More from Mom

Hi All,

Mom's been playing some more. My brother brought these down for me to give away at the next Guild meeting. She was inspired to try Gollum from Lord of the Rings and used one of my brother's figurines as inspiration. I find him kinda creepy, but I guess that's the point, isn't it?

Can you imagine what Mom's talent will be like if she were to take some classes from the sculptors? I think she'd be unstoppable.



I haven't had a chance to clay very much lateley and when I do I seem to dance from one idea to another without actually completing anything. And the way the schedule is going it looks like I won't have time to do much in the next few weeks.

I did wear my new dichro earrings to work the other day and people must have wondered what I was doing in the bathroom jiggling my head from side to side. Turns out the dichro works really well with the fishing lure earrings since they automatically have movement in them. I can hardly wait to get the other sheets in to start playing.

That's it for now. Enjoy the photos of Mom's work.


Cheers everyone.

Sandy

My giggle for the day

Hi All,

My very talented claying friend, Laurie, sent me this photo the other day (if you don't get it, look at the sign on the right). I laughed out loud and that's always a good thing.

Cheers,

Sandy

Mom's been at it again...

Hi All,

These photos were in my e-mail this morning. They're photos of Bottles of Hope from my mother. She's done an amazing job and it looks like she's figured out lids (which I hate doing).

Mom's always had a bit of an addictive personality and now her addiction runs to clay. She's been dreaming about the bottles and tries to make the bottles in her dreams.

I think I'm going to try to persuade her to enter some contests or at least send some photos in to some of the publications if she keeps going the way she's been going.
Mom believes in high quality. The crystals on the various figurines are Swarovski crystals. No fake imitations for Mom.

She is having some oven problems and it's a question of buying an oven thermometer.

But the figures are beautiful and you can tell Mom's cake decorating skills really come into play here.

And it's nice having a family member understand why I enjoy the hobby so much.

Way to go, Mom! I'm so very impressed and proud. I'm sure the recipients will be thrilled!

Cheers all,

Sandy

Fishing tackle earrings...

Hi All,

I really enjoyed the April 2009 version of Polymer Cafe. You saw my attempt at the diagonal skinner blend flowers here, which was one of the articles.

One of the other things I wanted to try was using the blank spinner blades for jewelrey which was a technique for a necklace shown by Lee Ann Armstrong in the same issue, whose work you can see here.

While Lee Ann has been showing necklaces, for me it's all about earrings. So I was pleasantly pleased when I was at our Dollarama and they had packages of the spinner blades, three pairs for a dollar, in a perfect teardrop shape. At our store they come in silver and gold.


One other thing that I recently purchased was a slab of Dichro Slide transfer paper in the blue/gold shifts to green. I've had to cut it into small pieces since a bunch of us got together at Morrisburg and have ordered the whole set of colours (which should be in very shortly) so I don't have a lot to play with.

This is one of my attempts at a pair of earrings. They looked really nice until I decided to go fancy. I used a regular hole punch to cut out the dichro slide paper. I had discovered at Morrisburg that the dichro slide paper when placed on clay and stamped will take the stamp and keep the shape. I do have another piece to show of that later.

However, the shape (in this case a nice bit of flower) doesn't keep when you place it on a bed of uncured liquid clay. So all I got was a bit of rippleyness that would have been better if I had left it flat. But if you didn't know you might think that it's supposed to be that way. So these are almost good.

I'll wear them.

I took two different angle shots so you can see the dichro effect.

And once the other sheets come in I'm sure there are a lot of opportunities.

I'll post more as I experiment.

That's it for today.

Thanks so much Lee Ann for giving me an idea I never would have thought of without you!

Cheers,

Sandy

Three Feeping Inspired Bottles of Hope

Hi Everyone,

I'm a HUGE HUGE fan of Feeping Creatures which you can see at http://www.feepingcreatures.com/. I contacted Dylan (the creator of these marvelous creatures) and asked if it would be OK if I played around and tried to make my own that would be used for Bottles of Hope. He very graciously gave me permission.

Here are my first three attempts.

They're fun to make.

I should make more.

They make me smile.

Thanks, Dylan! I'm sure they'll provide a bit of a smile for others.

Cheers, everyone.

Sandy

My first attempt at diagonal skinner blend cane...

Hi Everyone,

Polymer Cafe had instructions on how to create a diagonal skinner blend flower cane. I loved the idea and thought I would try to make one. Once I understood the instructions it went OK and I think there's great potential in it.

For those that are unfamiliar with the diagonal skinner, it seems to be a relatively new technique. What it does is create a cane that gradually changes colour as you slice into it. You can see a bit of that in my canes in the first photo. There are some with three teal petals and two pink petals and then some with three pink petals and then two teal petals. That's all the same cane, just different sections of it.

Some of the things I would do different:
1. I would simplify my skinner blend and not use as many colours.
2. I tried narrowing the skinner blend by reducing it in the pasta machine. Next time I would simply turn it into a plug and narrow it that way.
3. I added pearl to my colours and it really seemed to wash them out so my colour changes weren't as extreme as I would have liked.
4. I would not follow the instructions that say to narrow the darker edges of colour since they get lost somehow during the reduction process.



Since there wasn't enough colour change in the canes I decided not to follow the instructions completely for the covered tin and turned the individual flower canes into one larger cane with lots of translucent spacing. This next photo is thin slices of canes put on different colours of clay. I'll cover Bottles of Hope with the canes - seems like a cheery thing to do.

My next attempt is going to be to make butterflies with the technique since I think that could be very nice. I do think it's something I'm going to experiment with for a bit.

Cheers,

Sandy

My annual labour of love...

Hi All,

I took the day off work to decorate a cake for my husband. It's my annual labour of love for him. I'm not particularly good at it and it takes me hours. By the end of the day I can be on the cranky side and my hands are very sore. The kitchen is usually a disaster.

But I'm typically happy with my results and it's really the only thing my husband wants for his birthday so I try not to complain too much. Every year I buy the Wilton's Cake Decorating issue and try to use it for inspiration. I had flipped to the Wall-E cake, husband saw it and said "I want that". It's not often he gives me guidance on what he actually wants so that was an easy choice (and, of course, he got the movie for his birthday).

So here's my cake for my husband, my love, my soul-mate, my brightness in life.

His birthday was actually last week but since I had a cold he didn't want me anywhere near cake making so it's a few days late. Husband is looking forward to having it after dinner.

And if you want to spend some time with a smile on your face, go over to http://cakewrecks.blogspot.com/ and spend some time perusing their site. I hope my cakes never make it to their blog.

Cheers,

Sandy