I have Sherri Haab to blame for all of this.  And by “this” I mean the polymer clay supplies that lurk in many corners of my house, the business I’ve built around clay books + videos, and the piles and piles of polymer jewelry mostly gathering dust in my bedroom.  (You know how that goes – you have your two or three favorite pieces, which soon are replaced by new work, and this continues through the years until you have a jewelry box full of stuff that is just hideous compared to your most recent masterpiece. You wouldn’t be caught dead in them now, but you feel funny throwing them away, knowing as you do all of the blood sweat and tears that went into making them back in 1996.  Please tell me you do this too.)

Anyway, I’m sure it’s completely unfair to blame Sherri.  I should probably be blaming Neil, who brought the book into the house in the first place.  Or maybe I should just accept that polymer clay and I were destined to meet one way or another, and the mechanism by which we came together those 14+ years ago is largely irrelevant.

In any case, I did get my first exposure to polymer through Sherri Haab, I enjoy her style, and I like her books, even the ones that are not specifically about polymer clay, like this brand new one: Sherri Haab Jewelry Inspirations: Techniques and Designs from the Artist’s Studio.

There are three polymer projects in the book, all of which are interesting, but none of which really float my own particular boat.  Luckily, what Sherri lacks in polymer clay depth here, she makes up for in general clay breadth.  In other words, I don’t mind the lack of polymer here because she’s playing with other kinds of clay that I find pretty neat.  In particular, metal clay and epoxy resin clay.

I plan on dusting off my metal clay supplies in the next week or so, but until then I decided to try a more instant-gratification project.  I had trouble choosing between the Sea Urchin Rings and the Resin Clay Flower Bracelets, but in the end I chose the bracelets.

Like I mentioned a few days ago, we’re in a financial crunch around here, so I didn’t want to invest in any new materials (as super cool as that epoxy resin clay sounds) so I substituted polymer in making the flower.  This is one case where the material used really doesn’t matter, because the sculpted part could be cured by itself.  (In other projects, it might not be appropriate to substitute an oven-bake clay for an air-dry clay, because the materials embedded in the clay may not be heat-resistant.)

I also used some of the leftover clay from the flower to make the easiest. button. ever. instead of using a mass-produced one.

I actually think that this bracelet looked just as nice before I put the flower on it.  I may have to make myself a little pile of braided fabric bracelets with matching solid-color buttons for the spring…

So I had fun with this book.  There’s nothing overly artsy or complicated here, just plenty of fun, lighthearted, and hip designs to play with, and a handful of new materials to explore.

How about you?  Want to have a little fun with this book?   Learn to make this bracelet, some big funky rings, vintage glass bead earrings, metal clay charm pendants, and more?  Leave a comment on this post, and I’ll choose a random winner sometime Monday evening (3/15).  Good luck!!

Until then, here are some links to keep you busy:

• Buy the book from me at Polka Dot Creations
• Read all of my blog posts about this book
• Visit Sherri’s website

This topic in blog history:

• The results are in - March 2010

I see many areas in the house that need my attention.  For one thing, new arrivals for the store are waiting to be put away and their boxes broken down & recycled.  Right now they’re piled-up in the kitchen, of all places.  Laundry is another issue.  Most of it is clean, but little of it is actually put away.  And dare I admit that my Christmas tree is still up?  I’m considering decorating it with construction paper hearts and calling it a Valentine’s decoration.  Somehow that seems easier than packing the poor thing up.

Creatively, I’m feeling frustrated and missing my sewing machine.  Last thing I sewed was a coffee cup cozy for my sister for Christmas, and my fabric has been stashed away ever since.  I got my polymer clay fix a few weeks ago, so I’m not feeling a real pull towards that right now.  Knitting has become my main creative outlet, and that’s really only because it’s portable, and I can sit on the couch with it after the kids go to bed during my regularly-scheduled evening downtime.  Not that I don’t enjoy the knitting.  I do.  I am having such fun learning new techniques – I made my first cable yesterday, as you can see from the photo. (That’s a pair of Dashing in progress.)

Right now I’ve got a growing itch to sew something, but I find it hard to justify making a crafty mess when I haven’t cleaned up the other messes around here.  And I haven’t cleaned up the other messes because I am somehow being sucked into a time vortex during the day.  Before I know it, it’s time for the kids to come home and I haven’t managed to shower!  (which reminds me, I’d better do that today…)  I don’t even know what I want to make.  I just know I want to be back behind the machine sooner than later.

So, yeah, time management issues abound here.  I know a few good strategies, I just have to actually employ them.

