Color my ( Wedding ) World

Last night I went out in search of the new Polymer Clay Cafe magazine which I had heard was out and was featuring an article by one of my guild mates, Linda Riopel of NKDesigns who does fabulous millefiore cane work and transfer art. But alas could not find it in three stores, they all had the same last issue ( which I was surprised as it is usually sold out by now). So I busied myself looking through some other mags, and happened to glance at a Martha Stewart Wedding issue. Now anyone who knows me personally knows I have been called Martha numerous times, In a complimentary way because of my decorating skill and artistic flair for interesting dinner parties and pretty good cuisine ( I have been asked numerous times to open my own restaurant through the years), however I am not a great big fan of hers but she does have some styling ideas, as long as I can read about them and not watch them. ;)

But anyway, I saw this magazine cover with a white wedding cake filled with colorful, like a rainbow of butterflies streaming down in a curvaceous streamer that looks quite amazing. A glance through showed lots of color, in the bridesmaids gowns to mixed colors in the bouquets as well as color on the bride. ( I went to her site and couldn't find the issue but did find these cakes which you may want to browse through, I especially like #29,the Magical Marzipan Forest. :)

Which brought to mind someone I know whose cake toppers are bright, colorful and whimsical but also natural and sophisticated at the same time. And that artist is Mary Ellen Nichols of beetreebyme.com and beetreeand me.etsy.com. I can just imagine this cake topper sitting on one of those colorful cakes and making a lasting impression. The Dalia cake perhaps ( #11) or maybe the Calico Cake ( #4) or even my favorite the Magical Marzipan Forest ( #29) ----(See the cake link above to know what I am referring to.)

So ladies planning your wedding, and looking to go beyond traditional, being more colorful, more individualistic, how about a custom made cake topper to carry out that theme? These can be personalized and be a treasured keepsake forever. They are not made of sugar that you have to worry about deteriorating or humidity causing problems and she does way more than cute little foxes. Check out her store and her website. She loves customs orders and a challenge, you can even have your integrated family members depicted :) Like this one shown here. She could be holding a flower colored to match your bouquet! And isn't he spiffy in his black bow tie?

I've watched this lady create and I don't think anything is beyond her reach, she is a great sculptress and having one of her works of art top the cake of your special day would be an honor and make it very memorable.


And don't forget the grooms cake too, I'm sure she could come up with something very apropos and ingenious to make that a hit too!

Ever Wonder?

About your art, you know you have those days you think what you came up with is really cool, then there are days you think that everything everyone else does is so much better. I fluctuate between this all the time. I was given a chance recently to advertise in a well known, art magazine. At first I turned it down, knowing my old camera couldn't take a decent picture good enough for magazine work, and secondly because I didn't feel my art could hold it's own with all the names I could imagine would be there. Ones I've long admired in the Polymer clay world as I have courted and left and come back to this medium even more enamored after time away.

So after much encouragement I decided I would give it a try. I didn't realize how hard on the nerves something like this would be. I went and purchased a new camera, after not having a new one since like 10 years ago. Wishing my old Canon SLR could function with instant success but knowing not to go there, I can just imagine the film developing costs. As it was I took over 60 pictures of what at first I thought I should feature, and it was suggested to me, then I decided to go with something else, so more pictures, probably over 100 this time.

Do you have any idea what it's like to go through 100+ pictures ( and being a perfectionist) to find the perfect one? I can't tell you how many hours it took me to decide on one, just one, and to finally submit it. Then when It came time to approve I had changes, I didn't like how my background looked, so asked to use another picture with a gradient background I quickly photo-shopped in. They were so very nice and very accommodating. But I really wasn't so nervous for myself, it was about being amongst all these top artists and I didn't want to bring their art down by having 'me' there.

But all in all I think I blended in quite well. It is simple but it is also as complex as you can get , since my pieces come directly from the source. I just try to make sure I don't make them look bad. :)

Oh, here is the winning picture, it is of one of my favorite to immortalize in clay, even though I don't much care to eat them, the beautiful aubergine, the Eggplant and its companion, one of the Eggplants fuzzy leaves, that leave such a wonderful texture.

Oh, and if you are interested in which magazine, check it out here, but to see my ad, you will have to visit your local Borders or Barnes and Noble and flip through it in the Polymer clay article section.

