Slacking..............

I have been slacking real bad on my clay work as of lately. Not because I have been lazy but because I have just had an awful lot of stuff going on, and it even seems it has hindered my creative flow as well.

My 86 year old father was diagnosed with stage 4 lung cancer last February and I have been driving 200 miles a day 4 days a week for his treatments. Besides working 40+ hours a week at a full time job it has been a real struggle. I guess the treatments are working to a point because when he was first diagnosed they gave him 4 months, maybe 6 tops. Well he is still with me and still getting treatments. He has shown the doctors what will power is all about.

There for awhile I did take advantage of sitting for 3 hours sometimes 4 in his treatments to make a couple of things but just not as much as I would have liked. I had to be careful what I was dragging in to work on because of the sterile environment of the chemotherapy room. As for the creative juices, my brain at times was quite mushy, I think it still is mushy from being exhausted all the time. I am not complaining because I would do it again if necessary.

While sitting at one of his chemotherapy treatments I had confiscated some electrical wire from one of the maintenance men where I work at. I started picking away the insulation and noticed there were quite a few strands of copper woven together. The copper wire was quite fine about a 24 or 26 gauge which would be just right to use for some wire work and clay I was thinking about for a pendant. The following day my wire was still unused until I remembered I had a crochet hook with me. I started to crochet different sized wire balls. They were quite fun to do. The day after that, the balls of clay I just jerked up from my scrap pile was made into different sized flat discs. The hard part was getting them home to bake without drastically distorting their shapes. Some did come out wacky but I baked them anyway. After baking and putting together I think wacky gave it character.  I guess everyone else can decide.

Valentines Day

Its that time of year, time for heart pendants, heart bracelets, heart rings, etc. But I think a heart necklace or bracelet is great any time of year. I don't think it should only be for Valentines Day. I enjoy making heart shaped pendants and bracelets.

Hope everyone has a Happy Valentines Day.

Molds - CaBezels

Over the years I usually did hand drawn shapes for pendants. Many times I used cookie cutters as well. When the internet got more popular it introduced different places to buy molds and shapes to make pendant designs a lot easier and quicker.

I became an online shopping junkie. I found alot of wonderful websites for the polymer clay crafter. Way too many to name them all.

One day while I was looking for some supplies I came across Shades of Clay.  On it was an instructional video for CaBezel's. I was intrigued. I saw one of the molds and a bunch of ideas started popping into my head for their uses. So I purchased some. My favorite one was the lemon egg cabezel.

I had a blast with it. I sent an email to the lady responsible for making them, Wendy Orlowski, a very sweet person. Her ideas for making these molds was wonderful, and I thought I would let her know. I found them easy to work with, and I believe the potential for them is boundless.

I got the notion to make a brooch with some turquoise I had mixed up.

Then I tried a necklace with the brooch.

 Of course these were just ideas I played with. Next time I will try making the bezel frame a silver color or just stipple some silver gilders paste instead of just leaving it plain black. I will try more with these shapes and the others I purchased as well and see what else I can come up with. Maybe I might come up with more designs.

Beginnings with clay.

I started my journey with polymer clay many years ago (over 20 years) by chance.
It started when my daughters were quite young and I thought I would make them a Victorian dollhouse. I purchased some blueprints through a woodworking magazine and went to work. I worked on it for 6 weeks every chance I got so it would be ready to put under the Christmas tree.

Christmas morning there sat this dollhouse, and I was excited about how they would react. I watched them look it over, touch it, and the first thing I heard was "where are the people?"  Great ! I went through sleep deprivation, almost lost digits due to construction mishaps to get this done and I had forgotten the most important thing, the family to reside in this house.

I lived in a rural community in Arizona at the time, online shopping was not an option because there was none. So a friend of mine was taking a trip to Tucson which was 95 miles from where we lived and she asked if I wanted to go.

The search was on. After finding a few places and the cost to outfit both my daughters with their "people" wishes was a little too much for what I wanted to spend.  I ended up in a hobby shop where this man after listening to what I was in search of handed me a small block of Fimo clay. He did not know if it would sell or not, thought he would give it a try. He told us he had heard it was something doll makers used. It was supposed to be sturdy and would last a long time. I took the Fimo home and went to work.

Mind you, I was raised in a home where I was taught things my mother thought girls should know, sewing, knitting, crocheting, etc. so what could be hard about making people. I had taken art in school, did paintings, drawings and was fortunate enough to have some of my art accepted in the Phoenix Civic Art Museum.

Well was I ever wrong. Human anatomy was never my strong point, these dolls looked like Freddy Kruger. So I rolled up my messes to find that if you rolled a couple of colors together and made them into little round different shaped balls they were great looking beads. So the journey began...............