight new pairs of earrings, in lucite, Czech glass, Swarovski pearls, a few teeny freshwater pearls, and antiqued brass findings. Now where to find the time to take pictures of them and list them for sale?

Hobby Lobby is opening stores in town, and I came across one very near my day job, so I went to check them out one day at lunch, 40% off coupon in hand.  I walked out with a few packages of this new polymer clay made with beeswax, Pardo – in red (ruby), green (amazonite), white (mother of pearl), and black (onyx).

I made some snowmen and Santa beads, mostly with Pardo, but also using Cernit, in the case of the flesh color fo Santa and the orange carrot nose on the snowmen.  Pardo is extremely soft so it was rather challenging to work with.  Now I’m trying my hand at a few angel beads, mostly made with Cernit except the wings in mother-of-pearl Pardo.  I hope to have those finished tonight so I can bake those sometime this weekend and see how this new clay turns out once baked.  If they turn out well, I’ll post them to my Artfire shop for sale.

Speaking of my Artfire shop, I unfortunately have not been able to spend much time, if any, promoting it, not without interfering with my day job, family time or clay/craft time.  I will obviously need to work on that issue if I want to start getting any sales.

Final sketch of my daughter

I can hardly wait to start painting it, though I may not get to that until tomorrow night after a family outing, due to the late time tonight.   Then again I may try starting with some skin tone mixing on scrap paper to get an idea of what I need to mix…

my daughter

On an artists’ forum I recently joined, it was suggested in a class that was done back in 2006, to try overlaying a the reference photograph and the sketch to get an idea of where any tweaks or fixes may be needed.  I did that and there are a few spots that I will need to fix before I will put paint on the paper, minor stuff – like her eyes are just a little too high (especially the right one on the page), her nose needs to be just a touch wider and her mouth needs some adjusting.  Then her body – arm/shoulder position and her dress need some adjustments, too.  But compared against the picture, it’s a rather good likeness of her.  I think someone somewhere (on Plurk I think) said getting back into drawing/painting is a little like riding a bike, you don’t really forget… they were right.  Once I got over that fear that what I put on paper would look like absolute crap, it wasn’t as hard as I thought to get back into it.

Of course, this is just the sketching part so far… goodness knows what kind of chaos will reign once I start putting the paints on the paper!