I guess that’s where I’m headed after this blogging break – to dust off Remember the Milk, update my abandoned task lists, and put some order back into my life.  Oh, and I should probably take that shower, too.

Last summer, I was asked to submit a beginner-friendly polymer clay project for the upcoming Craft Hope book. The book will feature pairs of projects and charities, the idea being that you can make the projects and then donate them to the charities.

I was honored to be included, and so I set to work and designed a heart pendant that was attractive yet simple, and then sent it off happily to the publisher.  A few weeks later, I was disappointed to find out that the charity my project had been paired-up with was not interested in receiving polymer clay jewelry.  They wanted “glass only.”

That was a really big bummer, of course, and it might have been nice if the charity had let their preferences be known up front, before I spent all of that time working on my project, but what can you do?  On the bright side, I now had this tutorial written up, and all of these photos taken, and I only needed a place to use them.  Well, last week (five months later), it hit me:  these hearts started with Craft Hope, why not use them in that way now?

In case you haven’t yet heard, Craft Hope has opened an Etsy shop for Haiti.  100% of the proceeds from every sale will be donated to Doctors Without Borders.  The shop is stocked with handmade items from all over the blogosphere (they’ll be accepting more items after they’ve had a chance to catch their breaths, if you are inclined to donate something yourself).  As of this writing, there are nearly 170 items listed, and over 1500 ($27,000+) sold.  In just a few weeks!  I think that’s just wonderful, don’t you?

So I spent last Tuesday morning putting my instructions and photos together into a 6-page PDF, and am now pleased to announce that 20 copies of the Polka Dot Cottage Hearts tutorial are available for sale through Craft Hope. Please consider this little splurge, particularly if you’ve thought about playing with polymer clay, but were intimidated by long supply lists, or were put off by a need for expensive equipment.  You can make these hearts with nothing more than a few colors of Sculpey III, an old kitchen knife, and a toothpick.  Everything else is optional.

Alternately, I stumbled across Hearts for Haiti on etsy a few days ago, and since a heart tutorial seemed like the perfect fit for such a shop, there are now also 20 copies available there.  Both shops are donating to the same charity, so please just feel free to purchase wherever you prefer.  You may also get your copy directly from me at Polka Dot Creations, but I do hope that you will check CraftHope and HeartsForHaiti first and buy through them for as long as they still have copies.

Even if you’re not intrigued by these hearts, I urge you to head over to either shop and see what else may be of interest.  Buy yourself a little something special and help make a difference in the world at the same time.

This topic in blog history:

• The girliest thing I’ve ever made - February 2009
• Pink. - November 2009

My time at the Clayathon ended up being all about the shawl pins.  I’m so glad I tried making a few that first day, because I really loved the way they turned out.  Particularly once I’d spent some quality time sanding them smooth.  And even more so, when I sat down at the buffing wheel and gave it a spin for the first time.

Ooh, they are just so unbelievably smooth, and have such a beautiful satiny shine!

(As an aside, I have got to add a bench buffer to my setup.  Now that I’ve seen firsthand what it can do, I just can’t imagine going back to rubbing my sanded pieces on my couch…)

Many of these will be finding their way into my shop this week.  Others that I’ve grown fond of will stay with me until I have finished knitting my sweater and can decide which one looks best with it.

A few of you expressed an interest in these – if you’d like one and want to save me the trouble of photographing it and creating a listing for it, leave a comment or email me.  I’ll be happy to let you have one for $24.  I haven’t quite made up my mind what the final price of these will be once I put them in the shop, but I do know it will be more than $24.

I made a lot of other little doo-dads with leftover pieces from the shawl pin extravaganza, and I did a little experimenting with scrap clay, and some other experimenting with the pearlescent Liquid Sculpey that Polymer Clay Express was kind enough to share with everyone.  I made myself a pair of earrings that has me completely smitten, and a small pile of similar earrings that I plan to sell.

Just about everything else still needs to be sanded and buffed.  Whether that will happen soon, or six months in the future, remains to be seen

This topic in blog history:

• Christmas Mokume - December 2009

Don’t you think?  Once I finish the ribbing at the bottom,  I’ll just need to add the sleeves and the ruffle, and lastly the closure.  The closure is supposed to be crocheted ties, but I am thinking a shawl pin might be a fun option.

As luck would have it, I am currently holed up in a hotel outside of Atlantic City with a pile of clay, a box of tools, and three days to play.  (It’s the annual Clayathon weekend, you know.)  These are the prototypes I whipped up today.  They’re a little rough around the edges, since I forgot to bring my sanding supplies, but you get the idea. I’m likely to make more tomorrow.  They’re kind of fun!  What do you guys think?

