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The Shop: On the way
Maybe Spring is in the air. I know that it influenced my cane making choice the last couple of weeks – pansy canes and now pansy beads. But I’m wondering if the cat has gone nuts.
Sam the Siamese is 16 or 17 years old. He spends most of his days like this:
Yesterday morning around 6 am he was skittering and darting around the house and even jumping a little. For long enough that I got up early to check what he was up to, wondering if we had a mouse or something. Because he was hell-bent on catching SOMETHING.
The terrible something turned out to be a vicious, feral hair scrunchie. The cat is crazy. End of story. But it was a fun start to my day.
My bead shop has a couple new pieces this week, including some cute rounds with my pansy canes:
You can pick the canes up in my Claychicks shop or both beads and canes all in one go from my ArtFire shop.
New Ideas
Every now and then, I have an idea. Odd, I know. So the other day while helping out with my production work, the boyfriend got ahead of what I had planned. I passed him scraps to blend. They made a pretty rainbow which turned into these pretty rainbow beads:
So there’s a stack of these with a little variation (depending on how they got rolled up). I doodled some of my brain waves -
We have earrings. I think some of them will have to be earrings. Bright fun earrings.
I don’t make stitch markers but one of my favourite teamies and customers, Heather of RyCrafty, makes stitch markers like these. So the idea occurred to me.
And finally, I think some will be buttons. because they could be really cute buttons.
When you all are brainstorming how do you go about figuring what you’ll clay? And if you, like me, make supplies… how do you determine what you’ll make as the end product?
Signs of Spring
Before I knew a thing about flowers – and this wasn’t long ago – I didn’t really realize there were flowers that were heralds of spring. I mean I guess it makes logical sense but if you’d asked me I’d have been unable to name them.
I started this spring off with a new order of pansies. I’m happy with how these came out.
Of course, another sign of spring is that we’re spending THIS weekend painting, too. The windows can be cracked open so it’s not even too fume-y.
Light Sage Green
This weekend started with a stop at the hardware store on Friday afternoon. A few more paint trays and a can of Light Sage Green, the slightly more subtle colour I’d picked for the yellow-green Goldenrod my guy figured was perfect when he did it 7 years ago.
We patched, sanded and TSP’d the walls and then got down to priming. The kiddo offered to help with priming. She had ulterior motives.
This is funny because my daughter has spelling problems. This should read Me WANT food. She tried again on the next wall, complete with crossouts and redos there. The guy meanwhile was painting himself as well as the wall.
The worst part about any home project is not usually the doing. Priming and painting only took us a couple of hours. The cleanup and repair and moving stuff however takes FOREVER.
Somewhere in there – before and after we got going – I finished up a custom order and made these guys so the day did end up with more than just Light Sage Green paint everywhere.
Weird Clay Trivia
I keep notes in list form everywhere, notepads full of it. One of my lists has weird clay trivia:
- Premo Alizarin Crimson has speckles in it. You can see this in this rose cane made with it
- Submerging clay items with translucent in them, in ice water right out of the oven really DOES seem to brighten and clarify the translucent. No clue why
- Yellow and black clay does not make darker or saddened yellow. It makes olive green. To make a saddened yellow use a browny-grey
- Liquid clay, a transfer medium, is much more useful as a clay glue, top coat and icing maker
- Baking some types of magnets decreases their strength
- Hot glue, the magic of crafts, doesn’t work well with clay. Use epoxy or super glue instead
- Clay tastes awful
- You can add a few drops of oil to soften stiff clay. A few drops of scented oil will soften AND scent clay
Any other weirdness you’ve noticed?
Pinch Me
As if the fabulous birthday weekend were not enough! I gathered my courage and went and spoke to the education coordinator at the Art Gallery in town a few weeks ago. What did I have to lose right? They have interesting classes and perhaps they’d be interested in some polymer clay related classes.
Long story short: they were happy to meet me and yes, clay class would indeed be interesting. I’ll start by demoing beads one afternoon and then teach classes for the older kids and adults. And if I was interested, there are shows at the gallery that even take complete newbies.
So if you happen to be in the small town of Swift Current, Saskatchewan on March 21st, I’ll be demoing caned clay beads at the Art Gallery. Until then you’ll probably find me hovering around cloud 9.
Of course, life would be TRULY grand if this were not still the view outside my window.
Birthday Indulgence
I spent the weekend out of town, visiting family in Calgary. It was nice to take the long weekend off and do random, sociable things. We went to the zoo, tried out Mom’s new hot tub and shopped while we were in civilization. While the rest of North America does Valentine’s, I call it my birthday :p
I grabbed the clay for myself since I lucked out and found it on sale at the same time I was near a craft store. Mom, my enabler, bought me beads. I picked up a few spools of sterling silver wire to try my hand at. And last, but definitely not least, is my new camera.
The cat is already starting to slink away when I pick up the camera. I’ll have to find other guinea pigs.
Making
I’d been hurting for a little inspiration and motivation at the end of 2009 so I took the advice of the experts and took that first step: I started making things. Sometimes all you need is a little motion to get you going in the right direction. I’m still lacking the solution to some projects but I have a growing pile of ‘productive procrastination’ projects. Here’s a few:
A customer challenged me to make them bright roses in the colour of my citrus canes. So I did. Some of these canes are in my Rainbow of Roses listing. The bracelets are basically wrist candy to get myself using my own beads, especially the swirlies. How else do you sell the things if you can’t convince people they should be essential parts of their art?
One World One Heart
I’ve closed commenting and drawn the winner for my giveaway! Thanks for participating everyone!
The theme for this year’s One World One Heart event is a Magic Carpet Ride. I’m sure there’s a little room on my magic carpet for good company so hop on, wander my blog, and take a tour of my obsession: all things polymer clay and beads.
To encourage all of my visitors, new and old alike, to comment I’m going to give away a $20 gift certificate to my ArtFire shop. What better way than to get some new clay friends than to spread the clay love around?
My giveaway is open to anyone who’d like to comment on this post between today (January 25th) and the end date (February 15th). On February 16th, I’ll draw a name via Random.org and contact the winner. Local and international commenters welcome! So introduce yourself, link to your blog or your photo album so I can visit you, and take a look around!
Getting 2010 On
After a sleepy start to the year, 2010 woke up and it seems there’s a lot coming up in the next few days and weeks!
January marks the anniversary of my join dates on Etsy for both of my shops and the anniversary of the date I began selling on ArtFire: 3, 2 & 1 years respectively. It’s been a wild time!
For a bit of a change I’m going to tuck free gifts into all of my ArtFire and Etsy packages going out until the end of the month. The gifts will vary from extra beads, canes, jewelry, coupons for discounts or free shipping.
Subscribers to my newsletter will get an extra bonus as I finally get it rolling! To subscribe simply pop your email into the widget on the right or drop me an email with the word subscribe in the subject line and/or body.
One of the most insanely energetic and cheerful Canadian artists I’ve had the fortune to meet in my journey on Etsy is Kristal of RikRak Studio. She’ll be holding a big Olympic themed giveaway on her blog in the coming weeks. From the response of us sponsors, there are going to be a TON of fabulous prizes! The giveaway will be based on Olympic events and run for six weeks. Keep an here and there for updates.
In 2009 I saw some of the One World One Heart postings but didn’t participate. The goal of the project is to encourage bloggers from around the world to reach out and meet others that they might not meet normally.
Bloggers offer giveaways on their blog to entice commenters and people spend a few weeks visiting the giant compilation of links on Whimsical Bohemian’s blog. The event begins January 25th and runs until February 15th.
