Hooray for Clay Playmates

Hmmm, maybe that isn't a good title, sounds like we're doing Playboy or something.  One of us might fit the bill, but the other three are definitely out of the running, LMAO.

Today was the January date for having people come over and play with me polymer clay with me.  It's so much fun to sometimes have company to do clay work with.  This month it just happens that we can fit in two Clay Play Days, one today and one next Saturday.

It's obvious my sister reads my blog, as she brought me a bunch of Ultramarine Blue Premo.  I did find out though, that if you mix 1 pkg of purple with 2 pkgs of Cobalt Blue, you can come very close to Ultramarine Blue, in a pinch.

We aren't a very big group, although we'd love to have some other polymer clay artists join us.  Right now, it's just me, my sister, Gail,  her bestest friend, Reni (Reni's my friend, too, but I'm 4 years younger than them and they've been friends since they were kids and I was just the "little sister").  Our Mom also joins us, although she isn't really into the claying part.  She usually brings a knitting project along and just sits and knits and chats with us.

As you can see, my Mom also likes Snuffles, just a little bit.  She's getting bigger than we expected her to, I mean Snuffles, not my MOM, but she's still within the size range we wanted.  

Today for lunch, I fixed lasagna, as I mentioned yesterday.  I was pleased to find those "cook in the oven" lasagna noodles really DO work.  It was really good.   We had jello with fruit for dessert.

Our Clay Play Days usually take the form of classes with me as the instructor.  Sometimes we try a technique out of a book or a magazine or off the internet.  Since Valentine's Day will be coming up soon, we did hearts today.  We used Iris Mishly's free tutorial for a  Cookie Cutter Square Heart Cane .  Thanks, Iris, you write a great tutorial.

We then went on to make some pattern sheets with some of my canes and made some puffy hearts in the same way we have always made 'pillow beads'.  The first time we made them we made square pillow beads, but then we challenged each other and ourselves to make other shapes, so we've made butterfly pillow beads, round pillow beads, star shaped pillow beads (which are very hard to close by the way).  The only difference this time was that we borrowed a finishing technique (again from Iris Mishly) to put a striped border around our pillow bead seams.

The top ones are my sister's, the middle ones are mine, and the bottom ones are Reni's.  We had a blast, lots of chatter and trading ideas and colors etc.  I was pleased with my pattern sheet and my hearts, but didn't really like the colors I chose for the seam around my hearts.  I really liked both Gail's and Reni's colors.  Something for me to work on for the future.

As we were cleaning up, Reni was rolling some of her leftover striped seam clay into little rolled up beads, which struck me as a really good idea, but I though of a way to take it one step further.  I used all my scrap from today and extruded tube beads from my Makin's trusty green Extruder and then wrapped my left over striped sheet around it to make beads.  I then cut them into about 8mm tube beads.  Half of them I did the stripes around the bead, and the other half have the stripes going lengthwise along the bead.  It sure beat turning that pretty sheet of stripes into a muted sheet of who knows what color, LOL, and now I have beads to go along with my hearts.

So, here's what I have to show for a day full of  fun . . .

and a close up of my hearts with some of my older canes on them:

I'm almost completely out of that butterfly cane, guess I'd better get busy making some more of them, as I really like butterfly canes.

Tomorrow I have to get some leaf canes done for our eBay listings.  Then I have to get busy reducing those eye canes I started earlier in the week.  My sculpting class starts January 29, and I want to have everything else off my work space by then so I can concentrate all my energy on my Fairy Child (remember, sculpting is VERY difficult for me, wish me good sculpting vibes, please).  So, until next time, I'm off to bed.  Smiles!