I forgot to put halos on the angels, and I’m debating whether to add them since their flesh color already seems to have darkened just from the 30 minutes they spent in the oven already, compared to the Santas where I used the same type and color of clay.

I’m a little disappointed with the green Pardo that I used to make the holly leaves on the Snowmen’s hats, it turned out very dark. I’m not sure if that is because they were such a very thin amount or if it’s just because they’re laid upon black hats and it’s picking up the color from the hats.

But I am happy with how the Santas turned out!

These are just preliminary “show and tell” pictures of course. I still have to loop the wires on the Santas and the Snowmen and maybe add some glaze to the Snowmen, angel wings and Santa hats to bring out the pretty colors in that mother-of-pearl Pardo, and then I’ll take the pictures that I’ll use when I post these up at my Artfire shop. Hopefully under better lighting the green holly leaves will show a little better but even with the naked eye they’re still pretty dark. Oh well, live and learn.

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.