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!

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!

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.

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!

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.

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:

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:

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:

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:

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