September Challenge Prizes from PCAGOE members

I want to share the September "Prize Pool" from the Polymer Clay Artists Guild of Etsy with all of you. Below is a "mosaic" of the prizes that will be given away to lucky voters in the PCAGOE September challenge. These prizes have been donated by members of the PCAGOE.




The challenge is open to PCAGOE members only, but the public is invited to vote for their top three favorites at www.pcagoechallenge.blogspot.com between September 1 and September 7, 2010, for the chance to win one of these prizes and to determine the outcome of the challenge.

And just WAIT until you see the September challenge entries - this month it is all about transfers and there are so many beautiful entries. Voting is going to be very difficult, that's for sure. The transfer sheets were donated by http://www.piddix.etsy.com/.

For now, you can drool over these great prizes. But next week you can VOTE and maybe win one of them!! Good luck, everyone.

HYSTERICAL LAUGHING (u will understand)

I am so thankful that I have all of you to share this story with. My "Claypen" studio space has been the dumping ground for all my "stuff" since it was redesigned in Nov. 2009 - (see clean Claypen here - http://thepleasantpheasant.blogspot.com/2009/11/my-studio-space-claypen.html).

The Claypen looks nothing like that now, of course. Sigh. There is so much stuff in there I can hardly walk through it. Sigh. Every day I Sigh about this, but I just keep dumping more stuff in there. Sigh.

So tonight, I'm trying to condition clay, but I have nowhere to put it. No place at all. Every horizontal surface is filled with stuff. Important stuff, of course. Too important not to have right in front of my nose. Ask me if I’m sure I need all this stuff in plain sight, on all of my working surfaces. Go ahead, ask me…. Oh, why is some of it stacked on top of the rest of it? Well because there is no more table space, and the top stuff is more important than the stuff underneath it. Hmmm.

I have this big metal cabinet - 6 feet tall, 3 feet wide, 2 feet deep, with shelves - which doesn't show in those older blog photos. I think, "Hmmmm I wonder if I could make room in the cabinet? Then I could stack conditioned clay on a shelf, with deli sheets between!" So I open the cabinet. "Gee, there sure are a lot of glass jars, bottles and vases in here. Can I fit any of them in the OTHER metal cabinet that is taking up space in DH's office”? It already has a shelf full of glass jars, bottles and vases, but maybe I could squish them over some.

So I carry the jars, bottles and vases, little by little (there are a LOT of vases and bottles and jars. This is actually Naama's fault because she used to cover beautiful vases, and I aspired to be like her - but I digress...) There are also little piggy banks and “oh! Look at these metal napkin rings. What’s in that gift bag? Oh aren’t these the cutest little tins and tiny containers? I should cover these…”

Then I get hold of myself. “Jackie”, says me to me, “let’s get these jars and bottles and vases moved to DH’s office already”. So I carry more vases and jars, and “Oh, look at all these gourds! How fun!! Remember that gourd you covered? It was so cool. You should cover more gourds.”

“What is in this paper bag? Oh, switch plate covers. Hundreds of switch plate covers, hmmmm”. I wonder if anybody wants these switch plate covers?” I fold up the paper bag, hurriedly carry it to DH’s office with the gourds, and push it and the gourds way to the back of the metal cabinet.

Back in the Claypen cabinet, I find boxes. Many little empty boxes. Some of them are ugly. But they are cute little boxes, if you ignore the ugly part. I have a thing about small boxes, to the point that DH won’t let me keep them anymore. So whenever he’s not looking, and a small box passes by, I hide it. In my metal cabinet. So I start pulling out all these small boxes, and wonder where to put them. There is that bin down under the house, where I have my “other” stash of small empty boxes. Maybe some of these would fit in there? Probably not, last time I tried to put a box in there I couldn’t even find a box without more boxes in it to put a box into.

I slide the boxes over, thinking of what a hassle this is becoming. Then I see some plastic bags, way back in the corner. “Hmmmm, what is this?” I wonder. "Maybe something really cool!" I pull out the plastic bags. In the plastic bags, there are cornstarch peanuts. I’ve never used a cornstarch peanut to make a hollow bead in all my years of polymer claying, yet here they are. Cornstarch peanuts. I stand there holding two plastic bags full of cornstarch peanuts (some of them are brightly colored cornstarch peanuts, even) in my arms, and I start laughing. Hysterically. Laughing and laughing and laughing. Because I am thinking of all of YOU – my dear friends, my addicted to stuff polymer clay pals, and I’m thinking, wildly, “I could add a few of these cornstarch peanuts to every envelope I send out of here! I could share these cornstarch peanuts with my friends!!!!”

But fear not, I managed to get hold of myself before I lost it all together. Tomorrow, I am going to carry those cornstarch peanuts outside, and melt them all in a pail full of water. And if a small tear falls from my eye as I melt my cornstarch peanut stash, I know you will all understand.

Another Flower Mountain

Well as you can see, I'm having all together too much fun over here. I've made some more flower canes - with many thanks to Zuleykha and Ayelet for their fun tutorials. Thank you for sharing your talents, ladies, you add so much to the polymer clay community.

I love the colors here - the copper and blue cane is different looking and the turquoise folded-petal flower cane is cheery and bright.

Click on the photos for a larger view.

A Mountain of Flowers!

I posted the initial photos of these flower canes a while back, but now that I've wrapped them in my special secret recipe of translucent clay, and reduced them, I wanted to share them again. I think they are so pretty! I'm definitely making more like these as soon as I get some claying time in again.

Please click on the photo for a closer look.


I'll be listing these in my Etsy shop as soon as I find some extra time. Where DID I put that extra time, anyway??

Embroidering with Polymer Clay

At times I feel like I'm embroidering pretty patterns with my polymer clay. This week, my thread colors have been turquoise, white, black, green and yellow. I've got some new polymer clay cane patterns to share:

(Click on the image for a closer view)



Next week I'll be working on some coasters for the Polymer Clay Central Coaster Swap. I'm looking forward to it, and already liking my prototypes.

Truckee Softball Rules!!!

Today I want to share my granddaughter Dezaree, and her Truckee Softball team. They were in a tournament this last weekend and we got to go to one of her games. It was really fun and her team was doing so well when they called the game for time.... but they didn't win. But, since it's not just about winning, we still had a wonderful day together with the family.

Here is Dezaree's team all stacked up:



And here is darling Dezaree in a couple of poses - cute, isn't she? That's my girl!!

I love you, Dezaree!

New Flower Canes!

I wanted to share some new flower canes that I've been making. I just love them. I still need to work to make something closer to perfection, but these are my first flower canes in years, so I'm pretty happy with them.

I can't take all the credit, though, I did purchase a tutorial by Zulekyha from www.claylessons.com - and that made the difference. It's a great tutorial.

I hope you like these as much as I do! Thanks for looking.