Zinnia Flyer

Here is everything you need to know about my upcoming classes at Zinnia in South Pasadena - first one next Saturday! Click on the pic to make it larger. Hope to see you there!

Yeah, what she said!

Here's the scoop from the lovely Lynda Moseley on the upcoming holiday promotions from the PCAGOE.

First off, we have this:
I'll be having a 20% off sale in my Etsy shop for this one. (There's a link over there on the left for you.)

Then, running concurrently and up until December 12, purchase any item (s) from a participating shop, and get a chance to win one of 3 amaaaaaaazing gift stockings just CHOCK FULL of prizes. I'm totally blown away by the contributions. 30, count 'em, THIRTY of our members are participating, and have donated some of their best work for the prizes. Most have contributed one item (or even more) for each of the stockings.

Here are mine:


EDITED: Oops! This one is in my Etsy store - I sent a different one!

This one really did go, plus one more...

PLUS there are gift certificates in the stockings! Blown away. Over the top. Mucho potato. More later.

La boîte de chiens

The Dog Box. What on earth is that, you ask?


It's the place to which I consign, well, not exactly failures per se, but items that just didn't work out as well as I had planned. Pieces with visible flaws. Bubbles or dings in the resin. Cracked, peeling, or just plain bad transfers. Experiments gone weird. Half-finished bits that would take more work to finish than they're worth. The first, second, third, fourth and however many more iterations it takes to bring an idea into satisfactory reality. Overworked pieces. And the just simply - no other way to say it - ugly. The dogs.

Now don't get started about me bad-mouthing your puppies - this is NOT the same thing as those sweet little guys! I love me the doggies - real ones, that is. Just think of a golden retriever's sweet, smiling expression, and it's guaranteed to warm your heart, if not bring tears to your eyes.

But just as the term "dog" is an unacceptable pejorative for a female, "dog" to me is my term as defined above. Okay. Enough about the choice of words - I actually started using it way back in the mid-90's when I was creating window clings (why? Like many things, if it had a reason, I don't remember it.) And I've kept the name, in what passes for my mind, lo these many years. It's not even a literal box anymore - it's a plastic tub now.

Last night I consigned two new pieces to it. I've been practicing for my class next year at Adorn Me called the Window Box Pendant. I've made several of these pieces in the last two years, beginning with my Let Love In box. I really like them, and have received many lovely compliments on them. But I have to confess, ultimately, that I don't know how I made them! I made so many versions of the very first one, that by the time I had one finished, I had no idea how I'd gotten there.

So what I've needed to do is go back and make more until I figured out a way to make it as simple as possible for my students to do. I've been messing with measurements and templates and what if's for the last several weeks, until finally, I had the "aha!" moment that simplified the whole process. Now I know how to make them sooo much easier than I thought. Hurray!

But in order to get there I had to make several not-so-easy versions. And Dog Box versions. And even the last one, the "aha!" one, finally was consigned to the Dog Box last night because of a color combo that just didn't work for me, and then several attempts to save it, until it just became an overworked mess. The construction gets an A. The finishing - C-. And I certainly can't put anything out there that's any less than an A-.

Onward and upward. I'll show you some A-'s in a bit.

Edited 11/15 - I just found out that the omnipotent Oprah is the originator of the phrase "aha moment." Therefore I officially retract it, and would have you mentally substitute the phrase "duh moment." And I thank Lesley Riley for THAT one!

Two - count 'em- two classes booked!

Hey all you local SoCal lovelies! I've just booked two classes at the amazing Zinnia in South Pasadena! I will be teaching my molding and faux techniques for polymer clay at both of them, so you have two opportunities to come by and play with clay!

I will make up a flyer that I will post very soon, but I just wanted to let you all know, and to give you the dates:

Saturday, November 28 (that's Thanksgiving weekend), and
Saturday, December 12.

10:30 - 5:00 pm
$60 - contact Zinnia to book your reservation!

I'm featured on Craft Gossip today!

This is one of my new transfer pendants, and today it is featured here. How cool is that????!!!

I'd better hop over to Etsy and get it listed! Yikes!

Time to Vote for......me?

This month's challenge at the Polymer Clay Artist's Guild of Esty - known to me and you as PCAGOE - is titled "Metallic Showdown."

I have entered the necklace above, since it includes my experiment with using patina solution on polymer clay. As long as you have some uncoated metal, paint with metal in it, etc., you can use patina solution over it. What I did on the fish is coated the unbaked clay in real metallic powder, baked it, and then patina'ed it. I dripped some of the solution on the picture part as well, since it had copper paint on it. Turned out pretty well, don't you think?

Go here to vote. Vote for any one you like! Just vote (p.s., there are prizes....)

Happy Halloweenie!!!

My favorite Halloween costume that I've ever done: the Cher Wolf, circa 1990.

More "me in Halloween costume" pix on my flickr. Link to the left.

Have a happy one, my lovelies!