Someday soon I'll start blogging again

Until then, enjoy some random pictures from my last few months. 

One blog post on the books for 2015! Go me!

Oh Hey There Internet...

 So, by now my vast readership has noticed that I haven't had a new blog post in a while. But, fear not! For I have still been busy. That's right, while I've been neglecting my blog I have not been neglecting my work.  And it's been a busy few months!


Since my last post, I went to my guild's retreat, I did a small craft show, I made custom sculptures for a cake topper, and I even tried my hand at a digital portrait.  And the big news this week, is I'm open for business!  I've got stock in my Etsy shop, and I'm happy with the photos.

I had been working toward this for the last few months and it feels good to finally be able to have it rolling.  I think one of my biggest obstacles, apart from what to make, was the photos.  I only have my iphone, but I think I figured out how to make it all work fairly well and I'm comfortable putting the photos I have out there.  Things are falling into place, I'm glad I decided not to rush it at the end of last year.

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.