What's new?

Well, I gave it a shot but I couldn't keep up with the photo of the day.  There were just some days that I couldn't get out to take a picture and there are only so many things I could find around the house to photograph.

I liked the idea, but who was I kidding?  It's hard for me to commit to anything.  I think it's the Attention Deficit, or the OCD, or my anxiety,   If you've been following me for any length of time, you are aware of my inability to focus, concentrate, follow through, etc.    I am not shy to talk about it either.  Plus, I'm feeling a little bit depressed and who feels like driving around to take pictures when you don't even feel like leaving the house?


One thing remains steady though and it's my art.  I can't let a day go by without working on some kind of project.  Yesterday I made some charms, a fairy poster, clay fairy houses, and valentine cards.  The cards are for my grand daughters, one who likes zebras and the other who loves my Purple Monkey books. 

I'm going to print out several of them and then the girls can cut them out
and pass them out to friends.  I have several DIY valentine's cards in
my Etsy shop.

I can personalize them with your child's name on the bottom of each card so all they have to do is cut them out and give them to their friends.

I don't even know if anyone was following my photo of the day challenge
and if anyone was, I apologize.  But, since no one ever left a comment I don't think anyone is disappointed and if you are following this blog, I bet it's to see clay!  Right?

I'm going to do a garden show in March.  I'm making miniature fairy furniture and fairies and posters.  It should be fun and hopefully, I can make some money.  Here is one of my fairy furniture sets.  It's a couch, two chairs and a table,  all made from clay in my favorite color combination.

I also am going to do a tutorial this week for you..something for St. Patty's day so stay tuned!

Glisten is the word for today

Sun peaking out behind a cloud, has a nice GLISTEN to it, don't you think?  The edges are glistening too.

I love taking pictures of the clouds.  It's been sunny and bright here in Michigan for the past few days and if I look up into the sky I can almost feel that feeling that I get when I'm on the beach in the late afternoon, after everyone goes home and there's that warm sunlight glistening on the lake.  I took this picture of the lake in August.  Don't you want to be there right now, I know I do.

Day 17 photo challenge word is CREATION

I finally finished my latest CREATION.  This was very time consuming and tedious but I enjoyed doing it.  The end result was worth it all.  I put this on etsy for $55.00 just to see if anyone was interested.  If they started selling, I would make more, but as for now, this is it.

I made all of the tiles with polymer clay imprinted with rubber stamps.  Then I baked them and cut them, glued them on the wooden birdhouse, grouted, and shined.  Lots of work and definitely one of a kind!

Day 16, which I missed,,boooooo

I totally forgot to post my picture yesterday.  I have a lot of stressful things on my mind so it's understandable.  Today's word is circle.  I like the reflection in the cups and the glass.  Anyway, I guess I have too many circles and I only needed one.  Some days you just have to make it up as you go along.

Happiness is the photo challenge word of the day

I think my clay puts a little happiness is people's lives.  Might only be for a moment, but my clay babies always make people smile.  Working with clay, making pigs and monkeys brings ME happiness.  Pink always gives me a little happiness!

Here's a cake topper I made for a customer.  I sure hope it brings her some happiness!

Nature is the photo challenge word of the day

I had big plans today to take some nice pictures of Hines Park.  I was over in my old neighborhood and figured I could drive back home through the park, but, as luck would have it, the park was closed, probably due to flooding.  So, I had an idea to drive over to another park where there was an old abandoned bathroom that was covered in graffiti.  I figured I could do my WORD photo.  When I got there, it was a pile of rubble.  I was beginning to get a little frustrated.

So I headed back home.  I decided to drive through Garden City Park and I snapped this picture.  Here it is January 14 and the park looks like the end of November.  There isn't a spot of snow or ice in sight, just decaying leaves and bare trees.  Nature sure is fickle, isn't she?  (not that I'm complaining).

Photo Challenge word of the day is Vibrant

I love having art and crafts supplies.  I have a bunch of pipe cleaners that I bought and I finally found a use for them.  Snapping a picture for Vibrant.  I put a plastic wrap filter on it for fun and it gave it an organic look,,kind of creepy.  I did a lot today, took about 70 pictures of Easter clay and did several custom orders.  I'll post pictures of the special orders tomorrow.  In the meantime, here are a few valentine clay sets and one bunny.

