The Tooaquarius Store
It’s taken some doing and some testing and a bit of hair pulling but here it is, The Tooaquarius Shop. To start, I’m offering polymer clay canes, available singly or in sets. The beads are being added each day.
All of my canes are made using a combination of the old Fimos, Premo, Kato and Sculpey 3. Regular canes are approximately 12mm or 1/2″ diameter by 50mm or 2″ long. This first batch that I’ve uploaded has some sweet florals, bright spring colours and a few accent or novelty canes like butterflies and dragonflies. There are more than 40 flower canes alone!
My beads are made from the same clays as my canes, properly cured, and with 1.5mm(1/16″) holes unless otherwise indicated. The cane covered beads are available in several colour-related themes and are sanded and buffed to a nice sheen. If a waterbased acrylic finish is used on them, this is noted in the item’s description. Prices vary by quantity and size but a single millefiori round will be $2 CDN with sets having discounts (ex: buy 5 get 1 free).
The slice beads are smaller beads, slices off my own - or fellow artists - canes and perfect for charms, accents, sewing, fringe or quick fun projects like these earrings or this daisy chain set or these wine charms. They are available 25-50 cents each, in groups of 12-20 for $4-5 or bagged groups of 50. Most of these are tiny, 1/2″(12mm) or smaller with 1.5mm(1/16″) holes.
2008 Kick Off with Thing a Day
Yup, I noticed that 2008 started a month ago. Lashes with wet noodles all ’round here at HQ. It’s not that I haven’t clayed, it’s just that I haven’t gotten organized at all. So in a bid to get my rear in gear, I set more ambitious goals - even if some were less than successful - and decided to concentrate on the move forward.
Towards THAT goal I signed up for the Thing-a-Day at www.thing-a-day.com - someone on the PCC boards mentioned it. I believe she’s one of the same people who got me trying the NaNoWriMo… a whole other story of insanity.
Anyways, the Thing-A-Day is brutally simple. You make something - anything really - a day and then (ah, the catch) post it to their site. For me, there’s an extra catch - I’m going to try for every one of those things to be clay related. Bonus points if I manage that! It runs the 29 days of February and then you all pass out. Or pat yourself on the back.
Goals: Win Some Lose Some
2007 was a lot of fun and a lot of frustration.
I met quite a few of my clay and craft goals! This was my best financial year for sales, in a row of best-ever years. Production was good - I made more beads than the 5k I planned. Somewhere close to twice as many, in fact. My technique improved and my overall finish quality went right up.
On the negative side, I let my site slide because my online activities were severely curtailed for a few months. That means I didn’t finish 52 weeks of the Year of Clay in 52 weeks. Not that I’m intending to stop now anyways - I’d rather keep on at it and improve in 2008.
I’m still working on my lofty plans for 2008. At least some of that will be a new bead and cane-o-meter, over there in the sidebar. In a few months, the Claychicks will be back after their hiatus and sooner than that Tooaquarius will debut on Etsy as well. Phew! And that’s just a bit of it!
The plus side of making year in planning posts a month after everyone else - it’s not one of dozens!
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!
A Little Creative Bug Making
Tooaquarius.com is one part of my creative efforts. Web stuff is the rest. Tooaquarius is going to get some updates over the next two days to test new software written for the web stuff so there may be some… bugs.
In particular, the shop and gallery sections may change frequently and not work.
Wish me luck!
Happy Birthday little blog
The Polymer Clay Beads by Tooaquarius blog turns 1 today! I am thinking it will be much less messy with it’s chocolate cake than my daughter was.
In that spirit, some sweets that my daughter and I made from clay. Most of them are beads, as well as half inch food minis. Polymer clay truly is an incredibly versatile medium and I have much planned for my continuing journey in it!
Here’s to an even more bloggy, clayful and beady second year!
Year of Clay - Cane for a Cause
I have an upcoming craft show. Perfectly normal. But this show’s proceeds go to benefit the Canadian Breast Cancer Foundation.
I’m lucky. I’ve never lost anyone specifically to cancer let alone breast cancer. Hopefully I never do. Here’s my help with a brick in that road.
These are some ‘pink’ canes that will go on a whole whack of round beads. The beads will get made into keychains, zip pulls and cell phone charms. The proceeds from the sales will be donated.
All this also proves another point: if you are lacking inspiration and creativity… don’t open the field MORE but limit it. Give yourself a smaller playing field, a narrower colour selection. Dare your muse to take something difficult and make it pretty.
Clay + Chicks = Claychicks
And a whole lotta chicken related jokes.
She’s gone completely around the bend you’re thinking… We’ll ignore that thought and get to the point.
Carolyn Jordan and I have joined forces to begin selling our work on Etsy and Ebay. We decided on the name Claychicks for our venture and are looking forward to a light-hearted, colourful and profitable run. To this end we’ve also registered www.claychicks.com though right now it’s Under Creation (so sick of under construction).
This week we have Carolyn’s lovely set of pansies on Ebay:
Sheer poultry in motion…
Heart Cane
I whipped up a simple little heart cane for my Valentine to my fellow clayers! It uses one of my new favourite toys, my Makins Extruder.
Year of Clay - Hearts
The first half of February has me with hearts on the brain. See, Valentines is not only a super-hyped holiday but my birthday. So I indulge a bit.
That and swirlies can easily be squished a little into a shape other than lentils -
The heart on the right has a little metal leaf swirled in to it. The scanner didn’t capture the subtle (I sanded most of it off, oops) flecks well but it would seem surface inclusions swirl right along with everything else!
Stay tuned over the next week or so - I have more heart related goodness coming up!
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