I spend a lot of my days playing with clay. My clay of choice is polymer clay, an oven bake clay, although I love ceramic and air drying clays as well. Polymer clay comes in all sorts of colours, mixes like paints, stays usable for years, can be used for everything from jewellery to whimsical critters to prototyping manufacturing parts.
My time is filled with making beads and canes or millefiori. Canes are fascinating little bits of art where the image is entirely made of mixed and shaped clay and runs the length of a rod or cane. I have fun designing and building my own, indulging my inner doodler, and then using those designs to make beads, vessels and jewellery. Sometimes I rope my kiddo or my partner into helping with the drudgery bits but mostly I’m mad scientist-ing on my own.
This is my daughter helping make beads