In search of Spring

I had to go to Madonna University today to work on a lithograph and since Hines Drive is open again, (flooding is over) I took my camera, hoping to find a little bit of spring.


I drove past my hill and felt a touch of sadness. I had a love affair with that hill for two years. I walked up and down the 140 steps, listening to music, feeling fantastic. I lost 60 pounds walking that hill but all along I was doing damage to my knees, now I can only dream of walking it again.





Due to heavy rains over the past month, the park has a lot of temporary ponds. I saw a woman pull over to the side of the road to watch a duck bob his head in and out of the water. She must have been looking for spring too.

Here a few geese swim.

Last week this tree was completely under water, now the water has subsided.

Daffodils are popping up in my yard



My lilac bush is budding

Green moss grows on the asphalt near my shed

From the song bird that woke me up this morning, to the skunk cabbage growing along the banks of the river, spring is slowly making it's self present. It will officially be here in a few days but I'm glad I got to go out and find a little bit of it today.


Go out and find your own bit of spring!

Graphic Buttons I made.


I sell these over at Cafepress. I think they are kind of cute. I'm planning on making more designs.

Tales from the darkside...

iIn other words, I did another craft show yesterday and it was bad.

I hate to be negative, because I did enjoy myself, chatting with other crafters, catching up with old friends, but as for sales, it was bad.

Most of the people I spoke to were in the same boat as me. They were struggling to get their table money back. I think I made about $38.00 over the cost of the table. I used to think that I would be happy if I made around 10 times to 20 times the cost of my space. For instance, if I paid $50.00 for a table, I expected to make $500 to $1000 that day. That was an achievable goal in the past. Those days are gone, at least for me. I haven't seen that return in awhile. I hope some of you are making that much.

As for customers, the "lookers" were friendly, gave compliments freely, chatted about the weather and inquired about my product. Two little girls came to my booth 7 times to admire my little pink sock monkey.

One of the girls really wanted the sock monkey and she held it in her hands, looked at her money, whispered to her friend, looked at me, and then would put the monkey down and walk away . This happened all afternoon. I really wanted her to buy it. Not because I needed the $4.00 but because she had fallen in love with it. But, as nice as I am, I wasn't going to give it to her.
With every purchase, I was giving my customers a free bag. The little girl who loved my monkey was just as in love with the bags, and would pick out a bag and hold it up to the monkey to find the right match. In the end, her mother told her she couldn't buy it. I was a little sad to see them leave!




Here are the bags I bought off of ebay. They looked nice with the clay, and people really appreciated the gesture. I paid $5.50 for 100 of them. Not bad!


I met a few crafters/artists and we shared ideas about Etsy., finding good items at garage sales that sell well on ebay, wholesale places to buy supplies, new craft ideas, and marketing suggestions.

As bad as the craft show was, I came away with some inspirations. For instance, I saw someone wearing polymer clay buttons on her jacket. I've been making buttons myself, and I think mine were much better, so that verified my idea that buttons might work for me.


I think I'm going to try and make stickers for my next show, to sell alongside the clay. I have been working a lot with graphics, so a lot of the work is done. I just have to get a new ink cartridge and labels, and I'll be set to go. I have a lot of ideas in regard to stickers and labels, and I think images of cute clay babies might look great on stickers. I have three weeks before my next show to put together a cute collection. I think I can work it nicely into my display.

Albert Einstein defined insanity as doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. Sometimes I think we artists/crafters are a little insane. I've done three shows in a month with horrible results, yet I still expect that the next show will have different results. Or so I'm hoping. To create, to make things, to do art is so important in my life that the
financial outcome, as horrible as it sometimes is, does not make me throw my hands up in the air and scream, "I quit!" I just keep creating. My friend Mary Ann, always says to me, "You just keep on keeping on, Debbie."

Albert Einstein also said, "True art is characterized by an irresistible urge in the creative artist."

Spoken as the true genius he was.

What I do with my junk clay

Polymer clay artists all have something in common. We all have that box or container that is heaping full of "junk" clay. Whether we are working in millefiori, making ornaments, miniatures or sculpture, we all have bits and pieces of clay left over.

Since I tend to be a bit disorganized, my junk clay is tossed in a wire basket. Whenever I clean off my desk, I take all my left over clay and, instead of neatly pushing all the same colors together, I sweep them off the desk into the basket. Then, about once a month, I sort the clay into like colors and mix. I then try to use those colors before I open up a new package.

On a weekly basis though, I mix all of the junk colors together into a beautiful swirl of colors and make product. I try to mix colors that look good together. For instance, I'll mix yellow, orange and pink together, blue, green, teal and white together, and black, golds, yellows, and white
together.

When I mix them, I roll out each color into a tube, place the tubes together and twist. I do this for only a few minutes. Too much mixing will turn the colors into an ugly gray.

Once I've mixed my swirly colors, I can make colorful one of a kind creations. This little fatty fairy has yellow, green and
orange clays mixed together.


My favorite ornament to make is this little set of Mary, Joseph and Jesus. I swirled blue, white and pink together to make this sweet sculpture.










I make a lot of swirly dragons and fairies from junk clay. Little boys love these characters, especially if there's a long tongue and sharp teeth.


I just recently started to make swirly buttons. But I only use premo clay for the buttons, so I've started a separate junk box just for premo. Premo clay is much more durable, and for something as functional as a button, I want to use better clay.

I'd like to share one final idea. Sometimes junk clay can get a little dirty with specks of dust, hair, lint, etc. I wash my clay with tepid to light warm water and lay it out on paper towels to dry. (that's important, you don't want to bake wet clay, as it can leave little cracks in your project.)

Clay can be expensive, so take care of it. Tomorrow I'm going to give you some hints on how to soften hard, old clay that has never been baked.