Pointy Paws Special

Well, the morning glory Tuscan pendant that was featured in that lovely charity treasury I last wrote about didn't sell yet and is still up for grabs.So in order to encourage some of you to help out in this worthy cause of homeless animals, I have announced in my shop that all things in the Pointy Paws Section are from now until Feb 28th, 20% off.

And remember all proceeds from these sales go to the shelter, I am not taking even material cost out, so 100% to them.

Also just a reminder, I was so happy to be able to purchase a beehive and training through Heifer International last month from the proceeds from my shop, as promised I will be doing so for the whole year. So if something else strikes your fancy in the shop, know that it too will be helping to benefit animals, as well as a whole village.

Have a great Thursday!

More Cleaning and lots of Treasury features!

So yesterday I spent about 4-5 hours downstairs cleaning, organizing, tossing in trash, tossing in Goodwill boxes, holding on to a few 'vintage items' to try and sell on my etsy Polkadotsandals shop which is mainly for supplies, some sewing items and vintage. And today I just gave it another hour or so. I can see my furniture again, the sectional, the sofa bed, the table for four, the 10' bar, and even in my work room my sewing table is bare, as is my general work table ( a 4x8' piece of plywood on saw horses). So it's getting there. I love to recycle, even packaging, and the room was also getting over run with all kinds of boxes so I wouldn't have to buy any or use a brand new one from the post office when the ones I had received things in the mail were perfectly re-usable. So the end seems in sight. I also cleaned off my clay table last night. I know I should have taken before pictures, but I was too depressed by all of it before and I think if I had them to look at, I wouldn't' have gotten past the 'Before' stage!

Mind you I keep everything else in my house neat and organized, I believe in the old adage,

"A place for everything and everything in it's place!" And woe to the one who takes something and doesn't put it back where it belongs when I go looking for it! ( that goes for myself as well! :) )

But it seems that art supplies are a different story, perhaps it's because we are concentrating on 'being creative' more so than 'being neat' about it, and the second thing, I think, is because we keep accumulating before using what we have, always with the good intention of , 'I can use this' but we never or rarely do.

So, I've decided 'less is more' and the art materials downsizing has spilled over to the rest of the house. I went through my kitchen and Goodwill boxed appliances and such that I don't use or that just don't work right for my style of cooking, which is probably why this is taking longer than it should, but I will have a great jump on spring cleaning and I'd rather do this in the winter and save on fuel to keep me warm by all this 'heavy labor' instead of sweating through the summer trying to do it ( I've already suffered Heat exhaustion from trying to unpack and set up a household under two weeks with no AC and in 95+ heat).

So when I finally finished for the day ( early this morning , around 4am) I needed a little down time and visited around the net. Checked emails and found that I had one over at etsy, which after reading, found I had been featured in a wonderful treasury.

Some of my readers from the beginning will maybe remember my post about Pointy Paws ( Organic Odysseys meets Pointy Paws), if you haven't read it yet I urge you to do so. This was also blogged about on the 'I'm Nice' blog.

I have set aside in my etsy shop a special section for items made from the materials sent to me, called Pointy Paws charity items. My Tuscan style Morning glory pod pendant was found ( one of the few items I used a charity tag on , I will have to amend that on the others!) through a search I am guessing and put in this wonderful treasury by deathlycute and it features items that are up for sale for a cause. I think this is probably one of the best promotional treasuries I've seen and have the pleasure and honor to be in.

I decided to look through some more and found I was featured in this lovely Spring green one! Which is so welcoming now as I look out the patio doors to the bare muddy ground. It's been warmer and so our snow has melted and turned the backyard into a mud bath, which by the way, as I am typing this I looked up and out there and saw two of my squirrels just jump up and tussle with each other ( they like to play king of the corn pile, we put out cracked corn, mainly for the deer, which I'll have to show you pics of some other time, but they think because they are here all day, it belongs to them! ). So this lovely collage of springy things is wonderful to look at and wonderful to be part of! Thanks to firescure! Check it out and forget it's winter!

Oh, it's my Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Time double switch plate that is featured! Which is a very down to earth, neutral, go-with-any-decor piece, done in vintage sepia tones and highlighted with a gold rub for just a little 'bling'!


Next I decided to peruse the Regular treasury and found I was in two others, that expired early this afternoon, but I got screen shots for you to see.

