The Birth of a New Girlie

Two Girlies - Using Some Stamps

I have a lovely collection of stamps now. I was going to start an art journal but as usually I ended up doing something else. Last weeks I came across Suziblutube's videos on YouTube and I was really inspired by her art. I love it! She's so lovely and so funny and sooooo talanted! I just love her girlies and I just had to try and make something like that. I am not really good at drawing simply because I don't practice it enough, but I am quite pleased with the result although I copied the girls. It was a nice chance to use some of my new hand made stamps, too. Mostly they are not really clear but they are great for background and some details that are maybe not seen well on the pics.

I used everything that I have at home: watercolour pencils, watercolours, acrylic paint, stamps, decorative paper, napkins, crayons, markers, old book pages, ink,... Tomorrow I have to go shopping again to get some gesso and watercolour crayons. Hope we have that in our stores!

And by the way, happy Easter everyone!

Cut It Out!

I was looking for some inspiration and some tips regarding eraser or stamp carving and I came across this fabulous site: Street Team Challenges. This month’s challenge Cut It Out is about making a stamp or stencil. I am a big fun of hand made art journals, but for now I am just watching and getting ready to start my own. With sites like Michelle Ward's and all the links from her site I am not really far from giving it a try.

I am getting a bit obsessed with stamp carving at the moment. What can I say, I just love it!! :)

Eraser (Rubber) Carving

Did I say I was going to try to combine wire with polymer clay pendants this weekend? Yeah, right! Of course I didn't. We were shopping on Friday, Nina needed few things for school and in the stationer's shop I saw quite big erasers. And they were on sale. Just perfect, for quite some time I wanted to make my own eraser stamps. I bought 7 or so and it seemed a lot. I started with carving as soon as we got home and it's really an easy way to make stamps! Nina was watching for some time and then she wanted to try, too. We run out of erasers yesterday although we carved them on both sides as they are thick enough. So tomorrow I am going back to that shop to buy all the erasers they have left! :)

These are Nina's carvings (I made her name and draw a cat, she did all the carving herself and designs for the other ones):












And these are mine and one with a piece of paper where I tried how eraser stamp works:












Have a wonderful week!

Wire Pendants and Rings

Bought some more wire, different types and now my fingers really hurt!!! The next step is to figure out how to combine wire with polymer clay. I'm looking forward to the weekend...

Box, Pendant, Picture and More Pendants

Yesterday I was in Velenje meeting with the girls from our creativity group. It was great to see them again and we had a wonderful time together. We had a "How to make a book" workshop and then watched photos from Rusia. In the meantime we ate a lot of delicious home made food and I learned how to make a wire pendants. I had to try that today and of course I didn't have just the right wire, but with some things from my stash they turned out quite ok. Oh, and we had two great swaps yesterday as well - scrapbook pages for memory books and 8th March swap. I got this cute picture, made of air dry clay (thanks Marta!):

And this is what I've made for our swap (cardboard box decorated with decorative paper K&Company and some ribbon with polymer clay pendant in it):















These are the two pendants I managed to made today (Natka, thanks for the instructions!). Yesterday I am going to the city to buy some more apropriate wire.
























Thanks for the lovely day, girls!

Baking Clay

Look what I got! A brand new cute little oven which I am going to use for baking clay! I used my regular kitchen oven until now but for quite some time I was thinking about buying a smaller one just for clay. Last week they had them on sale in one of the stores near here. Dajana went there in the morning while I was at work and now I finally have it. Hooray!

I am going to turn it on now and bake the pendants I made earlier. Hope it works well and doesn't burn them :) - keep your fingers crossed, please!

What My Mom Got

One of my toughest yearly "obligations" is picking up a present for my mom's birthday. It's so hard to give something to a person that actually has everything already. Their house is full of potted flowers, so that's out of the question. Clothes are out of the question, too. Accessories... well, maybe, but used too often. Home decorations... nah, they have too many. Last year my brother and I gave her a painting she wanted for some time. A year before coupons for beauty treatments in a saloon. This year I was not running around the stores like I usually do every year. I bought tickets for opera (which were later sold out, so it turned out to be a really good gift) and we went to see Carmen together. Nina, mom and me. She loved it and she loved the fact that we went together. I also made a small scrapbook album with Nina's pics and I am not sure what she was more happy to get, the ticket or the booklet. Since taking pictures in the opera house is not allowed, I can't show you pics from there. So here are few pics of my little album. The tittle is: My Nina.

Message in a bottle

Lunes tagged me for the Mimi's Message In a Bottle Meme. Since I don't want to end up in a virtual dungeon I better pass this on.

