We had a lot of fun at our last three Polymer Clay Play Day.  Sheesh, it seems weird to be writing about something that happened March 13 and April 11, when we just had ANOTHER Clay Play Day yesterday, April 24, but I'll do it anyway, LOL  I may be a ditz, but I'm a thorough ditz, LOLOL

All three PC Play Days, it was just me, my sister, our friend, and Mom.

March 13 we were exploring faux stones.  We tried just "river rocks", as well as faux amethyst, faux rose quartz, and faux marble in differing colors.  Some we liked, some we didn't, some needed sanding, which none of us like to do, LOL.

















We had a wonderful messy time but our hands looked worse than a little kid's hands while coloring Easter eggs.





Since Gail and Reni both work in health care fields, these beautifully stained hands wouldn't have gone over too well at work. . . but we had a wonderful rescue remedy available to us.

I don't know if I have ever mentioned it, but my daughter Becky happens to be a Soap Artisan and has her own business Moon Silver Soapworks.  At my request she has developed a special recipe for a VERY special soap.  She calls it Scrubby Soap and it is fantastic at getting almost anything off your hands.  Originally she designed it to take the Polymer Clay residue off my hands since anything else that worked also dried my hands out horribly.  Becky's Scrubby Hands soap is fantastic at not only removing Polymer Clay residue, but it also leaves my hands feeling soft, moisturized and clean.  We also know it works great for grease and garden stains, but didn't have a clue if it would help with these alcohol dyes and paint or not.  We tried it and WOW, it worked, and here's the proof (photo above of clean hands).   Becky also has other wonderful soaps and candles with lovely colors and scents or unscented, if you happen to be sensitive to scents.  Go visit Moon Silver Soapworks for further information.

We also made some of our river rocks into Christi Friesen style rock gardens and rock garden pendants.


Don't you just love Reni's take on the "Pet Rocks" from the '70s?















Mom doesn't clay with us, she just comes to keep us company and chat with us.  Here she is holding our efforts for the day.

Mom also comes to cuddle with Snuffles:






April 11, we had a specific project we needed to complete.  Mom has a special group of Lady Friends she meets with on a regular basis for friendship, support, encouragement, and personal/spiritual growth.  Mom will be giving a presentation in May and for her presentation she has chosen to use the topic of Positive Thinking and Attitude is her by-word.  So, we decided to make some of my Secret Stones (based on something I got out of the Book and Video  "The Secret", which, by the way, I thoroughly enjoyed).  The idea is a small reminder of a word that has special meaning to you.  I started out with just the word gratitude, but so many people saw them and wanted other words that I decided to make others and called them Secret Stones:    I wanted them fairly small so people could carry them in their pocket or put them on or in their desk or any special place where they would see them or feel them and be able to remind themselves of the special thought or word they chose.

So, Mom was telling us about her presentation and wanted some small token to give her friends to go with her presentation and we thought of the Secret Stones with the word Attitude on them.  So, we spent the Clay Play Day making  Attitude stones for Mom and other "Secret Stones" for ourselves and friends.

While the "Secret Stones" were curing, we also made some Faux Malachite.  It was an interesting experience.  We had several tutorials for making faux malachite which were all quite different.  Reni followed one, but tweaked the colors, I followed another but didn't like the colors, so changed them up a bit, and Gail followed one made with the extruder and the colors listed in the same Tutorial Reni used.

All in all, a very successful Polymer Clay Play Day.


Yesterday, April 24 we had another Polymer Clay Play Day.  We tried a new tutorial for a flower cane:  Flowers with Curling Petals by Zuleykah.  Zuleykah is a very generous Polymer Clay Artist who does beautiful cane work as well as miniatures that look good enough to eat and other dimensional jewelry.  Zuleykah has a great blog and freely shares many how too posts on there as well.  This was a fun tutorial, although it was a little difficult as we didn't know how much clay to start with or to use for the different parts.  We managed it though and came up with the following canes:

We find it amazing that 3 people working alongside one another and following the exact same instructions can come up with 3 totally different looking canes.  As a group we decided we had used too much white and the purple one has too "high" a curled petal to look like it's curing over.  This is a cute flower even without the curling petals though, as shown on the second blue one.  Thanks Zuleykah for a fun tutorial.  While researching the website for this tutorial, I found a new one I had asked Zuleykah to make a couple of months ago for a sunflower cane and it's in her store right now.  Thanks Zuleykah.

We finished out our Clay Play Day, yesterday with attempting some bargello canes.  I just love the look of Bargello, most especially the way Kim Cavendar does it (link is to a long past workshop, but shows what I'm talking about).  Unfortunately, our attempts came nowhere even close to Kim's and weren't even worth taking pictures of.  We still had fun and got some new ideas to try and techniques to practice.

So, now I'm all caught up on my blog, if everybody hasn't already given up on me and nobody's reading it anymore, LOL.  Otherwise, all is okay in my world.  Sun is shining today, temps are in the 60's, and now I'm back to my clay table for another attempt at bargello a different way, LOL.  Hope you are all having a wonderful 2010, so far.  Smiles