Twilight is the photo challenge word of the day

I know I missed a day and technically I've missed two days because it is 1:30 am as I'm doing today's photo. I got worried about the other photo I had used so here is a new twilight photo.  There, I feel better now.

Photo challenge word of the day

While I was babysitting my youngest granddaughter yesterday, she kept grabbing onto my hand and holding it.  It's that stage she's at and she loves to touch everything.  So I took this picture.  I love the contrast between her small little hand and my big hand.  Her's is soft and flawless and mine is aged and wrinkled.  I can still feel her little warm grip as she held on. 

I'm very happy with my word challenge HANDS.

Passion, the word of the day

Once again, I could not find a good picture for the word WORD.  I saw many great photo opportunities but the dang traffic was a problem again.  I think I'm going to go spray paint a word on the side of a building and take a picture.  Well, not really, but tempted.

As I thought about this dilemma, I looked up on the wall at a poster I made a few weeks ago, and thought, "Passion!", that's it!  If anyone knows me well they know I'm passionate about Northern Michigan, it's where I love to be and where I want to live.  I took all of those pictures last summer and just recently made this collage to get me through the winter.  I hung it right above my computer so I can gaze up at it and remember and day dream.  So I snapped a picture of my pictures and here it is.  My passion!  Or at least, one of my passions.  Enlarge this picture and let the day dreaming begin.

What can you do with the word Corner

Ok, so I said that I would work on the word, WORD today, but that didn't happen.  I spent several hours at school today and when I left the traffic was crazy.  I repeat, CRAZY.  Why is it when the sun shines people drive like maniacs?? 

Because I wanted to get off of the road and safely home, I took a short cut through an industrial park to avoid a traffic back up.  There I saw my opportunity to snap a picture of a corner.  Nothing impressive, nothing creative, but I got that word out of the way. 

I don't have a phone with a camera (can we say third world technology) so I have to take my camera with me.  I'm getting in a habit of doing that.  Tomorrow my plan to is take a drive down Hines Park and find something that glistens..At least that's the plan.

Polymer Clay Mosaic Covered Bird House

Here's  the beginning of a polymer clay bird house that I'm covering.  This is very time consuming.   I had to make all of these little tiles with clay and they are hard to line up perfectly but it's getting there.  I need to cover the front and the back and then grout it and shine it and then, if anyone is interested, I will do a tutorial.  So, leave a comment if you'd like to see a tutorial.  If no one comments,,then I know!

Today's photo challenge word is foundation

When I saw the word "foundation" I immediately thought of this hynm..

The church's one Foundation Is Jesus Christ her Lord;
She is his new creation by water and the Word:
From heav'n he came and sought her to be his holy bride;
With his own blood he bought her, and for her life he died.

I like this church because it looks like it's been here for a long time, standing strong on it's physical foundation.

I love that word, foundation.  It's what faith is built on, a good marriage, good morals, and good education.  A foundation used to tuck a woman's stomach in and foundation on a woman's face can make her look younger.

Tomorrow I'm going to go out and look for the word, WORD.  That should be interesting.

Exciting News!

My newest book, "You're Naughty, Purple Monkey" is on Amazon.  Here's the link on Amazon...LINK

What's it about?  It's a story about friendship and how we treat our friends, all with the subtle use of YOUR and YOU'RE.  It also has all of the days of the week.  Repetition helps a child learn the difference between your and you're.  The illustrations are done in collage.  I made all of the papers and did the illustrations myself, along with writing the story.  Eric Carle is my inspiration.  As you can see, when I'm not doing clay, I'm busy with other creative outlets.  

Thanks for reading my blog and see you again tomorrow.

 

Photo Challenge day 7

I love taking pictures.  When I go on vacation, I can easily take 700 pictures.  Then months later I look at each picture and savor those memories, relive  the sunsets and sandy beaches and quiet woods.  The invention of digital cameras and the ability to save pictures on a flash drive came along at the best time of my life.  It would have been nicer if it was around when my kids were born cause buying film and getting it developed was usually not in the budget, so a lot of picture moments were lost.  

