Mamma's got a brand new...

So much for wanting to keep this blog up to date. Here is a sample of another little phone bag I made...the button actually sits straight, but I had to scan it to get it in here, and sometimes the scanner doesn't always co-operate. 

 

I'll hopefully be posting a bit more, but in the meantime, I'm off to take Molly for a walk in her new little stroller.  We decided to get her one, since she loves being outside here, and with her blindness, walks have been little more than a trip to the stones outside the door for her to squat and do her business.  Hopefully, I can upload one of the pictures or videos of her in her little Molly Mobile.

Red Buttons...the pictures not the person

Despite the recent change in temperature, there's a lot of heat being produced at my craft table.  After the sale at the University women's Club this past weekend, it is time to replenish my inventory.  Buttons like the ones below were very popular, and fortunately, I have a bit more of the cane so I can make new ones. 

I actually put the smaller ones in sets of four on cards, and the larger ones are on individual cards. As for the ones pictured here, the smaller ones are about 1" to 1 1/4", while the larger ones are about two inches square or round.  The elongated one is about 1 1/4" wide by a little over 2 " long.

I realize these are a bit big for buttons, but they are meant to be real "Accent Pieces", so they add pizzazz to any garment, hat, bag, quilt or other handmade item. I will be making lots of other styles to add to your favorite item. 

Some folks who were at the sale on Saturday said they will be using the buttons as decorative elements for scrapbooking, while others were going to sew them on jackets and sweaters.  Other talented folks said they are going to use them on felted purses...so the use for buttons is limited only by one's imagination. I mentioned to several folks that want to use them as pins, that they could use a little trick for attaching them.  Instead of sewing the button on with needle and thread, I suggested attaching the button with fifteen pound fishing line (or heavier).  Simply thread a larger eyed needle with fishing line and instead of sewing the button on, just tie the line in the back of the garment (or what have you) and secure with a double or triple knot.  Then, if desired, it is easy to just snip the fishing line off and attach to a different article.  It really doesn't take much time at all!

I hope you can see the range of color in these. Some have a decided coral background and others are on a true red base. The cane itself includes a rich blend of alizarin, purple, gold, orange and red. All the buttons are textured in a variety of different feels...it's difficult to describe them all.

It was so great to see a lot of my friends and colleagues at Ralph Connor House. If you weren't close by and still want to visit and see my other creations, I will be in several more sales over the next four weekends.  This coming Saturday, November 16th, I will be in Kenora, at the Lakeside Inn (that round hotel on Lake of the Woods).  Looking forward to seeing my Northwest Ontario friends at that one...  I will post more locations and dates in the upcoming weeks.

But now, it's back to the drawing board...I have more fish to design.

The Fall Rush is ON

All I should say is WHEW!  Even with an extra hour this weekend, time is flying by so quickly as I prepare for the fall sales.  This Friday and Saturday, November 8th and 9th, I will be at Ralph Connor House, located at 54 Westgate near Misericordia Hospital for the annual University Women's Club Sale.  My items will be available in the beautiful Wedgewood Room on the second floor, which overlooks the river. 

Naturally, these fish won't be swimming in the river there, but they may be available as tree ornaments among the other things I'll have available.  I will have a wide selection of buttons, light switch covers, home décor items, serving pieces as well as lots of one of a kind pieces like handmade books, and other items suitable as gifts.  I will also have a few woven purses, a limited selection of jewelry, and other types of hanging items.  I hope that lots of you will be able to stop by.

 

 

Just push the Polymer Clay Button...

Let's Face It, and other Polymer Clay Buttons 

I can hardly believe that it's six weeks since I last posted here. I have the usual list of excuses, but sadly, none of them are very good or out of the ordinary.  I'd love to say that I have been on some magical tour of a foreign land, but it's just the same old, same old. 

So, without any more of that, I will get to my point. This is the ART and CRAFT season. It actually began on October 4th with the Dryden Art Sale and it continues on. This weekend is the Headingley Craft Sale, held almost simultaneously with the Scattered Seeds Show.  It is quite coincidental that there is also "The Big One" in Brandon, which would have been another option for me to display my stuff.  But, I chose this year to participate in the Headingley Sale. 

There, you can see me and a number of other artisans in a relaxed atmosphere, with great lighting, ample parking, tasty snacks  and no elbows  pushing you where you might not want to go.   The organizers there put on a very tidy show...okay it is not as big as some, but that makes it much more ambient for both vendors and folks to browse through at their leisure.  The admission is minimal and there is a nice selection of articles to choose from in the Rainbow Auction.  The location is a few miles past the Assiniboia Downs, on Portage Avenue.  So it is possible for folks to do both the Scattered Seeds event and the Headingley sale. The times and dates for Headingley are on Friday, the 18th of October from Noon until 8 pm and Saturday, the 19th from 10 am until mid-afternoon.  I hope to see lots of you out there.

