Who knew???

It never occurred to me to look on YouTube for information about polymer clay until I saw a link to Maggie Maggio's wonderful color scale tutorials.  After viewing her three tutorials, I searched YouTube for "polymer clay" and found 236 videos on all aspects of clay - sculpting, covering pens, making beads, mica shift, and making dollhouse miniatures, to name a few.  I also got a lot of matches for "wire jewelry how to" and "silver metal clay".  Not every match was what I wanted - I got a Clay Aiken song called Silver Bells, for example, and some of the videos were nothing more than sales pitches for jewelry.  The quality varies enormously, but still, there is a lot of good information out there.

Go to  http://www.youtube.com/  and then search.  Searching for Maggie Maggio will take you to her tutorials.  Happy hunting.

More Bottles of Hope

Brain Cane and metallic clay


 Bottle Flowers, side and top views.

My mission, which I chose to accept...

I seem to be on a mission to produce as many Bottles of Hope (BOHs) as possible.  I made 20 in November and so far in December, I have finished 9.  I'm hoping to make at least 10 each month.  Part of my motivation is because, out of 12 close friends from college, 2 of us have already struggled with breast cancer.  Perhaps if I make enough bottles, I will never need one of my own.

(For non-polymer-clay people, Bottles of Hope are small medicine bottles, only 1 to 2 inches tall, donated to clay guilds by doctors.  Guild members decorate them with polymer clay, put an inspirational message inside and then give them to hospitals.  The nurses give them to cancer patients who are just beginning their chemotherapy.)

The bottles above were inspired by my last long weekend with my college friends.  We stayed in a lovely house owned by American Sikhs in New Mexico.  There were Indian objects all over the house, thus the "turbans" on these bottles.  The colors make me think of the Southwest.

These BOHs are part of my Fancy Hat series.  The feathers are real. The little pink flower is made of cloth and was purchased at Michaels.

More about me

I retired from a career in management consulting and thanks to my husband's willingness to keep working, I have time to create.  I love designing and have dabbled in machine knitting, hand knitting, needlepoint, clothes designing (I have a Certificate in Fashion Design from the Parsons School in NYC), and long before scrap-booking became popular, I documented my entire life in a series of scrapbooks.

By choice, we have no children - our motto has been "no children, no pets, no indoor plants" - so my friends are very important to me.  Every 18 months I get together for a long weekend with a group of 12 friends from college, and this connection provides a regular infusion of joy and energy.

As you can tell from our motto, we don't like to be tied down and try to travel as much as possible.  I have wonderful photos from different parts of the world, and my plan is to put them on a website eventually.