This morning was quite crazy! After driving around to a few stores (hunting for the perfect Father's Day gift), we were headed back home so that Justin could quickly get dressed, eat, and head off to work. The car would not start at all. He thought the starter was broken, but a passer-by thought it sounded like a dead battery, and offered us a jump. Sure, why not?

And it worked! We drove home, and had to leave the car running so that I could drive him to work and then get a new battery. (Did I mention, we only have one car?) We were a little scared we wouldn't make it when we got in the car and saw the gas light had come on, but it turned off as we started driving. His (summer) job & the car dealership are only about 5 minutes from our house, so I made the trip, sat in the waiting room reading "White as Snow" for over an hour, paid them way too much money, and then quickly drove to the gas station.


But, before all that, I did manage to get a few things into the oven.



This was supposed to be an ambigram necklace for myself, but the resin turned cloudy & yellow in the oven. Even though I ran a few test pieces of resin through the oven, I had only applied clay to the back of the pieces. The test pieces did not yellow, so now it seems the reaction of the baking clay is what does it?

And now I am going to give up on resin with clay setting, and look into the metal settings once again. Which is probably a good thing ~ with bezel cups I can pour directly into the setting & not deal with the mold at all.


I also made...


( SWEET GINGER CHEWY GRANOLA BARS )

( My original bad luck with resin )



( My new bad luck )



So, after all of the disasters, I still present you with these three pendants! The clay on the first two is textured and highlighted with silver paint. The third one is smoothed (not textured)

I finished painting Bucky from the Get Fuzzy comics last night... when I was working sculpting him I was using a few small pics from online, I was too lazy to go upstairs & get the comic books. I knew his head should have been a little wider, but when I pulled out the books (and found a picture in the exact pose I was making!) I realized how much wider it should have been. But he is for me and I like him! (I left him tail-less so he can sit in my shadowbox nicely)

( More views... )

For those of you girls who are not on craftgrrl,
stolenmilkcrate has been posting tiny chibis lately (cutesy child-like versions of animals, like these) ~
after she made up a tutorial, there have been a ton of them on there lately.

Since I've been looking for a craft to work on downstairs (away from the workroom & all of my supplies), and have been trying to fill up a printers shelf I just hung on the wall, I caught the fever myself ;)



Kitty
Monkey
Sock Monkey
Old Hippie Man

Here are two things I made a while ago, but waited a long time to take pics...

( Spiral Tree Clay Tin )

( Spiral Star Box )

May 5 '05 ~ Hippie Bear & Clay Covered Tins


If you were wondering about what happened with the bear, I ended up leaving the ends of the yarn cut and she is now living comfortably in Japan. Here are some better pictures of her that I took to put up on the site. The dreadlocks look so good but take a long time to sew on ~ I would love to make another bear wearing a patch dress though!

March 3 '06 ~ Clay Covered Mint Tin



This tin actually got messed up from my stupidity. I took of the bottom and had spray painted it black. Then I was going to clear coat the whole thing. However, I grabbed the wrong can and sprayed right over the tree with the black paint! I wasn't too upset and decided it would just be black ~ but then the clear coat left a foggy white over the whole thing. It looks good in aread, like highlights, but not quite uniform enough for my picky self. It is still pretty cute though, and I use it for some of my jewelry supplies.

I've done another spiral tree on one of those round Citrus Sours tins ~ it is still sitting here unpainted after many months, but maybe I will get it up on the site one day. The tins are so fun to make but take too long to sell well.