A Ghost Cane

I'm trying to make more new canes for the next week or two so I can open up shop.  This little ghost came together the other day.  I have a strong desire to make more sophisticated stuff, and then I sit down and make butterflies and cute ghostesses.  I'm always trying to figure out how to merge my two sensibilities, I like simple, organic looking jewelry but then I sit down to my clay table and make rainbow fun stuff.  I know I'll figure it out eventually, but for now I'm just happy to be claying regularly again.

For what it's worth, I think he's a very sophisticated ghost.  And he glows in the dark.

This weekend I need to focus on canes, but maybe I'll sit down with more of a plan.  I'll try to work from a sketch (a rare occurrence around here).  There's some jewelry that I want to make for myself, so maybe I'll get to work on that.

And maybe make some Christmas stuff.

I love holidays.

I think I just need to sell my items in collections?  The geeky collection, the holiday collection, and the attempting to be sophisticated collection.

I also get to start work on the TARDIS again now that there's more blue clay in the house.

Thanks for reading my meandering thoughts.

I like to think that someday someone will read this blog.  If that person is you, let me just say... hi :-)

The Butterfly

This one was supposed to be a small cane.

I'm having a lot of fun now that I'm back into caning everyday.  It didn't take long, The TARDIS was my fun project to get started after too much time off, and now I've got more ideas than I thought possible last week when I may have let myself get a little discouraged (we don't need to talk about that right now though)

I was going through all my clay trying to find something I could make without using much blue or black clay and I came across a bag full of clay colors I had mixed for a project back in June.  I'd made one small background cane for it and it was meant to look like a sky, since I'd scrapped the original project idea I decided to see what I could do with it.  I wanted a quick cane, not a week long project like most of my canes turn out to be.

The first thought that came to me was to make a bumblebee, but I ran into two problems with this idea:

1. Too much black clay.  Something I don't have much of right now.
2. A black and yellow bug didn't seem like the right fit for the background I was trying to fill.

So my next thought was to make a butterfly, the colors I'd already mixed for my now defunct project seemed like they would make a beautiful butterfly and it's been almost 10 years since I last made one.  That one was very popular with the 3-8 year old girls (hoping to appeal to a wider audience with my current work) and there are things that I've wanted to do differently if I ever made another (I've learned more about color palattes in the years since this last fellow was created, there were too many conflicting purples for my liking in my first one).  One thing I did really like about it was the way I made the backgound,

One of the more time consuming things about the way I cane is mixing all the different colors.  But that was already done for me so the work was quick and I came up with this in only one toddler naptime (and still managed time to make dinner):

You can see the piece of background cane that inspired me in that picture too.  By the time I was done building my butterfly I realized I'd made it too big for the little bit of background, and decided it would be fun to use in in a lot of different ways, so I packed it with playdough and scrap clay and reduced it that way.  After I cleaned it up I cut a slice of the smaller butterfly and made him some antennae and packed in the background clay.  I think I was a little tired because I forgot to take a section of the cane when it was still bigger, so I only have the small size to show you.

As you can see from the picture at the top of this post, I have a lot more butterfly to play with.  And as you can see from the picture right above I have a lot to learn about taking pictures.

I'll probably make some jewelry from the canes without the background, but I also have some pictures in my head that include the butterfly that I would love to turn into canes or wall art.  I'm trying to challenge myself to finish things with them.  The finishing is not my strongest skill, I tend to just make canes, then bake slices of those canes. I really need to up my finishing skills, because I don't know if I feel like just selling my canes.

TARDIS progress

My current project has to be put on hold, apparently I am coming up a few pounds short in the blue and black clay department.  Time to work on other projects while I wait to restock. 

Pieces from the week

The time I had to work on the TARDIS over this last week was spent in more of the prep work for the final build.  I've mixed all my blues and managed to get them together and ready to be turned into a police box.  I also made the sign for the front of the door, nothing too fancy, I didn't include real words, but I like how it turned out.  The last detail I was working on was making everything the proper size that I need to head into the final build stage.

Mixed Blues

Almost ready to build!

I realized something with this new blog attempt. Blogging everyday is impractical for me, I hope you all can forgive me (hello out there, if you're reading this). I'm going to lower my expectations of myself here, and say once a week is the goal, and more than that means I'm awesome just being productive. I want to make sure I have time to enjoy life without the self imposed guilt that comes along with this adventure.

What kept me away this week? Well, thank you for asking. it was my daughter's fourth birthday, so that involved some celebrating. I made her a princess fairy wand which she "helped" me with. Her help was really more like a tiny dictator standing over my shoulder moaning, "Mommy, are you done? I don't know how to have patience."

The Birthday Princess

This is her patient face.

Beginning the TARDIS

I've had in my head to do a TARDIS cane for a while, and decided to make it my first big project to jump into.  It's always easier for me to work on the ideas I can't get out of my head, so I just decided to run with it.  Hopefully the end result will be worth showing off.  I spent some time today making the words for the top of the simple blue box.  I was surprised by how quickly so many letters came together for me, sometimes caning words takes me forever and I dread it, things went smoothly this time though.

I made the three sections of words in three separate canes so that reducing the shape would be easier (if I'd done it all together I would have probably made reducing it an impossibility because of the long flat rectangle shape.





Here's a picture after all three have been reduced. It looks like I have plenty of cane leftover to make more Doctor Who themed things once this one is done.
 



Time to go to sleep now, or lay awake thinking of how to approach the next step. I should probably attack the windows first, but i also need to mull over how I want to pattern my blues. I'm sure you're all on the edge of your seats.

The first post

It's time to start something, my mind is filled with ideas and I want to turn my polymer clay hobby of 20 years into a business (for real this time, not like all those other times).  I have some work to put in before I'll feel like I'm really in business, so I'll use this blog to track my progress.


For now, let's get to know each other a little better, here's a recent picture of me.  I don't know how to tell you about myself without this post getting really boring.  Let's leave the rest of the details for the about me section.

Thanks for sticking with me through the first post, I appreciate your kindness.

~Beth West