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Year of Clay – Toasted Poinsettias!
I finally settled on the ornament project for my aunt – they were to be smooth poinsettia ornaments, more my traditional technique. And it went together just perfectly.
Hopefully only the clay folks will notice that, er, the poinsettias got a little toasted…
Merry Christmas to those of you enjoying that bit of chaos and a very Happy Holidays to the rest!
Note Taking for Crafty Types – part 1
It’s funny. In school I was almost strictly a ‘its all up here’ type of student. I was lucky enough to coast by on my (lucky) memory a lot of the time.
Of course, where school couldn’t motivate me to become a proficient note taker work / art has. Sometimes I desperately want to remember what that colour I made was or what that flower cane had… 5 or 6 petals? I’ve written copious notes on colour so far, to share and to remind myself but the note taking on my projects is a little slower sometimes.
One easy way to keep a visual record – yes, Virginia, it counts as notes – is to keep your digital camera or scanner hanging near your work surface and to record as you go. Then upload the works to a freebie album software – I do love my Flickr – and consider yourself recorded. An added bonus, if you keep your images available to the public, is that your work is available for peer review and sharing.
For example, these pins are one of the pics I just tossed up to Flickr. They’re a few of the small pieces I made this year and last, on some of my hangtags. They’re some of the stocking stuffers on my table and my daughter helps assemble them. The little snow guys are based on combos of Carolyn’s snowblobs and Heather Powers sweet little snowmen pendants. For an added treat, Heather blogged a whole weeks worth of clay ornaments!
Year of Clay – Monochromatic Bowls
This weekend was my final craft sale of the season and I have to say it did pretty well! The weather was nice, the show was upbeat and well organized and I am beginning to get the hang of the small booth setups. I made well into the Happy Range of 8-10x the booth fee and if the show comes back at the same weekend would happily give it another go, as it runs a little after most of the big clog of them.
It brings me to my little bowls. I’m fascinated by vessels, particularly the mini ones and the little glass bowls that I cover and turn into decorative ring bowls or pill dishes or what not are often my most popular sellers. Last show, I ran out of them by lunch, except one cheerful bright coloured one. This show? I have the monochromatic ones left! The brightly coloured ones went fast.
Other shows I have had them trickle out one by one and the last few, people just scooped up several at a time.
It just goes to show that each show is a little different.
Keychains
A lot of beads are very small and I make quite a lot of very small beads. But every now and then I make larger ones without really intending them to be focal beads. So what to do with those? Some I put very large holes in for stringing on hemp or leather as casual pendants.
Others get turned into keychains and purse charms:
Year of Clay – Mokune Gane Beads
My first love in clay is canework. I love making the little pictures and the magic of each slice. But this season I challenged myself to try to work on other techniques and mokune gane was one of those.
I made a basic mg stack, translucent clay and silver leaf. Then a base bead of purple and translucent – which ended up a rather brighter and … er.. more festive purple than I intended – and some smoothing, sanding and polishing.
Poinsettia Ornaments
I’m lucky enough to have family that encourages me in my clay obsession. One aunt always buys my ornaments and this year I got her name in the family Christmas gift draw. She requested ornaments, in deep reds and greens. To me, that says Poinsettias!
So I start with some basic glass ornaments that I got in the post-Xmas sales last year. Cover them liberally with black marbled with gold, bake. It may sound dark for holiday gifts but it makes a dramatic background and the baked base layer means I stick fingers through the whole deal less often. Read more
Year of Clay – The Green Lady
Given the… oh boy… 6 month break, I was trying to decide whether I’d keep the Year of Clay going. I figure I may as well try. There are more years ahead!
So on that note, I had a friend ask for a focal bead based on a tattoo of a green lady (from the green man myth). I tried a few things, squished them up and then decided one of my bumpy beads was the way to go.
I liked her so much I made a few focal beads and sent them all off to Cindy of Cindy’s Creative Crochet where she crocheted up a necklace with them. I hope the recipient loves the collaboration!
Having a Ball
After a frankly… challenging… couple of months it was a wonderful feeling to get to sit down with the new-to-me laptop, a cup of coffee and dig back into my site and online clay life. Wow! So much to catch up on, so much to update, so much to fix.
So the site is getting a winter overhaul and some things are bound to be not working. I came back to more than 4000 spam, several hundred emails and a lot of other site-housekeeping details that will take quite a while to fix.
I don’t think I’ve ever been quite so happy to face ‘housework’ though!