I have been busy restocking my supply of buttons, light switch plates and all the other things I make...and if I have too much stuff, well, I have a good number of other  upcoming events starting on November 8th where they will also be displayed.  On that weekend, Friday and Saturday, I will be at Ralph Connor House, at 54 Westgate, near the Misericordia Hospital for the University Womens' Club Annual Christmas Sale.  If you haven't been to this event, you will be certain to enjoy browsing through this old mansion and enjoying the warmth of a house built when houses were really something!

The following Saturday, the 16th of November will see us venturing out to Kenora, for the Beta Sigma Phi Event at the Lakeside Inn, that round hotel on the Lake of the Woods waterfront.  This is a first time there for me and I am really looking forward to it.  I look forward to seeing friends from Dryden, Sioux Narrows and other Northwestern Ontario locations there.  That particular sale runs from (I believe) 10 am until 4 pm.  Following that, I plan on getting together with my niece to catch up on family stuff. 

On the 23rd of November, I will be back in "The Peg" at a local event hosted by the Good Neighbours Club of East Kildonan.  Their sale will be in the multipurpose building in the 700 block of Henderson Highway.  It formerly was where the Bronx Park Community Centre was located and their building is a great venue.  I have taken a class there and it's very nice.  Good thing about this one is that it is only a ten minute drive from our place.  Yay.

The following weekend is going to be really busy.  On the Friday evening, I'll be at the Opera, (watching and silently humming along) to Don Pasquale, (or as I am loathe to report like the present state of my work table...Don Pa Squalor).  Then, early (very early) Saturday morning on the 30th of November we'll be heading out to Brandon to the Art Gallery of Southwest Manitoba for their Gala of Gifts event. We haven't been to this show for a couple of years, and sorely missed the beautiful room, with the musicians strumming their harps.   It runs Saturday from 10 until 4 and then again on Sunday, December 1st,  from noon until five pm.  Hopefully it won't be too cold and not snowing so that the ride there and back won't be too taxing.

And then there's just one more after that...a new venue for me...the Last Chance Sale at the Canad Inn on Regent, which is adjacent to Club Regent.  That one is also on a Sunday, and it will be the 8th of December.  It's in the hotel and I am in the big area on the second level.  Fortunately, the elevators make it easily accessible, and the lighting on that floor is more amenable than that of the Blue Lagoon, another room where vendors will be located.  I am not sure of the hours, but I am pretty certain that if you drop by between noon and four p.m. that we'll be there.

From time to time I have considered opening up an Etsy shop....a couple of years ago I even went as far as to register my name, but that's all that became of that.  I don't know if my stuff would appeal to online customers.  Most folks seem to want polymer clay jewellery, and since I do not do a whole lot of that genre of items, I am reluctant to start something on line.  If I got a lot of requests, I might, but not expecting that to be the case, I will play the waiting game and just do direct stuff.

Now, if I don't hurry and get to work, I won't have anything ready for this Friday, so I am off to that clay table!

Sharing something to make

From time to time, I have a chance to share something that may (or may not) be of use to polymer clay people and other artisans.  Today, I have a little something that I have been using for years and it might be helpful to some of you.  I used to make these out of darning needles, but have found a less expensive method.  Once you read through all my 'blah-gging' you can make the tool.  I use them all the time.  Needle tools are very useful in teaching polymer clay, and a good supply of them can be a costly expense. 

I often have classes in schools or camps where children are involved, and although the item I will be featuring is probably not for GENERAL child use, it has been safely used by children when they are supervised, and can even be made by them, thus encouraging them to come up with ways to be creative and inventive.  (As if some of them need encouragement, lol!)

When I was a girl of maybe five or so, I wasn't allowed to play with my mom's scissors, because they were for cloth and dressmaking only, not for cutting paper.  So I found a way to trim pieces of paper to sizes that I could use.  Later in life, I found that concept utilized in a commercially manufactured machine...yet I had "invented" it for my own personal use over forty years earlier. 

With that being said, over the course of my acquaintance with polymer clay, I have fixed and made many 'useful commodities' known only to me and a few close friends.  Polymer clay works wonderfully for me and maybe it will be useful for you too. 

Of course, I have many purchased tools and gizmos that I use in my clay playing, but some of my favourites are the 'el cheapos' that I either find amongst my goodies or make from scratch.  This tool is one of those.

Here is the finished tool:

It is a simple needle tool or awl, that can be used for making holes in leather, for poking holes in signatures in bookmaking, for boring holes in polymer clay beads before curing, and as a decorating tool for creating scratches, impressions, and carvings in unbaked polymer.  I venture to say that with a blunt tip, it could also be used by folk art painters to add those little dots that are oh so necessary for embellishing paintings.

