Recent Creative Projects

So, yeah, it's been quite a while...  we got to talk to Emily on Christmas Day, and she reprimanded me for not keeping up the blog and posting pictures of the fun stuff I've been doing -- not that missionaries can read blogs anyway -- and even though she's my baby sister, and I'm the one that's always right, I had to admit she's got a point.  ;)  I've had other friends asking when I'd be updating the blog, too, so here come lots of pictures of the fun I've been having lately with clay -- and since I don't have the time or desire tonight to figure out how to create a slide show...  I'll post them as small pics, but I'm pretty sure if you click on them, you can see a full size version if you'd like.

These first two are the front and back of a little pin I made for Emily to put on her scriptures or something.  I was thinking kind of like a guardian angel, but I'm not that fond of those little winged figures, and besides, a missionary is an angel, right?  So there's the "Oh, that I were an angel..." scripture reference on the back, and her name and mission.  She wrote and said she really liked it and would keep it pinned to her scripture case for her whole mission, which naturally made me feel happy and appreciated.  :)  I think she's doing a wonderful job, and I miss her.

Here's a little elf man I made with movable arms and legs and his head swivels around.  I need to make him a little girlfriend but I haven't gotten around to it yet.  He sits on my desk at work and makes me smile.

I introduced my friend Brianne to clay, and she took off with it.  She made herself a set of mini-ornaments for a Halloween tree that she had, and then our other friend at work, Randa, wanted a set too.  Brianne made her one, but when Randa went to the craft store to buy the tree itself they were out.  So I volunteered to try to make a tree.  Here it is with Brianne's ornaments decorating it.  It's got a rock in the bottom for stability, and the limbs are all foil wrapped wire under the clay.  This isn't the best picture, but hopefully you can see it okay.  The eyes I did with glow-in-the-dark clay -- ooooo, spooky!  ;)

Randa's birthday was at the first of this month and she really loves giraffes, so I made this picture frame for her.  The pictures really aren't the best (kinda blurry), which is a shame because I put gold clay in the mix, and each orange spot has a strip of more gold around it, and the mica in the gold clay gives it some cool depth.  I thought the giraffe had a sweet expression, and Randa was thrilled with it, which made me really happy.  The photo inside the frame is all her friends at work just being silly.

I wanted to bring a little greenery to my desk at work, so I made this pot (vase?) for some lucky bamboo.  I did the basket weaving and the flowers both out of clay, right onto the glass, and baked it glass and all.  You can't really tell from the picture but the flattened marbles inside that hold the bamboo are colored ranging from clear to lilac to dark purple.  I was pretty pleased with the end result, and it looks nice on my desk.

And finally, my Aunt Linda remembered the hand bound journals I used to make and decided she wanted to get some for her family for Thanksgiving for gratitude journals, hoping that keeping a gratitude journal would help improve everyone's mood and attitude.  She thought that a personalized, hand made journal would encourage everyone to actually use them.  Apparently they were a big hit -- she ordered 3 more for Christmas presents for friends.  These pictures are only of the front covers so you can't really see the stitching on the spines, but all the names on the front are done in clay.  I've wanted to try combining clay with the books, and this was the perfect opportunity (not to mention some much needed extra spending money for Christmas).  :)

 

In other news, Christmas was great because it was really nice to spend time with family and talk to Emily on the phone.  My newest nephew, Stanley Sanders Lund (picture below) was just born on Dec 20th and he's absolutely adorable, of course.  Christmas was also miserable because I got a stupid sinus infection and now I have to take the most disgusting, bitter tasting pills until they're gone so it won't come back.  Blech.  But, I did get a Wii! Yay!  I'll be able to do some boxing and sword fighting and tennis to exercise.  I'm very much looking forward to that -- I start as soon as the infection is really gone.  The doctor advised I should probably wait until at least Monday.  Hopefully I'll be able to get into some kind of better shape this year -- the family is planning a cruise when Em gets off her mission, so I've got approximately 14 months to get myself ready to go.  It's a race with the clock, and I think it will be a lot of fun, too.  :)

Here's my sweet nephew!

