One of Those Days

Actually, it’s been one of those weekends.  I have the February doldrums.  And I don’t even have the  excuse of a big ole snowstorm that the rest of the country has!  We kind of expect snow here.  It’s hard to have sled dog races without it.  Fortunately, I seem to be snapping out of it, thanks to some funny friends and a terrible old photo.

First gripey thing:

It’s Thing A Day time at Polymer Clay Central, and this little fairy was my offering for Day 7.  As you can see, she is really tiny.  Well, I got her all finished, and painted with Ranger Alcohol Inks, and sat her on my pasta machine to take a picture.  But then I got sidetracked with cleaning in my studio (probably looking for the blankety-blank camera), and before long I heard a crunching noise underfoot.  Yep.  Squashed fairy. One arm and almost all her petals broke off.  I mended her with super glue before taking this picture, but you can see that her arm and the petal directly under it weren’t quite in the right spot before the glue set.  Gr.

Next gripey thing doesn’t have a picture – my children have been dancing on my last nerve.  It’s getting to the point, though, where they are being so annoying I just have to laugh.  As I type, the Girl is putting barrettes and ponytail holders in my hair while the Boy (the Girl’s Assistant) is brushing it.  At least they’re trying to be gentle.  I was (facetiously) offering to sell them earlier, and one of my cyber friends came up with the best thing ever to get me to quit whining:  Could be worse.  They could have bagpipes.

Finally, my dad must have known I needed a laugh, because he emailed me this photo, wanting to know if I could date it for him.  Uh, yeah. 1983.  Junior Prom.  I’m second from left.  I won’t name the others – they’ve probably long since forgotten (blocked out) this picture.

Smooshers’ Valentine Scavenger Hunt

Wow, this is starting out to be a GREAT month – first the books, then the machine, then the giveaway and now I get to add this info, too!  The Polymer Clay Smooshers Guild of Art Fire is hosting a Valentine Scavenger Hunt.  You can check out the rules and prizes at the Smooshers’ blog.  Have fun!

One World One Heart Giveaway

Grr – this image is supposed to link to A Whimsical Bohemian…but I can’t make it work!! Grrr. I think it’s a WordPress thing.

This is the coolest idea – bloggers all over the world are invited to join this giveaway. The creator of the One World One Heart event, Lisa Swifka, explains what it’s all about on her blog:

The original idea behind this giveaway event was to bring bloggers together from around the world who may never ordinarily meet. It closes the gap of the blog community and enables us to interact, discover new and wonderful people, and in the process possibly win a prize or many prizes along the way.

Bloggers participating in the giveaway link to her site and are added to the list. Active bloggers are invited to visit as many links as they want, and leave comments to be entered in the giveaways at each blog. As I write, there are 902 links listed at A Whimsical Bohemian, Lisa’s blog!

So, this is my item to giveaway:

subtle brown-gold swirly

It is a polymer clay pendant that I made and strung on amber Soft Glas. It has very subtle pattern of yummy chocolate brown swirled with gold and buffed to a soft shine. The pendant is about 1″ in diameter, and the necklace as a whole is about 18″ in length. Leave a comment below, and on the 15th of February, I might announce YOU as the winner!

I hope lots of folks participate – this is such a wonderful way to make the world seem a little smaller and a lot more friendly!

Update 2-5-10

Ok! I now have 100 comments on this post!  Time to add a 2nd prize…so, for something completely different, TA DA! It’s Disco Cat!

A Good Day to be ME!

Yea!  Yesterday was a good day to be me.  Well, other than slicing my finger with the kitchen scissors while doing dishes (see? doing dishes is BAD NEWS), and having to clean up after the Boy (who is resisting potty training vehemently).  Why was it a good day, you ask?  Well for starters, I got my order from Amazon:

I’ve already read through most of the Maureen Carlson book and am perusing the Katherine Dewey book.  No more arthritic space alien hands on my sculptures! (Unless I’m sculpting arthritic space aliens, of course.)

Secondly, I finished a goofy little bird I’ve been working on:

Chirp!

This is the first thing I’ve ever made that looked anything like the picture I drew first.  I’m either getting better at claying or I’m getting better at drawing.