To make the tool, you will need
a thin wire clothes hanger, the kind you get from the dry cleaners
some heavy duty wire cutters
needle nose or other small pliers
a bench grinder with a grinding wheel
safety glasses
thin gauge wire (I used 20 gauge)
floral tape or masking tape (6 - 10 inches)
polymer clay, some scrap and a small amount of your favourite color
roller
clay cane slices (optional)
oven

Here are the steps:
Using the heavy duty wire cutters, cut the clothes hanger into approximately four inch pieces.  You can make many (about 10 or more) tools from one hanger.

Once you have cut your wires, the fun begins.  Wearing safety goggles, burnish one end of each stiff wire by sharpening it along the grinding stone of your bench grinder.  It's fun because when the sparks fly, you'd think you've invented sparklers!  You need to angle the wire a bit to get a nice point, and it's important to twirl the wire a bit to get an even point on the end of the wire.  If you are making several, (which I do) they will be done in minutes. 

Even if the wires are a bit 'crooked' they can still be used, because much of the wire will be incorporated into the handle of the 'awl' or needle tool.
Cut approximately 8 inches of 20 gauge wire and wrap it about six times around the non-sharpened end of the wire.  Make a short loop, and then rewind the remaining wire over the other wire.

Starting on the wrapped business, tightly wrap some floral tape all the length of the loop and the wire, securing it to the wire.  If you don't have floral tape, masking tape works just as well.

Once the thin wire is completely encased in either masking or floral tape, it is time to start covering the tape with some polymer clay.  First I use a small amount (about a 3/4 inch size sphere) of scrap clay, well conditioned, and rolled to a fairly thin sheet.  I cover the taped up part securely and form it into a smooth handle.  It doesn't have any curly end to it, just a cigar shape with a slightly pointed end.  Then I roll a thin sheet of a coloured clay, which can be embellished with a few cane slices. Trim this to approximately 2 inches by 3 inches, or large enough to cover all the scrap clay. Place the decorated side of this sheet face down on the work surface.  Cover the scrap clay with the decorated clay and seal the edges.  If desired, you can elongate the end to a fine point and roll it up like a spiral as I have done.  I added my name stamp to the side of the holder, flattening it just a bit.

Bake the tool in a pre-set oven (270 degrees Fahrenheit) for approximately thirty minutes.  Allow it to cool and you are ready to roll...beads or whatever. 

 

Enjoy.  

 

 

Morden Here We Come!

Only two more days until set up at the Morden Corn and Apple Festival.  It looks like it is going to be three very warm days so there will be times when I will want to act like this little gal and just dive into some refreshing lake. 

Unfortunately for me, the only one who will be free to do that will be Molly, and now that she is blind, she is much more fearful of diving into the water than she used to be.  But she will be sitting near the lake with DH who says he is bound to catch a fish.  It will be catch and release, but he won't be catching the swimmers like this gal does.  You see by her fins, that she can swim right up to the fish, cuddle them for a moment or two, and then release them.  When she is not in the water, she can hang on the wall and her fish can be played with and then returned to her arms. 

She is about seven inches tall to the tip of her tail fin and her 'locks' are a combination of wool roving and some decorative yarn I picked up in my travels who knows where.  The face and arms, although primitive, emit a Mona Lisa type smile (can I say that?) and she seems thoroughly in a place where all is well with the world.  \\

I wish all was well with me...well I really shouldn't complain because I am well...just busy.  But then again what else is new. 

Is it school of fish or School for "Fishy"?

I thought I had posted this a while back but upon checking this blog, realize that I was remiss.  When I did the composition for the Uniquely Manitoba Boxed-in Gallery Display at the Red River Exhibition, this was the group (I called it a school ;-) of fish that was displayed.  Unfortunately, the display was less than what I had expected.  I am not going to go through all the sorry details ... I've already done that in "background" a few posts ago.
The fish themselves and the buna cord survived, thankfully, and for a while, the school hung over the fireplace on the brick wall. 

This view shows the other sides of the fish and they're flanked by a standing fish which  I had purchased, and on the right, by a beautiful hand-dyed, batiked pike, made by my very talented batik artist friend, Karen Johannsson.

I had another photograph taken against a plain wall to provide more contrast and also did some close-ups of the fish individually.  I have actually sold three of the individual mobiles since, which was what I originally intended, since I was pretty certain that the entire composition would not have sold the way the display came out.  Who says the whole (fish) has to be better than the sum of its parts?

I will be making a couple more of the individual 'mobiles' to take to the Sioux Narrows Arts Festival this coming weekend.  I will be working late into the nights to be sure, but I love making these fish.  The region where the Festival is located is very resort-like, and this type of creation is quite weather proof making it ideal for a porch, patio, verandah, hanging from a tree or wherever a Fish Gallery exists. 

