Lately my crafting time has been split between beading and playing with clay. I get almost equal satisfaction from each medium but the clay probably appeals to the kid in me as well as the artist, where the beads represent more of my adult persona. There's just something about kneading the clay, running it through the pasta machine, shaping it, mixing the colors. I used to love making mud pies too! And the colors remind me of my crayon box when my parents could afford to buy me the box of 24 or, glory of glories, the box of 48!! The names! The possibilities! Clay is like that. So many endless possibilities of color mixing; I especially like doing marbled designs. Here's what I've been up to recently with my clay.
The abstract design was inspired by my EBW and Facebook friend, Lorraine of TrinityDJ on Etsy. I first met Lorraine through the Etsy Beadweaver group and she is just one special lady. She is no longer able to bead due to illness, but somehow she creates these incredible polymer clay pieces. Her example, both as an artist and as a person, is the push behind this recent spurt of creativity on my part.
I had a lot of fun mixing the colors for these two and the little red haired girl has to be my favorite out of the bunch.
Since it's not long before Memorial Day, Flay Day and 4th of July, I thought maybe some patriotic designs might be in order.
I'll see how these are received before doing more barrette designs. Yesterday, I played with a couple different techniques of mixing and shaping the clay to create some pendants. They still need to be sanded and coated with sealer (the not so fun, but necessary, part of clay work). Then I will probably to the adult thing and work up some beadwork to go with them.
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