Anyway. August’s Polymer Clay Smoosher’s challenge theme was “medieval”, and here are the two pieces I came up with for it.

This one is a pewter colored medieval cross.  Hand cut and shaped, with a red decorative marble for the centerpiece and Trinity knots carved in each section of the cross’ arms.

The second entry is a gold or brass colored version of a medieval cross.  Like the other, it also has Trinity knots carved into it and is hand cut and shaped.  I’m working on a third one that is copper colored.

They’re both available in my studio for $15 USD each.

Go check out the rest of the Smooshers’ entries in this Medieval themed challenge!

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!

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.

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.

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.

My first item, a Steampunk-ish polymer clay heart pendant:

Then, my newest creation, a pink & white polymer clay swirly heart necklace on organza ribbon:

Both are heavily influenced by the work of Christi Friesen, if it isn’t obvious and you’re not familiar with that polymer clay artist & author.

Anyway, sometime today, if it’s not there already, the guild master will be posting the rest of the items from the other guild members who participated in February’s challenge, to the Polymer Clay Smooshers’ guild blog.  Go check them out, and then vote on what you’d like to see guild members take on for the next month’s challenge!

Take care!

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.

I purchased this from Amazon about a week and a half ago, as one of the things I am interested in trying out with polymer clay is making mini foods. Not dollhouse style mini foods, but precisely what this book is demonstrating – mini food charms. I am anxious to try my hand at this but I need to finish up some other projects first before I dive into it.

The projects in this book are extremely cute. I have my eye on the cupcake, cinnamon roll and pumpkin pie projects specifically, so when I have the chance to start working on these, one of those will be the first on my list. The authors take the reader through the general basics of what tools you’ll need for the projects, and what colors of clay they work with, even down to how much of each color to use. They also show you a couple of basic jewelry making techniques that you’ll need to know to make these items into charms – a wire wrapped loop, a double sided loop, and a figure eight loop – which in this case is actually a little longer than a typical figure eight loop, so one can push this loop into the clay charm before baking. There’s a quick blurb on bead stringing, crimping a crimp bead, stringing beads on nylon, and making stud earrings, among other things.

For the actual projects, they’re set up exactly like food recipes: a list of ingredients, with the colors and the amounts of clay you’ll need for each component, including a handy little actual-size graphic illustration – basically a colored circle that you can hold up a ball of clay in front of to gauge how much clay to use, and any tools you’ll need for that particular project. It also notes how many charms it will yield for the ingredients listed, which for most of these is one or two charms. Then there are several color pictures demonstrating from start to finish, how to create these cute little charms. And at the end of each project they offer a suggestion of how to incorporate your newly created items into a jewelry piece.

The authors have also included a few real food recipes for you to try out if you’re inclined: Old-fashioned lemonade, cinnamon rolls, and a cheddar omelet, to name a few. I think I may try out their recipe for sugar cookies for the holidays.

If you’ve ever been interested in creating little mini food charms, this would be the book to get. I’ll be sure to post the results of my attempts when I’ve had the opportunity to give it a whirl.

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.