Ok, I’m off.  It’s after midnight, and I’m getting sleeeepy.  Happy Weekend!

This topic in blog history:

• The yoke’s on me - January 2010

Technically, I am still on my Christmas vacation until Monday, but I had promised to take a day out of my holiday-having to ship Bettina Welker’s new book when it arrived.  I’d been checking the tracking information online every couple of days, but there’d been no change in status since December 15th.  Ack.  So you can imagine my surprise when Neil wandered into the family room at 11:30 this morning, lugging a big box of books from Germany.

Oh, they’re here?!  Great!

It was uncharacteristically forward-thinking of me to get customer payments ahead of time, and to print out the shipping paperwork before I started my vacation, but I did do those things, and as a result, I was able to jump right into packing these books up and printing the postage.  It was admittedly a long shot, but I actually managed to drop them all on the doorstep and put the flag up on the mailbox before the postal pickup today.

So, yay! The first wave of books is on its way to those who had preordered and paid before my vacation began.  New orders will go out next week.  And I still have a (very) small handful available if you’re feeling tempted now.

You know, after looking at the cover for so many months, I’ve been increasingly eager to get a look inside this book.  It’s written entirely in German, but there is a small pamphlet that comes with the book, which includes Kathi Briefer-Gose’s English translation of all fourteen projects.  I can imagine it might get a little awkward to have to flip back and forth between book and translation, but these projects are so fabulous-looking, it just might be worth it.

For now, though, I’m all about gawking at the eye candy.  My clay is packed up, and may very well remain that way until my annual trip to Atlantic City for the Clayathon in two weeks.  This book (along with Kathi’s translation)  is for sure going to be in my travel bag that weekend.  I’d like to use these earrings as a starting point for somethingorother. Probably – fittingly – a pair of earrings.

Oh, and speaking of books that arrived here while I was technically on vacation, Christi Friesen’s got a nifty new book called Steampunkery that marries her signature style with gears, watch parts, and all things steampunky.  While it’s not really my style, I have to admit I couldn’t put the book down – I read it cover to cover.  And I just may find myself applying some of those ideas to my own work.  Hey, I’ve got a whole Clayathon during which to play, right?

Speaking of gears, I need to change mine now.  A certain six-year-old is attending a friend’s birthday party tomorrow, and I’ve got a sock puppet to finish making.

Happy Weekending, everyone!

This topic in blog history:

• Don’t judge a book by its cover - March 2009
• Delusions of Springtime (and a winner!) - March 2009

I treated myself to a new goldenrod-colored sweater last week, and a pair of argyle socks to match, and as I was driving home from Target, I was doing what any other jewelry designer would do – taking a mental inventory of my necklaces, trying to remember if I had anything to match my new sweater.

I did, as it turns out.  A few of the necklaces I made after Julie Picarello’s class last April were a perfect color and I hadn’t sold them yet.  Still, I wanted something a little more interesting, like the dangly necklaces I’ve been making that have the clasp in the front and a little cascade of glass beads that jangle around as you walk.

Luckily, it’s a relatively simple thing, to take a necklace like I had and turn it into a necklace like I wanted.  In fact, I did it on the other two necklaces I still had left from that time, too.

It’s fun to breathe a bit of new life into something,when all you need to do is add a couple of extra components.  It makes me want to dig through my little box of clay tiles that I never bothered to turn into anything.  There are so many potential earrings and necklaces in that box!

I must resist, though. My creative energy needs to go into a little bit of Christmas knitting I’m doing for the boys, and some coffee cup cozies the boys and I are going to be making for their teachers – it seems to me like a good collaborative project: they can pick the fabrics and the buttons, and they can cut out the pieces.  All I need to do is sew it all together and buy the Starbucks gift cards to slip inside them.

(“All I need to do,” she says, as if she isn’t teetering on the verge of a good old-fashioned week-before-Christmas freak-out…)

This topic in blog history:

• Christmas Mokume - December 2009
• In my mind, I may still be at the beach - May 2009
• Birthday baubles - May 2009

And now, after walking through 2-inch-deep slush puddles in my Crocs, waiting for the school bus, and trudging back home through the same frigid puddles, I’m wondering what on earth I was thinking putting on shoes with holes all over them. Not my finest hour.

At this moment, I’ve changed into my coziest, comfiest clothes, brewed some coffee, and I’m thinking about how nice it is that today’s agenda centers very much around wool.  Warm, dry, sleet-free wool.

