Well Tuesday I finally broke out the clay (yay!!). I (attempted) to make some pumpkin earrings for my mom. They didn't come out TOO badly (though I forgot to take pics before I gave them to her). Making them, however I discovered I really hate Kato Polyclay (the brand of clay I bought). Clay has a workability----->durabilty scale. The softer a clay, the easier it is to work with, but the less durable the finished product will be. Firmer clays will make much more durable items, but they are stiff, and can be difficult to soften and condition without something like a pasta machine to use. Kato is at the far end of the durability spectrum, and since I have no specialzed clay kneading machines, it took nearly an hour to get a few square inches of clay soft enough to mold into earrings. So, I will be returning the clay. Luckily, my second choice was Premo brand clay, which they sell at AC Moore. I went down and picked up a few bars to try out at home before buying a large amount over the internet (again lol).

I LOVE it! It's great...here is a folk-sy cat pin I made mom. (all these pic will be slightly yellowed because I used our lamplight to shoot in, as we have no real sunlight in NY in Oct.

A close-up of the pansy decoration (mom LOVES pansys)

Here is a turtle pin I made for myself inspired by the art of Cristi Friesen who I think is a PHENOMINAL artist! (http://www.cforiginals.net/)

I am much less pleased with how this came out. The wash came out very, very sloppy and pretty much makes the whole thing look dirty (it's hard to tell in the pics, but trust me, it's not pretty). Next time I'm going to water down the acrylic paint a bit..it was a bit lumpy and tended to clump and streak on the piece (I think I didn't wait for the clay to completely cool, so that may have been a factor as well..I was just so impatient lol).

I DO need to find somewhere to set up a mini-studio..just somewhere I can lay out all my tools and not have to keep picking them up and taking them out..this is what our living-room coffee table has looked like for the last 2 days:

I'm really excited about this new medium, hopefully I can get started on a few of the big jewelry pieces I have in my head soon.