Day 27 - only one more day after this one!

Boy, today was a busy one for me. We got a lot of snow overnight, here's a photo that I took early this morning looking out the back door. That's the hot tub under that layer of snow! And below that is a photo of our son Tim's truck in the driveway after we had gotten the driveway cleared of snow, a couple of hours later.


Snow being the first thing we had to deal with today, I am sharing an "already-made" polymer clay creation, a needle case that I made using a texture sheet made by our own Ponsawan Sila. I absolutely LOVE that texture sheet and use bits and pieces of it all the time. Thanks, Ponsawan! Ponsawan is a fantastic artist and always wonderful about sharing her knowledge. You can find her tutorial blog here: Polymer Clay Beads Tutorials by Ponsawan; and her fabulous creative personal blog here: Polymer Clay by Silastones.


We have more snow since yesterday's storm... but not so much that it should keep me from Thing-A-Day's final day tomorrow.

Day 26 of Thing A Day - held up by electricity

I was ready to post a new photo for day 26 of the Thing A Day challenge, however, we had a snowstorm and suddenly lost all power for the entire evening, about 6 hours. So since the saying says "better late than never", I am posting some new kaleidoscope canes here for Day 26.





I'm still having a lot of fun making these canes so there will be more of them in the future.

Day 25!

Well Day 25 of the Thing A Day challenge at Polymer Clay Central means that we only have three more days left. I can hardly believe it, and may just keep going straight on into March!

I've been claying... making canes to be more precise. I had a lot of trouble photographing this color green for some reason. These canes are actually a mild pastel green and don't have all the blue in them. I worked at correcting the color on these but it's still not quite right. They are really mellow in person. Well I guess we don't meet canes "in person", but you know what I mean.

More canes tomorrow, I hope!

Day 24 of Thing A Day

Today I have a purple kaleidoscope cane pendant that I made. I like this one because I put a sapphire crystal in the center and it adds a bit of bling to the piece.

I sure wish I had more time to clay, but today we got almost a foot of snow. Nice wet heavy Spring snow - ugh. But it's all cleaned up now and I believe I saw "moon shadows" a few minutes ago. Hope it doesn't snow through the weekend, since we have a delivery coming and our son is coming over on Friday to help with some heavy lifting and spend the night. Will be great to have two of my favorite men in the whole world (our son-in-law being another favorite) to cook for on Friday night!



Click on image to enlarge.

Thing a Day Challenge Day 23

Today is a "sad day", as it is the anniversary of my dear mom's death. She was a great mom and a fun wonderful person, all of us miss her a lot. But on the good side, I got to talk with my little sister for a bit, and so that was helpful.

Last night, during my thoughts of mom, I decided to make a Bottle of Hope. I got a lot of help on this one, though - from both Carolyn of Carolyn's Clay Creations and Seana at Skb31mom.etsy.com, who made the beautiful canes that I used. Aren't they awesome??? Those girls can both make fabulous canes, and I treasure those that I have from them.



Hope everyone had a nice day!

Day 22 of Thing A Day!

Now that I'm back on track, here is my Thing A Day, Day 22 offering for the Polymer Clay Central challenge. I made this pendant from one of my recent canes and I just love the shape and the way the cane looks in the frame.

I'm sliding in just 10 minutes before midnight here, so with no further adieu...


Thanks for looking!

Day 21 of Thing A Day - Yellow Kaleidoscope Canes

I'm not even going to talk about missing three days of the Thing A Day challenge. Suffice to say that I am back on schedule and have some new kaleidoscope canes to share.

Hope to be able to clay later today again - we have snow but we lucked out and the storm moved north of us. We have 5 inches... our son's area has over 2 feet!! That is not normal, usually it's the other way around. We are feeling so blessed, and so is our son, because he loves to ski. There's a win-win situation.

Hope everyone is having a safe and happy Sunday.

Day 17 - a Bottle of Hope

The Olympics are a serious drain on my claying time lately! I have been watching them as much as I can each day. This Bottle of Hope is my Day 17 entry in the Thing A Day challenge that we are having at Polymer Clay Central. My guild, the Reno Polymer Clay Guild, provides bottles of hope to the Nevada Cancer Institute and since we are a small guild, keeping up with making them is an important job.

I also have a cane ready to assemble tomorrow. Looking forward to that, it's the fun part. The whole day of conditioning and mixing, conditioning and Skinner blending, is not the fun part! But that is all done, just need a few hours for the rest of it.