But first a short story about messages in the bottle. When I was younger, about 14 or 15 (Omg!! That was almost 25 years ago!!!) I thought it would be a great thing to throw few bottles to the ocean. Before we went to our summer vacation to Croatia I prepared 3 bottles and 3 messages in few different languages. Message contained explanation why I am doing this and my address and date so that the finder could let me know when and where the bottle was found. My dad was quite enthusiastic about this idea so we went to the open sea with our little boat and I threw the bottles to the water, but not all in the same place. I was hoping bottles would travel a long way and end up on the other side of the world or something like that :). When we got home after 3 weeks, there was already a postcard waiting for me from Slovenian couple who found my bottle near the place where we were staying. They said it was amazing to found a bottle and that it was the greatest thing for them that summer. Cool. One was saved. About a year later I got another note, from Venice, Italy. That means that bottle traveled about 200 km. Even better. The second one was saved, too. The third one... well, I don't know if it was ever found. I like to think it is still floating somewhere in the oceans, traveling around the world, or waiting on some nice sandy beach on some exotic island for someone to pick it up :).

So, here is my today's message in the bottle:

---

Here are the rules:

You are about to send a virtual Message In a Bottle across the Blog Ocean. Leave a message in the sand or on the bottle. Write anything you wish. Be a pirate or a poet. Serious or silly. Anonymous or not.

What message would you like to send out to the universe?

Message In A Bottle Meme

1. Compose a message to place in your virtual bottle.
2. Right click and SAVE the blank graphic below.

3. Use a graphics program of your choice to place the message on the picture.
4. Post the Message In a Bottle meme and your creation on your blog along with these rules.
5. Tag a minimum of 5 bloggers - or your entire blogroll - to do the same. Notify them of the tag.

Your virtual bottle will remain afloat in the blogosphere ocean for all blogernity (That’s a Mimism for blog + eternity.)

So, if you are tagged by me, go over to Mimi’s and ADD your site to her Mr. Linky list and place your blog’s name and url in a comment HERE TO LET MIMI KNOW YOU’VE COMPLETED THE MEME. Mimi will add it to the master list of message bottles. Email mimiwrites2005 at yahoo.com if you have questions. Participation is optional. Just remember she has a dungeon….and some of you are STILL there from the Band Meme. Have fun!

---

Since I am not really sure I know someone that would play this and pass it on, I am tagging all of you readers. If you like it, make your message and pass it on. Thanks, it was fun!

It's funny...

... how some things are synchronized. Let me explain. For the past few months I have not been in the mood to do anything. I haven't made one single thing since the end of last year. My computer was (and still is) turning off all the time because one of the fans stopped working. That didn't bother me, I thought it was actually good to spend less time in front of the computer and have more time for creating and doing other things. Now I keep asking myself how it is possible that two months passed by and I didn't even notice that... with nothing to show, nothing to boast off with, and not much to write about.

Anyway, Nina went to skiing vacation with her father on Friday. I did some cleaning and some repairing that needed to be done. Then I got together all the things for claying and started to play. I'm still warming up and still waiting for the ideas to fill my mind again and force my fingers to crave for forming clay or cutting and gluing paper. I checked my neglected blog and noticed that it had hundreds of visits in last two days. Strange. No posts in last two months and so many visits? I thought that must have been some kind of mistake in my counter. I clicked the first link in my link bar, Polymerclaydaily, which I just love as there are always pics and links of the most amazing polymer clay works. And there it is, my bead and my hand making a bead! Woo hoo! I'm honored. And thrilled, in a really good way. Thanks Cynthia! That will keep me going.

It's time for me to wake up from my winter sleep. Sometimes it's hard to do so, but in my case few of the events that happened at almost the same time are making it much easier. Thanks to all of you who were visiting my blog during the time of my absence and special thanks to all of you who keep reminding me that crafting is what I just have to do.

Best regards to you all and keep checking in here, I'll be around more often! :)

First International Bead Swap Finished

These are my beads for the First International Bead Swap on European Polymerclay People Forum. We had to make 2 sets of 10 beads and send them to 2 participants. My two sets found their new home in Isreal and USA. In return, I got two different sets of beads and I am going to post pics of them tomorrow. I hope that was just one of many swaps there as it is always fun (and a bit of pressure, too) making things for someone else.

I made one focal bead for each set and 10 beads in 5 different patterns and sizes (so that's 11 beads, but I guess that's ok as well - if there is a focal bead it's good that you have even number of beads for each side, right?). I was working with translucent clay which I haven't figured out completely yet... but I was quite pleased with the final result. All beads are sanded and polished.

Still Making Christmas Cards

Hello again. I'm so busy lately and so not in the mood for posting. Not much is going on but it is obvious that the end of the year is approching as days are getting even shorter as they were. Not really shorter, they are just passing by with the speed of light. Mostly what I do is go to work in the morning after having serious troubles with getting up; I don't sleep well and I don't sleep enough so I wake up really tired day after day. Luckily I have fantastic co-workers and those 8+ hours I spend at work are not that hard, although a bit stressful time is starting in our accounting department which will last until mid January when we must have our balance and all the reports prepared. When I get home it's almost night (it gets dark at about 5 pm at this time). Then we usually do few things for school - I still have to help Nina to study, she makes most of her homework as soon as she gets from school so fortunately I don't have to worry about that. We have something to eat, go shopping or visit friends or have someone coming over,... and the day is over. The only thing I had time and will to do in the past two weeks or so was making cards. I never liked making them but since I bought some papers and other stuff it's much more fun. Now I actually love it! Here are some of them (if the slide is not working on your computer, you can see them here as well):

Thanks for stopping by. Sign my guestbook at the top of the page if you have time. Thanks! :)

My First Handmade Book

I am so proud of myself!!! I made my first book today! It's not really big, covers measure 10 x 12 cm and inside pages 10 x 9 cm and it has 24 pages in 4 different colors.