Since camp ended this week I am back from outer space, and back on terra firma, or at least in the backyard plastic pool.  The camp was very good...all but one of the participants were boys.  Needless to say we did not make polymer clay jewellery, but I did make them all a 'commemorative pendant' sort of like the Live Long and Prosper insignia. 

 On Monday, the kids made celestial light switch covers, to get an introduction to the nuances of the clay and they learned a cool technique with metal leaf which imparted a star-like quality to their creations.  They loved using the pasta machines. 

Then, on Tuesday, I demonstrated how to make a cane like a nebula and that was so successful I am going to use it in some of my own creations.  They used the slices of the cane to decorate pens.  They also crafted 'needle tools' out of wire coat hangers which I had cut at home and sharpened on the non-buffing part of my bench grinder.  Of course, they would use those the next day. 

On Wednesday, they used their needle tools to fashion wire loops upon which to sculpt the heads of their little aliens.  I had pre-baked the eyeballs. (They had a good laugh on that one because our class was at 12:30 so I said they were having Eyeballs for Lunch.  Anyone who has taught middle school should recognize that title, lol.)  Then they inserted the eyeballs into the sockets and then carried on with the rest of the head sculpting.  I took the heads home to bake...and to answer one of their questions, no they did not shrink.  But they were wired!

Thursday's class saw us finish sculpting the bodies of the alien figures, and we continued painting the covers of recycled books with acrylic paint.  I devised a technique whereby they could paint a nebula on the front and back cover and thanks to some glitter glue, the stars appeared as if by magic.  Another technique I think I will incorporate into some of my work. 

Thursday evening, I started coming down with a cold, and had a headache to boot.  So I went to bed early, knowing I would have to get up before dawn to finish my 'homework'.  I had to drill the holes in the book covers, bake the aliens, photograph the aliens, cut the pages for the journals since each book was a different size, and wax the cording for binding the book. And find enough needles for seven books to be bound simultaneously.  Of course, that meant getting up at two in the morning...need I say more.

But then on Friday morning, I still had to go grocery shopping as I had promised the kids a healthy earthly snack because we had to start early.  I had already asked them to come a half hour earlier than their schedule because the 'stuff' we had to do was kind of demanding and it required more time than the 1 1/2 hours that my session ran.  So at 7 a.m. I was out the door and off to the market to fetch fruit, veggies, dips, drinks, crackers, popcorn and a lot of other goodies pre-teeners like to eat. 

I had predicted Friday would be a knotty day. I was right.  Even though their binding threads were well waxed, the kids weren't accustomed to working with long lengths of the stuff, and I spent considerable time undoing knots.  They all managed to thread their needles and got the holes punched in the signatures.  They used their needle tools again, this time as an awl.  (I secretly called it "AWL FOR KNOT" because I knew the binding would be too challenging for them...).  I demo'd as slowly and carefully as I could, but even the initial stages of coptic binding can be humbling, even for adults.  So, I ended up binding six books while they waited patiently...Thank Goodness for Tyler, the champion crafter, who followed all the steps and was able to do his own.  Otherwise I might still be there binding!!!  It was good though, because they did 'start' and 'finish' the binding, and then they threaded the beads they had made to attach to the threads on the exposed spine.  They also glued the pictures of their aliens inside and hopefully at home gave their journals a suitable title so they can make log entries about their week at camp, or how they 'alienated' summer with polymer clay.

Yesterday and today, I have been trying to get caught up with some of my clay orders and also am preparing for the upcoming Festival.  I think I have sufficient inventory.  But I will supplement with a few more light switch covers and buttons.  Today, I made a couple of water-color effect plaques. 

 

The one on the left was inspired by the town of Portofino, Italy. I have not been there personally, but I saw a PBS production starring Andrea Bocelli, and although I am not a great fan of his, I loved the setting of the town. I did a day scene, but the enchanted night one would have been lovlier, but much more difficult to capture in polymer clay.  I envisioned that one of the little dories (is that a term for a small boat?) could have been used to go fish, but my little fishy here is smiling.  He is just playing in the bottom, cuz the boats are moored, right?  As for the fish, I did it in a two step process.  I first did the watercolor effect in clay on some leftover mdf board (wonder where that came from, lol).  After baking, I used a V-gouge to carve the fish, then backfilled it in soft gold polymer and sent him back in to bake.   The stones and weeds are dimensional, while the rest of the plaques are untextured, except for a bit of intensional impressions I made in the cobbled stonework of the Portofino Plaque.   

To sum up, I have learned a LOT this week, about things to do, about being resourceful, about being patient, and about new techniques that are always abounding in the fascinating world (and beyond) of polymer clay.