So I'm grateful that I can fill my flash drives up with thousands of pictures and capture as many memories as I can.

That's why I did this photo challenge.  Cause I love taking pictures.  So if you live in my neighborhood and saw a car driving around taking pictures of the snow and sky the other night, that was just me.  

The photo challenge word of the day is branches. 

I love the way the snowflakes look like planets in the sky.

This photo makes me want to make a cup of hot chocolate and sit by a winter campfire.

Thanks for stopping by!

Photo Challenge Day 6

 Yellow.  It's a primary color.  It evokes images of warmth, lemons and Doris Day!  Yellow was Vincent Van Gogh's favorite color and the name of a song by Coldplay.  I chose yellow today because I bought a bunch of silk flowers to use a props for my clay photographs and, although I would have liked to use real flowers, this was what I had.   I added a few filters and some sparkles for fun!


 

Here I've used them in as a prop.  You'll be seeing more of those in the future.

Hope my yellow picture makes you feel warm on this cold, wintery Sunday.

Last minute reflection

I just spent the last four hours at my daughter's house visiting with her and my three grand daughters and I took about 122 pictures.  I was inspired by the word YOUNG for the challenge today.  But once I got in the car I started thinking that I might not want to post a picture of my little granddaughters on this blog, so while I drove home, I pulled into Walgreen and took this shot.  My word of the day is now REFECTION.

 This was certainly last minute and not what I had in mind for reflection but it works.

Short and sweet tonight!  See you tomorrow. 

Day 4 is all about being SPOILED

This is Emma.  She is my son's dog and some nights she visits me in my room.  Now, I don't let her lie next to me, she has to sleep at the foot of the bed. But for this photo challenge I slipped a pillow under her head and snapped away.  She barely moved.  Spoiled dogs have handmade afghan blankets and a pillow while they sleep!

As for my clay, I'm trying some ideas out for my etsy store photos.  It's a beginning.  I need to work on lighting and sharpness.  But, not bad for a beginning.  What do you think?

Today's word is STREET

On this third day of the 365 day photo challenge I decided to go with the word street.  I took my trusty fugi camera out with me and I had an idea to find a street with no traffic, set the timer and put the camera in the street, but instead, I found a beautiful pattern of salt encrusted cracks and decided to take the photo instead.

I love texture and I'm forever making patterns in photoshop and as soon as I saw this design on the street I knew I could have some fun with it.  

The original image

Here it is with a paint dabs filter.

Here I changed the hue

Looks sweet as a mosaic

Many filters, lost track.

All of these images have been turned into patterns.  You can see in the image below how I used those patterns to fill in the text.

I'm pretty sure I won't be doing this much work for tomorrow's image but this was fun!

Because this blog is about my clay, here is a custom order I did for a customer in Australia.  I really liked how this turned out.  Be back tomorrow with my day four photo!

365 day Bucket List Photo Challenge

My friend Nick is having a photo challenge for each day of this year and he asked me to be in it.  At first I thought about it and thought I might.  Then by the end of yesterday I backed out.  After midnight I got a text from my friend Joe who influenced me with his positive comments to do it anyway, regardless if I missed the first day.
So,,after thinking about it at 3:00 a.m. this morning, I decided to do it.  Here is how it works.  Each month there is a list of words that we have to pick from.  Here is January's list.

 

The object of the challenge is this...get inspired by the list, get creative and take a picture, then mark off the word that inspired you.    Because I'm already one day behind, I'm going to do two words today, Day One and Mint.

Here goes....

Day One

• My day one picture is a cup of hot lemon tea and hand sanitizer.  Why???  Because I'm surrounded by sick people and I'm trying to avoid getting sick myself.  I'm drinking hot lemon tea twice a day and washing my hands with hot soapy water.  If that's unavailable I carry that hand sanitizer with me everywhere I go.  Let's hope it works.

MINT

• My second picture is mint.  Mint is the hot color for brides this year, so why not show one of my mint owl sets.  Shameless promotion, I know.

So, now I'm all caught up and plan to stay that way.

If you would like to join the challenge, there is still time.  Contact my friend Nick if you want to be in the challenge.  Here is his blog...Nick's blog!

Now I guess I have to go tweet this.

Happy New Year!