Joyce Cloutman is a member of our polymer clay guild and she attended Donna Kato's workshop earlier in the year. She gave Donna an adorable elf that she had made using canes from a previous workshop with Donna (unfortunately I didn't get a picture). She also had this little guy pictured on the left & we all feel in love with him. Pictured on the right is Joyce with another one of her cute little elves.

As workshop chairman, it is my responsibility to schedule workshops for our guild. After much urging by the members at Donna's workshop, I spoke with Joyce about coming and teaching a workshop for the guild this summer. It took much convincing on my part, as Joyce had not taught before and wasn't confident about doing so. Let me tell you, she had nothing to feel insecure about! Her workshop was last Saturday and it was fabulous. She broke things out to make it easy for each of us to create our own "Butterfly Elf", was very gracious and giving and also shared many, many invaluable tips & techniques that we will be using for years (got to make one of those curing boxes, especially with this 100+ heat).

While I don't have a picture of the finished project we did, I do have pictures to share of some of Joyce's adorable elves, all but two went to new homes, as the members purchased them.

Don't you just love the sweet little faces on her elves? Plus the detail is fabulous! Lucky me, Joyce generously gave me the original elf that we saw, the one on the upper left of this post.

I didn't finish my elf, but I did make two faces at the workshop. As soon as I get a chance, I'll finish them and post them. Neither little face wanted to be a butterfly elf, they have other things in mind.

If you ever get the opportunity to take a workshop with Tim Holtz - JUMP on the chance. I took his Assemblage of Flight altered bird workshop this past Friday. Not only is Tim a fabulous teacher, with his classes paced well, but you don't have to bring a thing - everything is provided - tools, work surface, paints, surface and more embellishing goodies than you would ever dream about. Tim had collected all sorts of vintage goodies on his trip to Paris for us to use - jewelry findings, castings, clock parts, plus lots of his Ideology line.

Tim encourages everyone to create their own pieces using their creativity and imagination, but he is right there to assist with how-to or suggestions. Mario (who did a lot of the preprep work for us) was there to patiently drill any holes exactly the size, depth and location we wanted.

In addition, Tim graciously allowed us to purchase (at a very reasonable price, I might add) vintage props that he found in Paris as well - antique binoculars, cameras, rusted tins, crochet balls. I bought one of the binoculars (complete with case that I will use on another project) for my bird to perch upon.

Thank you to Monica, Stamp Asylum for bringing Tim in for the workshops, to Tim for his sharing his creative mind and talents and to Mario for being such a great helper.

One of the ways EDAC keeps the cost of their conference down is by auctioning the table centerpiece dolls that are donated by attendees. Last year Lisa & I both created one. This year the theme is Magic and I created a Wizard, collaborating with Vicki. I sculpted the face, hands, feet and "carved" staff and Vicki created the clothes. Once she did the clothes, she passed him back to me to give him hair and put him on his base.

Lisa & I started a tradition (though not required) last year when we exchanged handmade gifts prior to attending the Enchanted Doll Artist Convention. She made me a fabulous handmade book that I use to chronical my EDAC journey and I made her a traveling tool case.

This year our dear friend Vicki is joining us (for more fun!) and I made the three of us purses to carry. They have polymer clay faces with beading around the faces, done on rayon batik. We'll be able to carry our wallets, cell phones, room key & lipstick in these lightweight bags.

I got the idea to do us traveling sewing kits for our pins, needles, etc. I found some canvas fabric and drew the faces (just like I did the shoes) and colored them with Prismacolor markers. I then used heavy duty iron on interfacing and backed them with felt. I sewed bias binding around them & added ribbon to tie them.

I also found some great luggage tags at Michaels and personalized them for us with our images.

We are all very excited about attending the conference next month! More about it later.

I found some really cool sprocket gears by Tim Holtz at Michaels. When Vicki & I were at the Grapevine Bead Show in May, I saw some beads
that just begged to be made into jewelry combined with those sprockets. Here is the necklace & bracelet I made. I used a freeform peyote & right angle weave to create the pieces.

I saw some shoes at a local store that were kind of cool, but more than I wanted to spend and the designs weren't exactly what I wanted. However, it did spark an idea so I went in search of plain white canvas shoes. I found the first ones at Target and later at Walmart. My friend found hers at DSW & the slipons I got were from Old Navy. Once I obtained the canvas shoes, I went to town. I normally sketch a light pencil outline prior to adding color with Prismacolor Permanent Markers. I do the detail lines with a Sakura Micro Marker (and some other ones that I have that are no longer on the market). When my friends saw the first pair, the custom orders started flowing in and I'm having a great time doing these shoes. Later I'll show you the tote bags I did as a fund raiser for the doll artist convention I'll be attending next month.

Once my friend Lisa saw the shoes, she had to have a pair, so she commissioned me to do her a pair. Since we are attending an art doll conference this summer, I did doll faces on her shoes.

She loved them! Here are both the front & back views of her shoes.

Our friend Vicki is also attending the convention this year and wanted a pair of shoes of her own. She doesn't care for the lace ups, but found a pair of Keds slip ons that she liked. As Vicki is a master gardener, I did her shoes to reflect her interests.