First there was this one, ------------>
a BNR by adorkable1 in which she randomly choose items on etsy and if someone buys something from it, she replaces with something from their shop, so it's kinda just for sellers only. It was nice to be included in it, even though my ring didn't sell.


Then there was this very artistically done one by my guild mate Julie, from Juliespace titled
'In the Garden with Kitty'. It is not only artistic but very springy and humorous as well, get a look at that cats eyes!

She graciously added my Tuscan style Oregano blossom brooch to this wonderful assortment.

These two are done now, but were running concurrently as of last night with the top two, I think that is a record for me so far as I know! The other two are still active so click on the pictures and it will bring you to them, so you can click and comment if you feel so moved!


That's it for now. I am hoping to do some more in the studio today and since my desk area is clear................................who knows what may happen?

Till next time, keep it Real ( istic)! :)

Spring Cleaning Early!

Have you ever discovered that you have collected so many things you thought you could do something with, or make something out of that one day you wake up and survey all this mess and feel hopeless and overwhelmed and just know if you lived to be 200 years old and stopped collecting right now you still wouldn't have the time to do all you proposed to do? Some people overfill their plates with food, others, like artists overfill their plates with materials and objects to use those materials ( paints, fabrics, clay, beads, and every other interesting bit you come across) on , either with an idea already in mind or just knowing that one will come down the road, so get it while the getting's good!

I have found myself in such a predicament. You would think I would have awakened to this five years ago when we moved, out of state no less and maybe if not then, at least when we had to pack it all up and move again three years ago, but Nooooooooooooo, I guess I was still young and naive enough to think I had the time. But now it all seems a burden and I've realized that I really did have that deep down feeling before we moved five years ago. I wanted to move to a tiny little house, small enough to be cleaned in one hour, top to bottom, and just enough room for some clay and nothing else, but it didn't work out that way, with either house, we had room in both for all of it, plus room for guests and more. But it still has managed to overwhelm me to the point of high anxiety and I need to dig myself out from this before it overtakes me.

It has also seriously squelched my creative spirit to the point where I have only done a few new pieces in the past two, three months. This isn't good because the ideas keep coming but I feel too pressured to clean and feel like clay time is play time and more like fooling around so I can't bring myself to go in there. So I have been catching up on paperwork as well as cleaning out. The studio has been 90% rearranged and organized, but you see polymer clay is only one in a long line of materials I have used to express my artistic vein.

I have huge, trunk sized boxes of fabric, mostly quilting cottons but other materials as well. Then I must have at least 3-4oo lbs of stained glass and supplies, and then there's all the paraphernalia that goes with them, the battings, the threads, the paints, dyes, looms, racks, metalwork, patinas, and other chemicals, not to mention all the other tools and such I have for being able to do a bit of this and that for collage making. Then there was the time I wanted to turn everything into a clock. I love clocks, clock faces and things that were meant to be one thing but turned into another. I guess I get that part from my Grandfather, he collected all sorts of things others would throw away without a second thought and then create something really cool with it, but most times it was something useful that he either couldn't find to buy or couldn't' afford to.

So here I am, I couldn't wait to do a yard sale and believe it or not I did have one before moving here from the last house. So things are either going into the trash, or in boxes to Goodwill. I think my husband has been over there at least three times with a large station wagon full each time in the past week or two.

It's looking much better downstairs, where I have my sewing room and also the family room which got taken over. I am relegating myself to the family room ( which is nicer than my sewing room , it is carpeted and heated!) and letting hubby have the sewing room for a woodworking shop.

I still would like to pursue some sewing and maybe tinker with the stained glass, so maybe if its organized and larger, and more comfortable I will be more apt to do so. Meanwhile my clay studio is upstairs in the master bedroom ( we took the guest room, I mean , how much room do you need to sleep?) so it's fairly large ( 16x14) and has plenty of room for my clay and all that goes with that, nice and organized and even room for a little office too ( actually in one of the three closets in there!_).

So that is why you haven't seen too much from me lately, but hopefully this will be over soon and on to doing all those things in my mind and in my sketchbook!

The Dog ate my Homework!

The winners have been announced!

Congratulations to the winners of the PCAGOE ACEO, challenge! I was thrilled when I saw the #1 prize winner, beetreebyme's

'My Dog ate my homework!'

Which is for sale in her etsy shop.

