Necklace for Ada

This necklace will be one of the door prizes at the Christi Friesen workshop that will benefit Ada Silapiruti. Ada is the daughter of Ponsawan who made the mosaic I blogged about a few posts back. Just over a year ago Ada was in a terrible car accident involving a drunk driver. Read about Ponsawan's art here and all about Ada and her road to recovery here.

Warm Weather and Smooth Beads!

Yesterday the weather was so beautiful, 65 and Sunny! The kids played outside all afternoon, and I actually got some findings put onto a group of pendants while they played.
For the past several weeks I've been filling up a bag with beads and pendants that needed to be sanded. Since I hate sanding I had been putting it off and putting off, now I was left with this huge bag of unfinished stuff! I decided to buckle down and I told myself I could not work with raw clay until my beads were sanded. Now I know that a lot of people use a tumbler to sand their smaller beads, and I've tried that too, but I just don't feel like the quality is as good. So I do everything by hand. It took me forever but I finally finished the bag so now I need to put everything together into finished pieces. During the 13+ hours of sanding I did discover a new little trick! I generally shy away from round beads because mainly they are so hard to hold onto when I sand. But not any more! I discovered that I can use my needle tool to poke through the hole (I don't pierce all the way through so it fits tightly) and use it as a handle with the smaller beads! The saves time and my finger nails! I'm sure this idea is not original but it helped so much! Today should be another nice day so maybe I'll get some more work done. Happy Friday to everyone!

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."