A little over a year ago I took a workshop with Kathy Davis. While I knew I loved working with polymer clay and I had taken to sculpting in college, Kathy awoke my love a creating dolls with her workshop. I would highly recommend her as a workshop instructor - it was fun, informative and rewarding. I'm hoping to be able to take another workshop from her soon.

In the workshop she taught for our guild, we were to create a fairy or elf. She told us the doll would let us know what it wanted to be. She was right! Mine are Forest Folk. The bigger one was created in the workshop and the little one was created later.

Zeke is now over a year old - we are hoping he is his full adult size. He is on the bigger range of border collies. At last weighing, he was 50 pounds. He's also a bundle of energy. These pictures were taken last week. The car is my husband's 87 Mustang convertible - that is me with Zeke.

For several years I've been creating candy tin purses. Purses made from candy tins, covered in polymer clay. Two of my purses were published in Haute Handbags II (if you scroll down on this link, they are pictured as Polymer Clay Critter Purses) and two were in the May/June 2007 issue of Belle Armoire in the Gallery section (and no, they aren't that orange in real life). Since then I have created a few more, including this Indian purse. The indian on this purse is an original painting that I did years ago on a wooden box for my husband (the box got first prize at the Texas State Fair). I scanned the image, removed the background and used LazerTran to create the transfer.

When I got my first package of Sculpey UltraLight, I thought it was product with great potential. I was right - it does have. It took a little getting used to the feel of it - much like marshmellow creme, but not quite as sticky.One of the great advantages of the product is being able to create larger armatures that remain lightweight. This clay goddess is from my first playing with the UltraLight. She is approximately 6 inches tall and covered with a sheet of mokume gane over the UL armature. She is also adorned with three turquoise beads.

It's been a while since I've taken the time to post. I only have so much free time and it seems that I choose to spend it creating in my studio or keeping up with emails & egroups rather than posting on my blog. Since the last time I posted, I had the tremendous opportunity to travel to Rhode Island and take a workshop from the amazing Kathleen Dustin. I have always admired her work and been inpired by it. She was teaching a workshop sponsered by The Bead House in Bristol, RI. I was able to fly on AA miles and stay with my friend, Linda in N. Providence (Linda took the workshop as well).

The actual workshop was at the Bead Annex, a marvelous facility, perfect for workshops owned by The Bead House. It is a converted luggage factory which now houses artist's studios. The space was spaceous, well-lighted and the owners very gracious and made us all comfortable.

Kathleen is a very generous person, sharing her very unique techniques for her transparent techniques. It was a very satisfying workshop, which I enjoyed thoroughly and wouldn't mind taking again. Here are the three pieces I created in the workshop:


The piece on the far right is the first one I created. While it is nice, I learned from it and created the piece in the middle. I like the design of the middle piece better, it isn't as cluttered as the first piece.


The second day of the workshop, we created a dimensional pendant with an image transfer, the piece on the right.

As I mentioned, I love the technique and went home and created more, all of these dimensional, two with image transfers and two without. These are the pieces I created at home.