I’ve got hats and neckwarmers on the brain (and the loom) this week.  I’m knitting them up for the shop, for my upcoming sale, and for some gifts.  And so, even though I generally consider knitting to be a leisure activity for my evening downtime, today I’ll be promoting it to a daytime job and hopefully cranking out a nice variegated brown + blue neckwarmer.

Oh, do you want to know what I discovered yesterday when I sat down at the clay table to make a few ornaments for this week’s sale?  I learned two things actually:

1. I am so over ornament-making right now, I couldn’t even touch the red clay.
2. The new textured pastel technique I’ve been doing lately lends itself remarkably well to color-matching variegated yarns.

So no ornaments actually got made, but I cranked out a small pile of buttons with relative ease.  While I really enjoy mixing up clay colors to coordinate with fabric and yarn, it is certainly not something to undertake when I’m in a hurry.  So it’s incredibly freeing to discover that most of the colors I want to match are right there in my box of 72 pastels.  Really, when you think about it, blending pastels together, is not unlike blending dyes together, and the resulting clay sheet is surprisingly reminiscent of the painted yarn itself.  As long as your pastels exist in the correct hues, a custom color palette doesn’t get much easier than that.

I’m suddenly consumed with the irrational urge to buy up all of the Malabrigo variegated yarns and make button sets to match.  Not being made of money, that will have to wait until I’m independently wealthy.  It’s a fun little idea, though.

I need to wrap this blogging thing up this morning and get down to knitting, although the more I type about color-matching yarns, the  more I want to make one tiny detour… See, I’ve got this really neat-looking skein of Rowan Colourscape Chunky by Kaffe Fassett (colorway #437), and it’s just screaming for a matching button.  I have no idea what I’m going to knit with this wool, but it wants a button.  Uh oh.  Distraction, here I come…

This topic in blog history:

• She of the warm neck - January 2009
• Confessions of a Recovering Cheapskate - September 2009
• Boys and their hats - December 2009

…and I need a nap.

I finished them last night, but today I needed to pack them up all pretty and safe, and get them on their way.  Stopping, of course, to take a picture or two now and then.  I don’t like to send custom work out without snapping a photo of it first – always nice to have a record!

It took me so long to get these packed up today, that I made the postal pickup by the skin of my teeth.  I had no idea it was going suck up so much of my day!  When tasks take me significantly longer than the time I’ve budgeted for, it usually makes me a little bit cranky.  Today, I’m not cranky – I’m just relieved to see the whole 2009 Custom Ornament Experience checked off of my list.  It feels good to be done.

I’m about ready to take the rest of the week off (what? it’s only Monday?) but I’ve got a pile of knitting to do before Friday.  And I’ve been hearing mumblings about some big holiday coming up in a few weeks, that maybe I might want to get ready for?  Hmm.

How about you?  Running yourself ragged much these days?

This topic in blog history:

• Crickets - December 2009
• Eight almost down, seven more to go - November 2009
• The stockings were hung by the chimney with care - December 2008

The snow fell yesterday, most of the afternoon in big fluffy flakes.  I often say how much I dislike snow, but the truth is that the objectionable part of a snowfall, to me, is its aftermath – the shoveling of it, the driving in it, the trudging through it.  The actual snowfall itself is something I can enjoy, particularly when it comes during the holiday season.

A cozy Saturday afternoon in December, with no place to go, and snow gently floating past the windows lends itself to daydreaming.  I spent some time yesterday thinking about the claywork I’ve been doing lately, which led me to thoughts of my upcoming open house, which it turn got me asking the inevitable question: what am I going to wear?

My Santa skirt was a good choice, but what about jewelry?

And so it came to pass that Saturday afternoon would be a clay day, surrounded by the festive colors of the Santa fabric, and the mokume recipe I’d come up with for the Beach necklaces of the summer.  The snow came down all afternoon, while I mixed and deliberately stacked colors, made impressions, formed tiles, and hummed tunes.

And in the evening, I moved the operation to the family room. I sat by the roaring fire, watched a Christmas movie with Neil and the boys, sanded, buffed, and assembled.  It was long past Midnight when my head hit the pillow.

I could have been finished with this whole process in about an hour, if I’d stopped at making one pair of earrings for myself, but you probably know by now that’s now how I roll…

I’m keeping my favorite earrings, but everything else is up for grabs.  If you, too, have a Santa skirt to wear, need something to complement your festive red sweater, or would just appreciate a pop of color on top of your gray t-shirt, you might like these guys.

Be merry!

This topic in blog history:

• Going bowling - February 2008
• Press this button - July 2008
• One thing leads to another - July 2008