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Dreaming ... in Technicolour!

A short and sweet post this week just to let you know what "fun" I've been up to...and to keep my promise to myself (and YOU) to blog regularly!

I couldn't believe the date this morning. My goodness how time flies! It's been such a busy month... playing with digital collage, making some fun poker chips, creating digital paper, designing a website for my Victorian Fashion Group (long overdue!) and getting ready for two workshops... Clay Daze with the Vancouver Island Polymer Clay Group this weekend (oh dear, whatever will I work on!) and a Victorian Valentines Evening with my Fashion Group... coming up quickly.

One of the fun things our claying group does is have a surprise gift exchange between members/participants at the end of our weekend. The only rule is that it be something "handmade" by you and anything goes!

Being relatively new to claying and not about to embarrass myself with something amateurish (after all we have a number of the best polymer clay artists in Canada in our group... Gera Scott Chandler, Wanda Shum and Tina Holden), I decided I would stick to what I know and made the sweetest little "dream" journal for those who like to dream in technicolour! I created the paper digitally because I wanted to see if I could re-create on the computer what I normally do with paints. I was pretty pleased with the result...


Going through my "stash" I discovered some knitting yarn I forgot I even had that matched the paper and with the addition of some scrabble tiles, it is now ready for someone to "dream in technicolour" and journal what they discover.

Now if I could just decide what I am going to work on "perfecting" this weekend... I really want to make an "inro" (a Japanese wearable "purse" ) and work on caning... so I guess that's what I'll go with. I would love to get good enough (eventually) to make teapots like Wanda does. They are something else!!! Take a look at Wanda's slideshow while you are there... I love the whimsy she puts into her pieces. It so matches her bubbly personality! I'll share the results of my weekend with you in upcoming posts.. the stuff that turned out and the stuff that didn't LOL.

I volunteered to be in charge of the gift exchange at Clay Daze so I decided to call it "A Brown Bag Affair" (pretty classy name huh?). Particpants have been asked to bring an unwrapped gift that will fit into a brown lunch bag. In return, they will choose a poker chip (that they get to keep as a souvenir of our weekend) and the lunch bags will get the same number. On Sunday, they will all get to choose their gift bag (other than their own number).

We have 15 participants, so I made 15 altered poker chip charms this week. Of course, there's something interesting about the actual draw, but it's a secret right now! Here's a sampling of some of the poker chips...they are altered on both sides... just forgot to take a picture of the "backside".. vintage ledger paper glued to the backs serendipitously. I just drilled a hole in the top of the poker chip with my handy dremel tool, got out some beads and away I went. I think they turned out pretty darn cute...




Well I have to run for today and get all my claying stuff packed up! Premo was on sale this week at Michaels (Wanda says that's the only kind of clay to use for caning) so I decided to purchase one package of every colour they manufacture (and use that gift certificate I got for Christmas). What fun that was... now I am REALLY ready to create something *fun* with all those happy colours!

Have a great week "arting"


Sharon

A Fun Tale: "Mary Sue's Goin' on a Diet"

Are you ready for a few chuckles in the New Year? If you are a woman, you'll relate to the "age old" dilemma in this story "Mary Sue's Goin' on a Diet" I wrote a few years ago! I only tell this story in January, so take a few minutes to have a listen to a story guaranteed to bring a smile to your face and a large chuckle to your heart.




Happy New Year to you! Hope 2010 and the new decade is good to you... you deserve it!

Sharon