Only 10 days left of the challenge!

Thing A Day for Day 16 - Works In Progress

I'm grateful to two people for showing me a couple ways to make pendants - first, Julie Picarello and second, Judy Belcher. Somehow, pendant-making has always been difficult for me, until these two wonderful women decided to share some tricks. These three pendants are made with my recent "Medieval Forest" canes.

They are not baked yet, I am waiting to get a full baking pan of things before heating up the oven, so I will share them as "works in progress" today.

Click on the image to enlarge them. Thanks for looking!

My Day 15 Education for Thing A Day

When I woke up today, the sun was shining! This was very good news as we have had cloud cover for the past two weeks, not only was it depressing, it was also making it very difficult to take photos.

So, I got up, set up my photo cube outside on the deck, and started shooting. After 300 or so photos, I was even more depressed than when we had cloud cover for two weeks. My photos left a lot to be desired, especially in the color category. So many of the pens and key rings I was photographing were not really the colors that were showing up in my photos.

So I watched the Olympics for about 3 hours and got a headache. But then, a wonderful little miracle. My daughter, the graphic artist, called to say hello, and I told her about my color problems. Well she uses Photoshop, which I know can do anything, but I don't have that program.

However, her 6-year old has a computer with the same program that I have, and she sat down in front of it, took one of my photos that was completely off color, and figured out how to fix it! Now, she didn't just send me the photo... nope - she made me sit there and work with the program until I figured out how to make my photos better. What a relief! I have a zillion photos on my computer that I won't share, because of the color distortion.

Here is where I've begun - this Rose Flower Pen is not blue!! It's a very pretty gray-blue color. But as you see by the first photo, it looks blue. I probably have 20 different photos of this pen - all of them blue.

But - VOILA!!! As you see by the second photo, the blue has been reduced so that the photo (at least on my monitor) looks like the right color! This is wonderful.

So the saying, "Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime" definitely applies to my new color-correction ability. I'm on my way to much better photos. Thank you, my dear daughter!

Happy Valentine's Day - TAD Day 14

It has been a lovely Valentine's Day around my house, I hope it's been the same for everyone else. I have five Heart pendants to share for Day 14 of the Polymer Clay Central Thing A Day challenge.

We are already halfway through the challenge! I am glad I signed up for it this year, and I'll be looking forward to doing it again next February. What a good month to get busy claying in, after the holiday and the January lull.

Red for Thing A Day, Day 13

What do Atoms, Fireworks, Baskets and Streamers have in common? Good question? I can tell you the answer - they are the pictures that I see in my latest set of kaleidoscope canes.

I made these for the 13th day of the Polymer Clay Central "Thing A Day" challenge - since they are red maybe I should be saving them for tomorrow, Valentine's Day, but I can't wait.

I did these a little differently in that I used exactly 50% each of Kato clay and Premo clay. I was impressed with how well this worked, I didn't expect them to be as crisp as the others, but they are. They also reduced without any more waste than the previous canes. So there's a win-win, since I have a lot of Premo clay here. They slice great, too, so I'm quite happy with the combination.

Here they are, please click on the photos to enlarge them.









I can't wait to make more... back to the Claypen!!

Day 12 - Plum Kaleidoscope Pendant

I finished sanding and buffing this Plum Kaleidoscope Pendant this evening, and took a photo, then forgot to move the photo to my computer. But I've remembered! So with no further fanfare, here is the photo. Thanks for visiting my blog!

The Claypen Chat - Thing A Day 11

The "Discussions from the Claypen" chat was this morning - so today I'd like to give you the link to the Claypen Art website so you can see all the polymer clay creations that people made. It's amazing, really, the diversity that people have in their creations from week to week.

And this is just one week! There are 5 years worth of weekly albums here at this site. Feed your eyes some lovely candy....

Here is the link to the Claypen Art photo album for this week:

Claypen Art - February 11, 2010

All the artists thank you for looking!

Day 10 of Thing A Day - Still Two-Thirds of February to Go!

I was up late playing with clay last night, and I really like the magical thing that happened with this Plum Pillow Kaleidoscope cane pendant. It was a cane end that had a hole in the center, but it was too perfect looking to pass up.

This is not sanded yet, I'm still deciding whether to sand and buff this one, I may not.

