When I was new to the online polymer clay community, I joined a lot of swaps. I had been claying on and off for years by that point but hadn’t had much exposure to more refined projects yet. I joined quite a few swaps those first couple years!

My goal was to see what others were doing, how they put pieces together, how it worked. There were whole ranges of people in each swap, too – published experts and first month newbies.

This year I joined two I had done before. Connie’s Bug Swap (which you can see a post about on her blog) and Sarajane Helm’s ambitious mask swap. Below are my entries – the masks are a spoiler so don’t keep going if you’d rather be surprised when that swap closes.

And the masks, which share my fascination with the little clay faces in the flower patches you see a lot of in my other work:

I donate to charities or help friends fundraise when I can. I’ve made items for breast cancer fundraisers and cystic fibrosis ones. The groups that are near and dear to my heart, though, are community ones (both local and world community). The food bank. The local shelter network. The urban projects society.  The Night to Fight fundraiser show I did recently.

May 3rd marks the 3rd year that Chloe and I will walk for the Kid’s Help Phone. She goes with me because it’s a short walk and they spoil their walkers – there’s treats for the kids, music and games and it’s a family speed walk. I go because growing up I had friends who needed it. It seems ironic to do a fundraiser with the devout hope that YOUR child will never need to access the resources you raise funds for. And so we walk.

On the left hand side, right up at the top is a button to Chloe’s pledge page (I’m a little late setting up the electronic version, her paper one is doing fine). If you can sponsor her, it’s greatly appreciated and I promise that it goes towards a cause that does help troubled children. Drop her a note on the ‘message wall’ there even if you can’t chip in this time.