The first image is at the start of the process, with one shoe detailed and the other with just the color.

One more image showing the side. Once I did the shoes for Vicki & Lisa, I loved the slip on style and also the doll faces, so I found a cheap pair of slip ons at Old Navy and did my own doll face shoes to wear at the convention.

Start of doll shoes without any of the detailing - just the basic color laid out.

Finished shoes with detailing.

Lisa had the idea that the shoes might look good just black & white. I wasn't sure, but the last pair I did was a different canvas. It wasn't working doing the pencil lines first, so I laid in the basic lines with the permanent detail markers. I figured I would do all the lines & detailing first and then add the color. Picture shows shoes in progress. Once I finished them, though, everyone seemed to love them as they were - so I'm leaving these black & white. I'll be selling this pair.

Last weekend our polymer clay guild brought in Donna Kato for a workshop. I got to host Donna & she is such a generous and gracious person and guest. My dog, Zeke was crazy about Donna & even "presented" her with his bone toy outside her door Saturday morning.

I can't believe how much teaching & learning Donna packs into one of her workshops. Our group choose to have her teach her Subtractive Bangle Bracelets and Hollow Leaf Pods. She also demonstrated another project that was done with some of the canes from the first pieces (sorry I didn't catch the name of this piece, I was dealing with an oven disaster at the time). Here are the pieces I created at/from Donna's workshop.



I know I speak for everyone who was able to attend Donna's workshop (and many who weren't able), that we cannot wait to bring her back again for another workshop.

Our guild had our first Bottle of Hope competion this year, with all the entries being donated to Gilda's House in Dallas. We had three categories, Hope, Nature and Texas. I entered a bottle in each category. The winners were chosen by guild member votes. The creator was not revealed until after the voting. I got first place for Mr. Mushroom representing Nature, first for the Texas Armadillo and second for my entry in the Hope section with Cow Jumped Over the Moon.

I'm a member of Dawn Schiller's group, Fairly Odd Fae. Dawn has been sharing some of her latest Odd Fae, Finding Fae which are done in brooches & jewelry pieces. You can see Dawn's creations on her site, Odd Fae. I had a couple of really old brooch backs in my stash & thought I would try my hand at creating faces in them. Here is one of my pieces.

This one is for Vicki

My dear friend Vicki is my partner in crime at the bead shows & functions. While we were at the last bead convention, I spotted these lampwork beads that were labeled as ophans and being sold very cheap. Vicki & I make things for each other - there is no telling when one of us might present the other with a beaded piece we have made (usually in the locker room at the gym where we work out together). Anyway, I told her if she would pick out & buy the beads, I would make her another necklace. You see, she wears the necklace I made for her birthday almost nonstop - a girl has to have some variety, don't you know?

This was a very fun piece to do. When we bought the beads, they were shiny, however both of us prefer a matte finish, so I used Etch-all on the beads. It changed the color quite drastically. While the beads had been more of a green, the areas that were green were now a navy blue. The background became more of an ochre color. When I went to my stash to choose beads for the necklace, the woods, ceramics and nuts spoke most to me.

Vicki had a rough week this week and I was really glad to be able to give her this necklace yesterday evening to at least end her week on a much brighter note. Everyone should have a friend like Vicki - I'm really lucky.

Bracelets

Vicki & I didn't get to take the tennis bracelet class that Colette taught, but we were able to get the directions for it, which are really simple. The directions were for a single strand, but after doing several singles, we figured out how to do double strand. The nice thing is this work up very quickly, so it is easy to make lots of them & they make great gifts. They look good worn in multiples on the wrist, too. I made most of these, with the lime green & hematite ones made by Vicki for me.

The next image is bracelets Vicki made for me - the top two were for my birthday and the bottom one was a new design that she found online and made for both of us.

The cubes and chain bracelet was an image I saw online and figured out how to do it by looking at the image. I'm sure I didn't so it exactly as the one I saw, but I do like how it turned out. I have the beads and the new chains at Michaels in the Bead Landing Meadow Grove collection will be perfect for this design.

Cool Spirals

While at the Texas Beaders Retreat, I was inspired by the bracelets Colette was doing with a marvelous combination of freeform with open spirals. I used lampwork beads in this teal green bracelet.

I also reworked two of the first freeform peyote pieces I did, a black bracelet and a purple necklace with this style.

It's been a while since I've taken the time to update my blog. I know I always have good intentions of doing so, but given free time, it seems as if there are always so many other things to do. Many times it comes down to the choice of creating or blogging. Creating always seems to win out. The good thing is when I do get around to blogging about what I've created, it looks like I have been very productive. Of course you must remember that these are done over several months.

The first piece is the necklace I made for my dear friend, Vicki, for her birthday which was in January. It is a freeform peyote with lampwork beads from my two favorite sources, Back Room Beads and Debbie Givens.

Vicki and I had the opportunity to attend the 10th annual Texas Beaders Retreat in January in Temple, Texas. While there I finished the black freeform necklace for myself, as I wear lots of black at work. This piece has both semi precious and lampwork beads.