Community Makes Me Smile
While thumbing through my visitor logs I noticed that I had been linked to from Susan Rose’s excellent Polymer Clay Notes. Susan is a frequent contributor / sleuth to Cynthia Tinapple’s polymer clay community blog at PolymerclayDaily.com.
What made me grin was that Susan had linked to my Math related posts. My clay buddies are frequently teasing me that I am the groups pet geek and I guess it’s gotta be true! For me, there’s some math in just about everything I do from my clay to my design work and it’s all beautiful! Colours and nature are linked inextricably with numbers in so many ways. And I hated algebra and trig, too.
Other people out in the blogosphere and forum-land (which my software notes differently than just standard referers) include Naama from Israel. Her lovely, colourful, work has certainly been an inspiration on some of my more recent items!
And for complete crafty submersion you cannot beat the Polyclay-holics on Polymerclaycentral.com’s Delphi forums, the enthusiastic and chic folks at Craftster.org (with it’s own clay boards now!) and Livejournal’s prolific Craftgrrls.
Christmas Beads… I mean ornaments
I think the reason I had so much fun with these was because they are pretty much just big beads for your Christmas tree.
Whatever the case, I made a few dozen Christmas ornaments for my shows this season and the fact that most are covered in bright, springy flowers didn’t seem to turn anyone off. The floral motifs combined nicely with the more traditional Christmas motifs and everyone was happy.
The site goes ‘winter’ today - which is basically, I’m going to whip up a new top banner - and here’s hoping that you’re all bundling up if you’re local!
Delft meet polymer clay
Ever since a good friend gifted me with items from the Delft region of the Netherlands - before that, even, probably - I’ve loved the look of the blue Delft-ware. Chinese blue porcelain and the Wedgewood blue are also lovely.
So earlier in the year I sat down and made canes to work in that theme using Premo!’s Ultramarine blue. And the last few weeks I’ve made several pieces, including this one:
If you’re interested in giving this a try, the very talented Alan Vernall has written a tutorial to the same end for PCPolyzine. It can be found here.
Lucky Find
One of my guilty pleasures is wandering the aisles of the local Dollarama - a loonie store here where the $1 is the loonie coin (i’m not kidding) - and finding Cool Craft Items I Don’t Need.
So off I went to see what odds and ends there were and I found this:
Frosted Clay
It’s been a productive couple of weeks in the Tooaquarius Studio. This weekend will be the Weekend of Sanding but here’s a few pieces, nicely finished to launch us:
I’ve never really covered much in the way of vessels or liked the look of plain cooked translucent clay. I found a secret though, at least for this. To get the nice frosted look I wanted for this Delft-ish look I sanded smooth then went and rough sanded the bowl to frost it.
Display Ideas - Ikea to the Rescue Part I
Whoever sells their artwork occasionally has to worry about how to display it. Since I primarily sell at small, local shows my displays are what I can make, use and afford - in other words creativity is key.Currently, my booth needs a bit of height interest and variety. At a relatively slow show a few weeks ago, I had oodles of time to stare at the display of a booth close by. Elegant and calm, it wasn’t overkill for the small show and the pieces were showcased rather than overwhelmed. When I got home I realized I probably had the pieces she’d been using for her risers!
Meet the Fira series at Ikea:
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