When I saw it posted to the challenge photo stream on flicker I knew it should be a winner! Such a clever unique and creative interpretation of the ACEO. Mary Ellen does wonderful sculptures of animals, birds, nature and also beautiful cake toppers! This was so innovative though, I was sure it would take one of the prizes and am so happy for her that it took NUMBER 1!





Congratulations also to second place winner Amantecatl, called Twilight elf. Very beautifully done, it has a porcelain like quality to it and lots of extruder work, lovely.






and third went to the kaleidoscope like rainbow of millefiore canes work of Polymerclaycreations, titled Color my World ( I think this was the very first song I could play on the piano as a young teen! by Chicago I think it was). Such a lovely garden of color and shape in such a small space!

The next challenge is for canework so all those who work with canes, here's a great way to stretch what you've done so far and enter a new work in this challenge. Check out this link for more details.

What Have you done?

Not much to blog about lately, or things I want to. So I nosyied around some other blogs and came across this. There are 99 things on this list, you list them all on your blog and highlight the ones you have done in your life. I've seen the other 'tag' games and not sure if I'd like them, but this is voluntary, so why not?

1. Started your own blog
2. Slept under the stars
3. Played in a band
4. Visited Hawaii - to see a total eclipse
5. Watched a meteor shower
6. Given more than you can afford to charity
7. Been to Disneyland and Disney world
8. Climbed a mountain
9. Held a praying mantis
10. Sang a solo
11. Bungee jumped
12. Visited Paris
13. Watched a lightning storm at sea.
14. Taught yourself an art from scratch
15. Adopted a child
16. Had food poisoning
17. Walked to the top of the Statue of Liberty
18. Grown your own vegetables
19. Seen the Mona Lisa in France
20. Slept on an overnight train
21. Had a pillow fight
22. Hitch hiked
23. Taken a sick day when you’re not ill
24. Built a snow fort
25. Held a lamb
26. Gone skinny dipping
27. Run a Marathon
28. Ridden in a gondola in Venice
29. Seen a total eclipse
30. Watched a sunrise or sunset
31. Hit a home run
32. Been on a cruise
33. Seen Niagara Falls in person
34. Visited the birthplace of your ancestors
35. Seen an Amish community
36. Taught yourself a new language
37. Had enough money to be truly satisfied
38. Seen the Leaning Tower of Pisa in person
39. Gone rock climbing
40. Seen Michelangelo’s David
41. Sung karaoke
42. Seen Old Faithful geyser erupt
43. Bought a stranger a meal at a restaurant
44. Visited Africa
45. Walked on a beach by moonlight
46. Been transported in an ambulance
47. Had your portrait painted
48. Gone deep sea fishing
49. Seen the Sistine Chapel in person
50. Been to the top of the Eiffel Tower in Paris
51. Gone scuba diving or snorkeling
52. Kissed in the rain
53. Played in the mud
54. Gone to a drive-in theater
55. Been in a movie
56. Visited the Great Wall of China
57. Started a business
58. Taken a martial arts class
59. Visited Russia
60. Served at a soup kitchen
61. Sold Girl Scout Cookies
62. Gone whale watching
63. Got flowers for no reason
64. Donated blood, platelets or plasma
65. Gone sky diving
66. Visited a Nazi Concentration Camp
67. Bounced a check
68. Flown in a helicopter
69. Saved a favorite childhood toy
70. Visited the Lincoln Memorial
71. Eaten Caviar
72. Pieced a quilt
73. Stood in Times Square
74. Toured the Everglades
75. Been fired from a job
76. Seen the Changing of the Guards in London
77. Broken a bone
78. Been a passenger on a motorcycle
79. Seen the Grand Canyon in person
80. Published a book
81. Visited the Vatican
82. Bought a brand new car
83. Walked in Jerusalem
84. Had your picture in the newspaper
85. Kissed a stranger at midnight on New Year’s Eve
86. Visited the White House
87. Killed and prepared an animal for eating - does fish count?
88. Had chickenpox
89. Saved someone’s life
90. Sat on a jury
91. Met someone famous
92. Joined a book club
93. Got a tattoo
94. Had a baby
95. Seen the Alamo in person
96. Swam in the Great Salt Lake
97. Been involved in a law suit
98. Owned a cell phone
99. Been stung by a bee

That's over half of the list! Didn't realize I'd done so much! So there's' a bit more about me you didn't know before, how about you doing the list? ( copy from here but make sure to dehighlight to do your own). Have fun walking down memory lane!