And one more thing:  On Thursday I took my sewing machine in to have its yearly (um, more like once-a-decade) check up.  While there, I succumbed to the sales lady’s offer to show me some of the features of the cool little Baby Lock I was looking at.  They were having a floor model sale – which ended  today.  After a lot of thought (no, I didn’t buy it right then) and a conversation with Wonderful Husband, ta da!

Now I can sew with BOTH HANDS!

Isn't she cute?

Look at all the stuff that came with!  This is the newest machine I’ve ever had.  It was a floor model, but it is not “pre-owned.”  So it actually had all the stuff that it it was supposed to.

Feet!

Wonderful Husband thinks I have a foot fetish.   There is one more on the machine – an embroidery foot.  Yep, this is a sewing and embroidery machine.

Oh, I’m so psyched!  I played around with some of the decorative stitches and embroidered the kids’ names and the word “Alaska” on the fabric that was conveniently hooped up for me.  I spent enough time playing with the machine that Wonderful Husband and the kids had the living room cleaned up for me by the time I came upstairs to cook dinner.  Which ended up being nuked potatoes with salsa and cheese.  I don’t think we’ll be having any multi-course meals for awhile.  I can only be diva-like in one domestic sphere at a time, and until I’ve worked the novelty out of my new machine, I’m afraid the kitchen will not be the one.

2010 Sale!

I have a 20.10% off sale going on in my Art Fire shop – and I realized today that I hadn’t mentioned it here. So, there you go! It’s on until January 31, 2010.

Pretty Blog Award – My First

Wow, thanks, BJ, Col and Vanessa!

The Sunshine Award is awarded to bloggers whose positivity & creativity inspires others in the blog world.

The rules for accepting these award:-

Put the logo on your blog or within your post.-

Pass the award onto 12 bloggers.-

Link the nominees within your post.-

Let the nominees know they have received this award by commenting on their blog.

- Share the love and link to the person from whom you received this award

It’s so cool to be told that your attitude and creativity inspire others! Here are my 12 – I haven’t included some who inspire me, because they have recently been repeatedly given this same award – you know who you are! And because you’re only allowed 12. The 12 are in no particular order:

1. Weird Bug Lady – because anyone who can give you the biological specifics of the real creepy crawlies that inspire her plush versions deserves an award. ***One caveat – she is a science student, and occasionally has posts that could be considered a bit icky (like the mouse dissection in her recent post). Don’t hold it against her!

2. Mary L -because she’s an inspiration.

3. Felted Chicken – because she made a felted angler fish and posted over 100 wip pics on Flickr.

4. Jill Palumbo – because her stuff is so pretty.

5. Zuleykha – because she blogs in English and Russian.

6. ColtPixy – because she’s the force behind the Smooshers

7. Marie Segal – because she likes to give stuff away.

8. Mimi Kirchner at Doll – because she makes tattooed dolls with toile fabric.

9. Make Grow Gather – because I love her blog.

10. Feeling Stitchy -because I can’t go there without wanting to hoop up some fabric and get stitching.

11. Cat Therien – because she has lots of cool tutorials on clay, and one on making a duct tape dress form.

12. Dragonsglass - because she helps the less geeky of us out with our computer issues, and she combines so many techniques and materials in her lovely stuff. Also, she is a Dragonriders of Pern fan. ‘Nuff said.

Thank you all for the inspiration you give!

This is Didimaa

She was my entry for the Polymer Clay Smooshers Guild of Art Fire’s January challenge, which had an Asian theme. I’m so glad I decided to enter this challenge. I’d been thinking about trying to sculpt a woman in a sari for a long time, but I kept putting it off. I love doing sculpture: it’s wonderful to watch a character emerge from blobs of clay.

Polymer clay has been called “the chameleon clay” because it can mimic so many things so beautifully – stone, metal, wood, etc. It also works great as fabric. For Didimaa’s attire, I started by dressing her in a blouse and petticoat:

(This is a good shot for showing scale, since she’s sitting on an Altoids tin and resting her foot on a cookie cutter.) I wasn’t sure, at this point, what color to make the background of the sari fabric. So I went upstairs and did dishes for awhile. Problems often seem to solve themselves at inconvenient times, like when I’m up to my elbows in dishwater, but only half done the chore. Sigh.

