Everwild » Polymer Clay

Teeny Harvest

Diann — Sun, 29 Aug 2010 16:55:55 +0000

Carrots from the carrot patch:

smallest harvest evah

And a rogue pumpkin:

Pumpkins in the Carrot patch...

I had a blast in Richmond last weekend. A lot of creativity going through the house where I stayed. Good people, great feedback, no eggshells or tip toes. I attempted my first feather cane (images pending) and it wasn’t an epic fail. I followed the instructions in Donna Kato’s feather cane from her first book. I didn’t use the linked version, but it looks about the same.

I’m in a Millefiori caning class this weekend at the Jacksonville Center for the Arts. In the month to come, I’ll be working on taking better photos. There’s always something nifty just around the corner to do.

Hasta la vista!

Wireless Woes and I’m on the Road

Diann — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 19:30:16 +0000

Whoa? I just spent an hour on the phone with my father trying to troubleshoot the wireless access on his laptop, only to have Windows suddenly decide to resolve the issue by itself. I so love technology. I really do.

So, for those of you who own a Dell Inspiron 1545 model laptop, if you can’t get connected automatically to open-access wi-fi, try your F2 key first — it’s the one with the radio tower looking icon, which should be white in color, which means you don’t need to use the function key with it. If you own a Sony Vaio (VPCCW), like me, your wireless access switch is on the front edge and thankfully, it has lights on either side to tell you whether your wireless is on or off.

Last February during Cabin Fever, Teri and I met up and got to hang out with some really cool clay ladies. Since then, we’ve had opportunity to travel to the Richmond area to hang out for marathon clay fests. You know the kind where you stay up extremely late, eat very little (or really bad!) and do project after project in a room full of other polymer clay nuts. It’s a blast. We’ve had opportunity now to spend time with people in Stuart, in Glen Alen, and of course, in Floyd. We spend a lot of time in Floyd. With so many people busy for the summer, the official guild meetings have been postponed, canceled, and even filled in with impromptu “unofficial” and casual meetings.

Tomorrow our teeny little clay club of 3 gets to meet in Floyd for a while. And then this weekend I get to drive up and hang out with the Richmond poly-clay addicts again. My traveling buddy doesn’t get to go (boo); duty calls. But she and I look forward to new adventures when I get back, as we try out working her booth together for a few of the nearby shows. The first being this September at Olde Salem Days.

Namaste.

Venus Unveiled

Diann — Tue, 03 Aug 2010 18:15:42 +0000

Venus 3.0 and swing

Venus 3.0 is a commissioned request from last month. I had to get Jon to take photos for me as I had a rush visit out of town with a friend who was on her way back to Egypt this last Sunday and chances are high that I’ll not see her again for another 2 years. One would think I’d know my husband’s mind well enough now that if a request is not in writing and acknowledged, things will be forgotten. We’re both black holes when it comes to remembering important things, so unfortunately, in this case, I did not get a reference shot detailing her size.

Venus - detail

To give you an idea though, my version of Venus is under 3 inches in height, and her head is roughly the size of an 8 mm bead, perhaps a tad smaller even. Two of those teeny glass marbles one can find in the scrap booking section would have worked for her eyeballs, had I the where with all to buy iris colored ones, but instead I tried faking her eyes with liquid clay and water based, heat-set oil paints. I borrowed one of Levi’s whiskers to paint her facial features and even that was too big for some details.

I find it odd, but inspiring at times when people see the work I do and then ask for things I’ve never done. It’s always challenging and, in many cases, rewarding; these commissions tend to push me WAY out of my comfort zone and suddenly I discover I can manage something I never dreamed possible. In this case, I discovered that, yes, with practice I can conquer human anatomy. After 2 failures, I managed to create something nearly human in form, and while she’s not a perfect replication, she managed to adopt a wonderful charm all her own. I can’t begin to list the number of frustrations I faced, both in my lack of knowledge for human anatomy, and how incorporating some mixed-media elements failed miserably because I had no idea which tools to use, or lacked the right ones, or even the lack of proper materials.

I have a long way to go in my journey, and so much of what I’ve done in the last 3 years has been exploration … so much so that I fret over the amount of room I have to store equipment and supplies vs. all the mediums I long to try. Also, this latest endeavor lends more purpose to blogging, which — although I’d love to keep everyone up to date with my escapades — has never been appealing in the sense of “OOOO LOOK WHAT I DID!” (this is why I have a husband, right?) But the idea of sharing my failures, of documenting the journey from stupid newbie to perhaps one day completely professional, does appeal to me. There are dozens of polymer clay websites focused on the how-to for both projects and techniques, and I’ve found hundreds of helpful hints, but often I am frustrated by the lack of documented failures.