I just want to know where the time goes.  I used to work full time, take care of my house, hubby, and 2 kids, volunteer for anything the kids and/or their schools needed and still got some other stuff done.  Here I am 15 years later and it seems like the days have gotten shorter or something because I'm always a day late and a dollar short. . .  Oh well, enough grouching, here's the missing post I promised several weeks ago.

Let's see, this one was supposed to be about polymer clay, wasn't it?  Let me go fetch some pictures and I'll figure out what I'm supposed to be writing about. . . (yes, even my cell phone ring tone is "If I only had a brain", LOLOL

While we were on our camping trip to Kentucky, I started working on a new cane.   We choose this particular 5th wheel so that I would have an area to clay in.  The original idea didn't work out as to where I was going to work, but we worked it out.  We got a special coffee table that the lid raises up to table height and since it's just the two of us, we use that for our "dining table" and the actual dining area has become my mini studio.  It works out great.  I can leave my glass table top on the table and leave my clay stuff out as I'm working on whatever.  Here are a couple pictures of my mini studio:  

I have this idea for making what I am personally calling a "Mandalascope" cane.  Here is the picture of the first one I wanted to try.  I loved the colors and the design and felt it would translate well into clay:

Here is the put together cane.
 It went together perfectly, the colors were good or at least as close as I could get them:

It was hard to reduce because of the non equaliteral  size and shape, but it did reduce and reduced fairly well.  BUT. . .

As you will see, in the following pictures, the individual parts were too small to allow for much reduction.  It worked, but I don't like it!!!!

It's pretty, but not what I was visualizing, so back to the drawing board.  Maybe I should stick to flowers and butterflies and leaves, they seem to be what I do best, LOLOL



Anyway, that was my big project during that short trip to Kentucky.  I also started some more leaf canes, as my store is nearly empty and I need to get some more canes in there.  I also had an idea for making the Sarah Shriver type Kaleidoscope a little bigger and more "mine", I'll have to try that in the near future.

I almost forgot, although it's a little late now, LOL.  Just before we left on our trip I received the Around the World Swap started by Tonja Lenderman .  This was a swap of Trash to Treasures.  Tonja started it out with a box full of goodies, could be anything, didn't even have to be Polymer Clay.  Mostly any crafty stuff you wanted to move on to someone else.  As each participant received it, they were to take out anything they felt they wanted or could use and then add roughly the same amount of stuff and send it to the next person on the list.  It went all over the world.  It finally got to me a couple days before we left on our trip.  Here is a quick picture of what was there when it got to me:  this was a bulk rate small medium flat rate Priority box and it was stuffed to the gills, honestly stuffed.  Problem was that some things had gotten broken being stuffed so tightly.  Also, even after I took out the few things I wanted, there just wasn't any room to add my stuff.

 So, I called Tonja and we decided I should throw out anything broken, and then sort it and send any definite duplicates back to Tonja, add my stuff to the original box, and send it on.  So, this is what I did, and added some of my stuff to both boxes, the one to Tonja and the one to the next person on the list.

Here are some of the things I wanted to add back into the box, but since they didn't all fit, I couldn't.  Some of them I put in the extra box back to Tonja, I added what I could and then sent it on.

I also included a box of miscellaneous canes.  I was disappointed that I couldn't put in all I had planned, as I had some nice supply type items I had hoped someone else could get some use out of.



It turned out that someone who didn't make it into the first swap wanted to start another one, so Tonja used the box of  extras and sent it to that person to help them start their own Trash to Treasure Swap.


So, that's it for this post, but I have two more I need to do today, I'm so very far behind and this is my priority today, to catch up the blog.  Thanks for visiting with me, watch for more today.  Smiles  S