Sep 2, 2007
There I was, standing in the aisle at Hobby Lobby looking for the mold making product I needed to locate for my students in the Making Faces And Molds class that I’m presenting today at our local bead store. And when I found it, I saw a familiar face–several of them in fact!
I recently did a photo tutorial/project and some promotional samples for the company that makes Amazing Mold Putty. I have the full tutorial on my website for those that want to see how its done.
I had not yet seen the store promotional piece in its final print form until I saw it in the aisle, and I have to say, they did a wonderful job! I’m very pleased with how good it looks. And, its always great to see your work in print out in public! Take a look for yourself at Hobby Lobby in the aisle with the polymer clays and tools. Take a little look here; I’ve reduced the scans to fit this blog.
I’ll be showing all sorts of pictures and faces in the books on miniature masks and faces that will be coming out NEXT year on PolyMarket Press. What was planned as one book grew into two.
One is a photo-book of hundreds of miniature polymer clay masks and also larger scale masks.
The second is be a how-to book. Look for “The Art Of Polymer Clay Masks” and “Making Faces” in 2008.
PolyMarket Press is my small but growing publishing empire. Judith Skinner and I created our debut book last year, “Adapting Quilt Patterns To Polymer Clay”. We each have plans for more books to come, so you can tell that we enjoyed the experience enough to do it again!
Aug 27, 2007
I’ve just started an *aStore* over at Amazon, where I list great books and tools, including the ever popular Atlas Marcato Pasta Machine and Motor and the FABULOUS Wusthof Cheese knife. This one’s a favorite with Judith Skinner and I love it too. Most clayers we’ve shown it too have wondered where to get it–its on sale now! I’ve also listed Varathane in the quart size, spray Varathane and more hard-to-locate items.
Jul 30, 2007
oi! What a summer full of work its been so far. I’ve been so busy I haven’t had a minute to stop and post here in a while. The garden is going full tilt–all the lettuce is gone and the raspberries are done for the season. (But we froze 16 lovely bags full which will be great in muffins later this year and next winter too.) Now my daily garden time is spent watering and pulling the weeds which tend to thrive wherever you water here in Colorado. We don’t have a big farm or even a little one, just a backyard in a small town with a few small plots and a few big black pots that trees once arrived in from a nursery. We recycle and reuse as creatively as we can…with the addition of some good dirt and even better compost from a local dairy, we have thriving tomatos, peppers, cucumbers, herbs and 5 kinds of squash plants!
In addition to an hour or so a day in the garden, I’ve been growing lots of website pages and blogs, both for myself and for other clients. That includes helping my husband with his musical podcasts and blogs, though he’s becoming very self sufficient at it these days. He’s got quite a bit of original music up for listening, and more to come. I’ve been hearing and enjoying it for years; now its YOUR turn!
I’ve been busy sorting and gathering and bagging beads too, preparing for show and for upcoming classes, kits, and bigger projects like the next books. Polymer clay masks are all ready to be photographed and mounted this week, with the frames prepared and databases for the artist information all prepared–its a serious lot of work just to get ready for some projects. The amount of effort that went into making all the masks is enormous, but its also been spaced out over five or six years and done by many different artists who participated. That sure helps!!I’m really looking forward to putting this one together, and its happening now, this very week. And for the next several months as well! Bryan will be mounting and framing the masks as I finish their photos. As I sort through them now, I’m really struck again by how wonderful they all are–so many extremely cool little pices of art! Shown at top are two from the 2006 mask swap made by Karen Cowles. Check out her website at www.choosetothrive.com
Right alongside of that giant miniature undertaking is production of new beads and new polymer clay faces and more masks! Before we show off the masks on the walls and in a new book, I’ll be traveling back to the ol’ stomping grounds in Ohio in September, where I am very pleased to be offering classes in Bead Making and Millefiore Caning through the local polymer clay guilds. More about that in my next post.
I’m also very excited to say that work is well underway on the many aspects of preparing for our “Really Big Show”, as Ed Sullivan used to say. Scripts, songs, websites and blogs, puppets and even the theatre itself all have to in place and running before we bring up the curtain. As every one who has ever participated in theatre of any kind knows, there are years of work that go into a single hour’s performance, and its done by many hands and with the use of all sorts of skills. We’re close to being able to share the progress, and thats what’s keeping me pretty busy at the moment. Visit again soon and find out more!
Jun 1, 2007
We made it through the Big Dyeing Event and it all worked out very well. My hands and back are really tired, but the backyard has certainly been well watered with all the rinsing.
The ribbons, lace, scarves, cording, fabric, hats, bamboo beads, wooden pieces and tshirts have all been dyed, rinsed, and washed, and now I’m rolling and tagging and getting things ready for sales.
Next up on the “to do” list is making more polymer clay faces to go with all the great new colors, and putting them together into Spirit Doll kits–I’m going to the Houston International Quilt Show again this year in the Fall, and so this Summer is going to involve a Big Production Push. Lots of things to get done….Musician Bill Nelson says in song “People who do things, are people who get things done”.
I’ve been busy writing articles for Belle Armoire and other magazines, and working on books to the point that I’ve been spending less time than I need to on the actual polymer clay work, and I’m really looking forward to getting back to that!
Though I’ll be photographing as I go, because the dyeing process is part of one book, and the polymer clay masks are part of the next one up–“The Art Of Polymer Clay Masks”.
I have to work pretty steadily on that for the next two months in order to make it happen this year. It will be self-published through Lulu.com as is “Adapting Quilt Patterns To polymer Clay” with Judith Skinner.
I’m still working on migrating this site to the one that I maintain myself, but I havent figured out how to get tags to work there as they do here–in the meantime, I’ll make use of both lobes of my brain and both ftp sites and maintain both for a bit! Please do visit “the other side” to see the features available there that aren’t here.
May 14, 2007
Time to turn to another set of projects–we have made a timing adjustment to the dye schedule, and are waiting another week. When the white cotton crochet hats with wired brims arrived last week from Dharma Trading Co. and were tried on and instantly admired by both of us, my friend and I realised we had a math problem. That’s when 2 Hats+46 Dye Colors = Another Order (placed that very day). So our dyeing days have been postponed but we’ll be better prepared in another week, as the pale piles accumulate.
A creative mind is able to adapt to a change in scheduling. Just turn to a different project; there are ALWAYS at least ten different Things To Do visible in the corner of my mind’s eye, and thats because they block the view of all the rest of the list. A little bit done here, a few hours of concentrated effort there, and a wide variety of things do– eventually–get done.
I’m going to do a bit of polymer clay work today, and put away the messes I’ve made from taking things out for classes at my local bead store, and have some fun! That includes the glitter and metal leaf, the clay and the Jones Tones foils. One of the uses of little bits and scraps of clay is to take small amounts of colored clay and add metal leaf. This is a VERY thin sheet of metal, and can be found in silver, gold, copper, and anodized color bursts, swirls and patterns. It sticks to raw clay without any adhesive.
Place it all on a solid color background, roll it out, and you have a multi-colored sparkly confetti-style design. Portions of this were placed on chunks of polymer clay and pressed into a mold of my own making.
Today I’m going to take some actual clay time where I can listen to music and make faces. These will go in the spirit doll kits. The faces shown here are from the 2006 Miniature Mask Swap. Its just one of 90 designs that were traded between polymer clay artists. AFTER the dyeing happens, I’ll be taking pictures of them all. That’s too big a project for the next few days, but it is the next on the list. But for today, I’m going to putter around the studio a bit!
