In a van down by the river....

What does that mean anyway?
Oh well. We have a new van! Well new to us at least. About 1 hour ago my husband and I finally purchased a Windstar mini van. I can not tell you how happy I am that we now have two cars. Several months ago our second car (a 1988 Toyota) died. Since then we have been a one car family. With Noe gone as much as he is with church stuff, work and school I have been stuck in the house with kids at all times. I'm free at last!!!
So what does this have to do with polymer clay? Easy! The mini van will be my glorious transportation for all the shows I hope to do!!!! Lots of room for displays and Art! (Does that make it a business expense??????) :)

New Items on Etsy

My camera works now. I don't know what happened but I plugged it in again yesterday and now it works.(???) I finally put some more of my work in my etsy shop so go check it out! (The link is just to the right) These are a few of the things that I have for sale.

Blast from the past!

I've gotten a little behind on my blogging lately. Well I have a good reason for that, I spend too much time reading other people's blogs! Ok, but here is my post. This week I worked on some new pendants and finally took pictures today. But for some inexplicable reason my computer won't recognize my camera. I have no idea why and I don't know how to fix it so I guess showing off my newest (and therefore favorites) will have to wait. So...instead of the newest, lets take a look at some of the oldest. I shall now embarrass myself just a little. These are some things that I made about 10 or 13 years ago. I would have to look at my 4-H record book to know exactly when I made them (see that darn record book does serve a purpose later on!). So lets see that would mean I was 13-16 years old.


Here we have a few figurines, a couple pins, and some earrings.

Necklace, bracelet and a huge pin with some of my first face canes.

I have boxes and boxes of stuff that I made long ago. All these are from before I knew what a skinner blend was, before I would even touch a brand of clay except Sculpey III and before I ever sanded anything. Ahhh the memories...

Polymer Clay Daily

I'm on Polymer Clay Daily...ok not really, but several of my canes made it! My clay friend Ponsawan made this beautiful mosaic wall piece and used some of my canes as pieces. (check out the little flower ones) Today's feature on PCD was her mosaic. Ponsawan is very talented and a very sweet person. Visit her blog to see more of her work.

Back to School

Yesterday I was invited to help with Ottumwa Christian School's art class. They have been doing some work with polymer clay for a couple weeks so I was invited as the local "expert". I showed the kids some of my work and then demonstrated making a simple cane. Then they dove in trying their hands at their own creations. I had a ton of fun and I hope they did too. I brought my camera with me but, as I have the tendency to do, I left it in my bag and didn't take any pictures. Lena (my 3yr old) also came along to teach the kids how to "play clay."

Canes

These are my latest 2 face canes. The one on the bottom is what I cut off after reducing. The rest of the cane looks a little less depressed. :)

Faces

After about a week of not touching my clay at all I have been working on a new project. I am making face canes of women from around the world. I've spent the past several days searching the internet for beautiful portraits of women wearing traditional ethnic clothing. Then I try to draw out how to adapt that face to a cane. It feels like a very long process but I just finished one last night. It is of a woman in Bangladesh. This is the picture I used for inspiration and also another inspiration picture I will hopefully be caning soon.

Bangladeshi girls

Hmong woman

A little side note, I found the picture of this Hmong woman on a website that just fascinated me. http://www.inspiringelements.com/pohw/index.html There are several portraits of Hmong women and excerpts of their life stories. When my husband and I were in college in Minnesota many of our friends were Hmong (we were even members of Hmong Student Fellowship:) Anyway, looking at all the pictures made me reminisce and miss my friends.