So, when I came back down to the studio, I’d decided to go with green’s compliment, red. I didn’t want it to look Christmasy, though, so I chose a kind of pinky red. I chopped up some red and dark pink Cernit and added some translucent Fimo, in hopes of making the finished sari a bit transparent. That didn’t work too well – next time I’ll use more of the translucent. I also added a bit of green Cernit to tone down the pink a little. Here’s the beginning of the sari:

After a few passes through my pasta machine, and the application of a few cane slices and gold trim, that mess up there turned into this:

(Canes, for those of you who don’t play with clay, are logs of clay that have a picture running through it, so that the cross section of the log shows the picture. Ever buy those tubes of cookie dough at the grocery store that have a picture of a ducky or a chick on each slice? Same idea. Here’s a better explanation, with pictures. The paisleys and patterned dots on the sari fabric are cane slices. The gold dots are just smooshed balls of clay. )

This fabric was still too thick, and the decorations needed to be smoothed into the background, so back to the pasta machine it went. After a few more passes, it was as thin as I could make it, and starting to stick to itself. Trying to drape 15″ of extremely thin, sticky clay into a sari around a seated figure was, um, a challenge. (I would have used a stronger word, but my mom is probably reading this….) Next time, the figure will be standing. And holding her arms out to the side. And on a bigger scale!

She still needed jewelry, make up and something to sit on. I made her a little polymer clay stool for her foot to rest on, and a seat, covered with more polymer clay fabric decorated with another paisley cane.

Make up and nail polish are painted on with acrylic paint. Jewelry is jump rings and the chain off a bracelet that’s supposed to keep you from losing it if the clasp breaks.

I think I might need to make some grandkids for her to be telling a story to!

Update:  My good friend Tammi just returned from her winter break trip to visit her hubby’s family in India, and she gently pointed out that “Didimaa” is not spelled “Deedeema,” as I’d first spelled it.  I also tied the sari a bit goofy, as the part going over the left shoulder should be going over the right and it should cover her chest more.  Next time….!

I’m Featured!

I am a member of Art Fire’s Polymer Clay Smooshers Guild, and tomorrow (1/13 – which also happens to be my big brother’s 45th birthday – Hi, Billy!), I am featured on the Guild blog! Yea! Go check it out!

Second Post Today! Studio stuff

My darling hubby installed my countertop! Yea!

30-something by 8 feet!

And I got some cubes to hold my yarn stash (that’s not all of it, just the bits I’ve recovered from the mess so far).

Remember I said my drafting table drawer holds a lot of clay?

It’s a bit out of focus, but you get the idea.

Lest you think I’m the only artsy one in the family, here is some of my kiddos’ work.  When 3 1/2-year old Frederich finished this drawing on the white board, he came to me and said, “Mommy…I’m finished my masterpiece!”

Thomas at Night (The dot at the top of the picture is the moon.)

And this is 5 1/2-year old Eliza’s favorite new craft.  Anyone have any suggestions for what to do with nail-polish covered pistachio shells?

Mother-In-Law’s Christmas Present

Now that it won’t be a spoiler, I can show a picture of the polymer clay pendant I made for my mom-in-law for Christmas. We’ve had some issues with mailing stuff (one box went missing, one went to the wrong town in Alaska, the winter storms in the lower 48 delayed delivery of her package….oh, and I procrastinated sending Christmas boxes until AFTER Christmas!), so she’s lucky she got it, finally! Actually, I like it a lot, myself, so she’s lucky she got it for more than one reason!

The pendant is strung on doubled brown silk cord.  The flowers are made with a petal cane from Donna Kato’s book, The Art of Polymer Clay Millefiori Techniques. Donna’s flower petal starts out with a purple and white Skinner blend bullseye cane.  My Skinner blend was gold and chocolate.  I love the way those colors blended.  It looks both festive and warm – perfect for Christmas, even if it’s not red and green.  And it’ll be good at other times of year, too!