The square center stone is compliments of Mr. Scott Mizevitz, it is an antique stone and very beautiful, the camera only caught a little of its glow.

Click on the photo to enlarge it.


(Reminder: tomorrow is Thursday, Discussions from the Claypen chat!)

Day 9 of the Thing A Day Challenge

Well I fell off the wagon, as they say, and missed Day 8 of the Thing A Day challenge at Polymer Clay Central. Sigh....

But here I am with three pairs of earrings for Day 9, I hope that makes up for it. I don't like the little bump in the road, but will have to live with it now.

These little kaleidoscope cane end pieces are fun to play with and make really cute earrings. They are sanded and buffed to a high shine. I have a Foredom jewelry buffer that I just love every single time I use it.

Click on the photos to enlarge them. Thanks for visiting my blog!!

Four things for Thing-A-Day, Day Seven

I got down to business yesterday, and made a new set of kaleidoscope canes. I was so good today that I took photos, and listed them all at Etsy even before doing my Thing-A-Day post.

Well, you can't go to my Etsy shop to see them, because I had barely finished the listing when they were sold! Thank you to my new customers, I appreciate your purchases and your support.

Here are the cane photos, you can click on the photos to enlarge them.






As soon as I am finished here and check into Polymer Clay Central, it's back to the Claypen I go!

Jackie

Some Earrings for Thing-A-Day, Day 6

I have been making some fun and cute earrings - here is a pair made from a green kaleidoscope cane. I also have some awesome orange kaleidoscope cane earrings to get sanded, so be looking for them soon.

Click on the image to enlarge:


Thing-A-Day, Day 6 - I'm really having fun with this!

Thing a Day Challenge Day 5 - am I slowing down?

Uh oh. Only Day 5 and here I am posting in the afternoon, where I was posting right after midnight a couple of days. The reason is that I didn't get to work on my new cane due to a headache and extreme tiredness yesterday, and snow this morning.

But now I'm back to my cheery self, and want to share these fun beads in my "Planetary" theme. Expect to see similar beads this month, hint hint. The rock-tumbler-turned-bead-sander has been working hard for the past week or so.

Thing A Day - Day 4

I made this kaleidoscope cane with scraps just to see if I could make it work, and it did! This is from Donna Kato's recent book about millefiori caning. It was fun to do but I wish I'd started with more clay because it ended up rather small.

I didn't get to make a new cane for Day 5 today, and the Claypen chat is in the morning. So I will have to hustle to get one made and photoed on time for Day 5! Wonder if I can do it?

Day 3 of the Thing A Day Challenge

The month is starting to blur already - who will keep up and who will NOT keep up? This is the burning question! Well okay, so it isn't the burning question but it sounded exciting, didn't it? All the members of Polymer Clay Central are secretly hanging out in their studios at night, making who knows what kind of polymer clay concoctions to be revealed the next day....?

Well I have some more kaleidoscope canes, surprise, surprise. These are a little different, different colors, different look, but I like them a lot. To me they look like little bits of a medieval forest from a fantasy book.

With no further ado, here they are:




I enjoy all your comments and read every one of them, so please don't hesitate to post them.

See you tomorrow, time for me to go hang out in my Claypen and consider what kind of concoction I can whip up for tomorrow!

"Thing A Day" - Day 2

Today, Day 2 of the "Thing A Day" challenge at Polymer Clay Central, I have four things...sort of. I made some more kaleidoscope canes and had fun doing them. One of these days this month I will show photos of the process I go through to get to the point of actually having kaleidoscope canes to share.

Here are the Orange Kaleidoscope canes that I made, I just love them:





I can't seem to stop making canes! It's been so much fun and I am in the process of making more of them now. So, I'm off to the Claypen again - to "work" (haha).

It's THING A DAY at Polymer Clay Central - let's go!

February is a special month not only because of Valentine's Day, but also because it's the month that many of us polymer clayers choose to celebrate the "Thing A Day" challenge at Polymer Clay Central. The challenge is to make and share one thing every day during February.

This may be a little like putting the cart before the horse, since I made the kaleidoscope cane first.... but here is a pretty kaleidoscope pendant that I made to start off with. I had loads of fun making it and will soon be putting it in my Etsy shop.

I am looking forward to the challenge because not only do I get to create great eye candy all month, I also get to see great eye candy all month. It's very inspiring and a fun way to share what many of us are doing.

So, with that, I'm off to make something for tomorrow. Hope I can keep up.