Thing a Day - Day Eight...

Buttons!

Thing a Day - Day Seven...

This is a simple necklace that I adapted from a class I'll be teaching next month:

Thing a Day - Day Six...

Sometimes, when I have a hard time of thinking of anything creative, I’ll grab some scrap clay and mush it all together.  Most times it turns out green (sometimes blue or purple, but mostly it’s green).  Then I fiddle with it a bit.  I usually wind up making an alien of some sort.  Here’s the latest one:

Thing a Day - Day Five...

A couple of beads…they’re not quite two inches long…. I promise–it won’t be pink and purple all month!

Thing a Day - Day Four...

Still with the ikat stuff.  This time a fibula.  Oh all right...a pin (or brooch).  These were known as fibula in ancient times and I rather like the word.

Thing a Day - Day Three...

I also made a smashed ikat petal cane.  And when I make petal canes, I make polymer flower rings:

Another view:

During the baking process, the band darkened to the kind of sepia tone you see here.  It doesn't look bad, but I think I liked the bright white better.  Maybe I'll try another one and see....

Thing a Day - Day Two...

Since I had so much of this particular ikat cane, I decided to use it to make a Christmas ornament.  It's never too early for those...

Thing a Day - Day One

Oh dear, I totally forgot to cross-post my thing a day's over here.  Well, never too late to catch up!  I made quite a few smashed ikat canes for the January guild meeting.  I used one of them (and a scrap cane) to make a couple of beads for a necklace:

Classes, more classes...

I'm going to teach a class or two at Ben Franklin in February.  Here's some pictures of the three pieces I made for their consideration (two bracelets and a necklace).  I'm not sure if they're just going to pick one, or pick two or three.  We'll see....

More Vancouver guild ornaments...

Here's the rest of the ornaments from the guild party:

Vancouver guild ornaments...

Here's the first post showing some of the ornaments from the Vancouver Polymer Clay Guild Christmas party.  Have I mentioned my failing memory?  Unfortunately, I can't remember who made each ornament.  Which is a real shame, as the ornaments are great and truly deserve to be attributed to those who made them.  If any guild member happens to be reading this, chime in and tell me who made what.  Thanks!!

Oh, and please forgive the poor photography....

The other two...

Here's the other two ornaments I made in the new style:

Christmas Tree front:

Christmas tree back:

Yeah, I know...it looks the same back and front, but it really is different on each side.

Angel ornament front:

Angel ornament back:

I'm having a hard time deciding which is my favorite.  I really like the angel, but I like the snowflake and flower, too.  The Christmas tree one was better in my mind than it turned out--I like it, but not as much as the other ones.  I'm going to be making more of these, so perhaps I can improve on the parts that didn't turn out as I intended.

Vancouver Clay Guild

I've been a member of the Northwest Polymer Clay Guild since 1996.  They meet in Seattle, which is about an hour south of where I live.  A couple of years ago, I went to Horizons, the Vancouver Polymer Clay Guild retreat.  It was wonderful!  They had some nice workshops and everyone was so very kind and welcoming. 

Of course, every year since then, the freedom to travel easily between Canada and the US grew more and more complicated.  It wasn't until last year that I finally got my passport renewed and could go into Canada again.  And I got to thinking...if I travel an hour to Seattle for a meeting, how hard would it be to travel two hours to Vancouver for a meeting?  And would it be okay for an American to join a Canadian guild?

In a word: YES!  Lucky for me, the first meeting since inquiring about joining was the December Christmas party.  I had a fabulous time and met some truly great people (all of them, really).  I'm horrible at taking pictures of people (I always forget!); for some reason, I usually concentrate on the polymer.  Go figure!

Here's a picture of some of the people (in deference to my failing memory, I'm not naming names--I don't want to get anyone wrong!):

Here's the ornaments in the ornament swap (I'll show individual pictures in a later post):

And here's the ornament I got...isn't it gorgeous?!  It's on my tree right now!

*happy sigh*

New Ornament Designs...

I try to come up with a new ornament design every year.  Here's a couple of the ones I made this year:

Snowflake front:

Snowflake back:

Flower front:

Flower back:

I have a couple more that I'll post later.  I'm quite liking this new design...I have some more ideas for it that I hope to get to soon.

New Class...

September?!  I can't believe it's been that long since I posted anything.  Let's just say real life intervened and I'm due for a loooong stretch of boring.

Anyway, I'm teaching a class at Ben Franklin next month.  These ornaments:

I'll post the times when I know what they are....