Two months!

Well, I've been getting used to a new job, remember?  Yeah, I know, not much of an excuse for two full month's absence, but it's all I've got.  :)  I wish I could say I have tons of great projects to post pictures of, but I've only got two.  Hopefully, there will be more in the near future.


My sister, Emily, is leaving on a mission in a couple weeks and as a good-bye present for her two roommates, she "commissioned" some work for them.  I made Em some dragon bookends for Christmas this last year (that I still haven't gotten pics of to post...) and her roommates really thought they were something cool, so she asked me to make some for them.  Actually, only the one roommate got dragons, the other -- well, pics are below.

 This roommate loves pink and bold, bright colors.  I took Emily at her word and went super bright!  When I delivered them, Em's roommate really seemed to like them, so I guess it worked.  I had fun with the rainbow backdrops -- they remind me of thermo images.  You know, the one's that you need special equipment for that show differences in temperature through color.  Pretty cool, huh?  I made them using the same technique as for the faux abalone I used on the bottle I gave my mom (see earlier post).  It's all clay -- no paint -- and they have hematite beads for eyes.

Emily's other roommate apparently prefers more mod-ish looking things, and her favorite flower is a tulip.  Emily asked me to do a scented oil bottle basketweave like the one I had done for Rachel (see earlier post).  I thought black would be nice, but a single bottle didn't seem like enough when the other roommate was getting two pieces.  So I did this matching relief sculpture -- it's got a picture frame stand back on it to hold it upright.  You can't really see it in the picture but both the flowers and the leaves have gold clay in them which gives it a really cool sheen and depth.  I was really happy with the way these turned out, and I'll have to do some more.  The bottle is a flattened sphere rather than an actual sphere like the ones I did before, and the craft store had all sorts of shapes of bottles for only a couple bucks each, so my mind is buzzing with ideas.  Whether or not I'll ever actually get to them....  well, we'll see, I guess!  :)

Oh, and that's a nice glimpse of my really cluttered creation station, don't you think?

Yay! Presents!

I didn't go to Manti until this last weekend for Mother's Day, so I didn't get to give my mom and sisters their presents until now.  So here are the pictures of them.  They are bottles for scented oil and diffuser reeds.  I encountered this new company, Cierra Ashley, at a craft fair a few weeks ago and I splurged on one for myself because it smelled so nice (and was less expensive than a candle).  Then I decided to play with decorating the bottle with some clay before adding the oil and this is what I ended up with.

It's a really basic polymer clay technique but one I hadn't tried before, so I thought it would be fun.  I just sandwiched a sheet of gold foil between a sheet of dark blue clay and a really, really thin sheet of transparent clay and sent the whole thing through the pasta roller a few times to crackle the foil.  I painted the glass with PVA glue and let that dry so the clay would have something to grab onto, smoothed the sheet in place, and then added the gold accents.  I was so pleased with it that I decided it would make an excellent gift for Mother's Day and for my sisters' birthdays, so I called up Heidi from Cierra Ashley and ordered 3 more.  I wanted 3 more round bulb-like ones like this one, but she only had two, so I had to get a square one.  That one went to Mom.

This is supposed to be faux abalone, so I was really thrilled when -- with no prompting from me -- Mom said that was what it looked like.  I thought the pearlized clays and pretty pastels really suited her.  For my sister Rachel, I made a clay basket, which was a great idea but took forever.

I textured the horizontal strips to make it look more like a straw basket, so before adding the final sealing coat they all got, I added a patina with some burnt umber acrylic paint to emphasize the texture.  There are three flowers around the rim of the "basket" and when I set out to make them, they were going to be sunflowers, but I just couldn't get them to look right, so I just made up these.  I call them "Rachel Flowers."

The idea for Emily's came from a turtle shell (she collects turtles) and is made from an extruded hexagonal cane.  The hexagonal shape didn't survice the process of making the pattern sheet very well, but I'm still pretty happy with the results.  I had a bit of that pattern sheet left over so I made a couple of cabochons that now only need a head, 4 legs, and a tail to look just like cool little turtles.  Not sure what I'll do with those yet...  I have a lot of the abalone cane left too, so I'll probably try to do something cool with that as well.

Clay Pendants and Beads

I found some batteries for my camera (yay!), so here are the pictures of some beads and pendants I've made.  All of these were done with translucent Kato PolyClay with alcohol inks, PearlEx powders, and colored chalks mixed in.

Obviously some of them haven't been made into necklaces yet, and the dark purple one doesn't even have a hole -- I was intending to use it as an embedded cabochon, but I haven't had a chance to work with it yet.  The yellow one is the only one (so far) that includes glass and stone beads too.  Only the yellow beads are clay.

I've been asked to put up a tutorial for the long-stitch hand bound books I took to demonstrate at our last mid-week RS meeting.  It's been a busy week so I'm hoping to get that up this weekend.

My Creativity Sharing Stymied

I've been browsing polymer clay stuff and have found some really cool products and inspiring blogs, and I thought, it's been way too long since I posted stuff about the clay things I'm making.  In particular, I made some pendants and beads that I think are pretty unique and I thought I'd take some pics and post them on here.  So I dig out my camera ... and no battery power.  I go searching and I've only got 2 fresh batteries and my camera takes 4, so ... nope, that rechargeable battery thing I bought is completely useless and the batteries don't work.  I'm going to have to buy new batteries before I can take pictures, so I guess I won't be posting any pics of clay or jewelry OR garden any time soon.  ~sigh~

Well, anyway, I've been working on quite a few things for hopeful income, and I just got a short term job that will be probably be incredibly dull, but will at least bring in some income.  As soon as I can, I'll post some pictures of those pendants and beads. :)

Clay creatures

This is the clay turtle (with stone bead accents) that I made last weekend for my sister Emily who collects turtles.

And this is the dragon I made -- took about a week.

 

Her name is Amy, and Amy loves her amythyst! There's her large rock and several smaller ones in the ground around her -- looks like she found a good place to collect them from. 

She has mother-of-pearl as plates along the spine, and green and purple freshwater pearl accents.  She's my first dragon, but don't worry, Amy will have lots of friends soon!

I also made a lion's head and some filigree beads (which my Mom helped on) over the weekend that look pretty cool, but I don't have pictures of them yet.

New Clay Technique

These beads were an experiment using a technique I found in a book called Polymer Pizazz presented by Bead and Button Magazine.  Two artists -- Jody Bishel and Aya Teshima -- each wrote instructions for a type of hollow bead, both using cornstarch packing peanuts.  I decided to try my own version, and these beads were the result.  You can't really tell from the picture that the beads are hollow, but they are.  I only made a few and strung them with some glass seed beads and hematite to make this bracelet.  I like the way they turned out, but next time I try it, I'm going to leave bigger holes, both to see the hollow design better and to make it easier to get the packing peanut out.  They're water soluble, and they do disintigrate, but I still had to poke and prod the slimy pieces out of those tiny holes.  Blech.  However, the technique itself has given me some really cool ideas that I hope I'll be able to transfer from my head into reality.

As for everything else, well, this week has been really hard as far as the diet goes -- wait, I was supposed to be on a diet? -- and I've been working 10 hour shifts at work, so I haven't had a lot of time to do anything besides work and sleep.  Should be a nicer paycheck than usual, though.  :)  I'm really happy to have a two day weekend (I worked last Saturday and will have to work next Saturday) so I'm going to make the most of it by getting laundry done, cleaning my room, and working on some art projects.  Hopefully, by tomorrow evening, I'll have more pictures to post.  :)