While surfing the web I came accross pics of handmade books and booklest and I just loved them. Today I watched the video on Craft TV Weekly where the demonstrator shows how to prepare back and front cover and put them together, how to stitch pages,... Since I had time I thought I would give it a try. Measuring and cutting paper was quite time consuming as I don't have any special cutters except blade, ruler and measuring plate. The hardest part was cutting the hard cardboard I used for covers, my hands still hurt! Making holes was much easier as I imagined and so was stitching. I wanted to make a coptic stitches at first, but then I figured out it would probably be safer to start with a stitch from that video. I didn't stitch too tightly, I am going to put different pictures and embelishments on the pages later so they will fill the inside of the covers, I guess. Oh, and the center inside part where pages are attached to the cover - that's my idea! I didn't want just glue the last page of the inside papers to the cover, I think this solution is much better. Almost like a real book! :)

It was so good to see how well things are fitting together and that in a few hours of work few ordinary pieces of paper turned into a book! Hmmm, maybe I should quit work and start making books! :))

And of course, here are few pics of you my masterpiece :)!

Cardmaking continues

It seems I got into cardmaking lately. It's probably because I should make beads for a swap and I just can't make the right combination. I guess it's about time I make them... maybe I'll just make another card before I start. :)
Since it is time for Christmas cards I am trying to make something more in that spirit. I have quite some stamps, but of course no stamps with Christmas themes. I just have this Santa, which is rather cute and it will have to do, and a swirly tree which I've used just for stamping on clay so far. My brother just came from New York, I was hoping he is going to get me stamps and punches and some other stuff I wanted... but he couldn't find any craft store there. Oh well, by next year I will have more Christmas stamps and papers, I am sure.

Santa Claus Fest

Sounds interesting!
I hope I have time to do something for this contest, I really like the idea. I should be working on cards and gifts and decorations, but days are passing by so quickly that I don't have much time for such things. Unfortunatelly. It's time to organise my life a bit better. It's weird. I mean, days still have 24 hours - that's the same as years ago. And few years ago I was much more effective as I am now. I had another job and my working time was 2 hours shorter as it is now. And Nina was going to sleep at 7pm while now she is up until 9.30pm usually. Yep, that could be the reason...

Cardmaking

I got few 6x6 BasicGrey paper pads today and I couldn't resist - I just had to try them!

Latest Pendants

This is fun! No more nervous breakdowns because of the pics here on blogger. I don't know for others but I always had problems with loading and then arranging more pics at once. They were all around the site and every time it took me quite some time and patience to put them in order. And then I look at my site on my work computer and pics are not lined up! Now that's over, I'll use Slide more often. Anyway, here are some of my latest pendants... as usually, I gave some away before I could even took pics.

Searching For Hidden Magic Part 2

Few more tries with stamps and clay. I still don't like the colors, except for the red/orange/yellow one. There were few more, but I was too anxious to cut out the shapes and I didn't have time to make pics :). There's one pic of the pieces on the tray before baking though, just for a sneak peek. I have to make some "ordinary" pendats for few gifts so I am sticking with simple forms for now. And I am still warming up, it has been quite some time since my last all-days-just-claying period. Maybe this is the start of a new one, we'll see. Oh, and I tried another thing from new Donna Kato's book (The Art Of Polymer Clay - Creative Surface Effects) - shading with ink pads and stamping on clay. Really nice results and rather simple to do as well. I just haven't figured out yet how to work with transparent clay, so I am not stamping in layers as she shows. I like it all the same.

Searching For Hidden Magic

I've seen a technique called hidden magic on few french sites (Parole De Pate and then links to other sites) and I just had to try it. At first, it looked quite impossible to get some good pattern out of clay but with some practice I got few quite interesting sheets although colors seems horrible. I just used some scrap clay with clay gun to make rolls for the base. Later I will try some more with hopefully better color combination.

You Make Me Smile...

Lovely and talanted Jessica nominated me for You Make Me Smile Award. Woooow!!! That's awsome! Thanks so much Jessica! I'm sooo honored! Please go to her site and check her art, she makes amazing cards and other stuff, plus really fantastic photos. Her art will surely make you smile, too. It makes me smile for sure.

I have to nominate few other people for this award (if you are nominated and read this, pass this award on to others that make you smile), so here we go:

• Isa with her Fimo by IC blog - she makes fantastic polymer clay jewelry and other stuff and I always find inspiration while watching her work. I just love the color combinations and shapes she is using - something I still have to learn.
• Iris Mishly makes me smile with her blog Polymery Online with links to wonderful, useful and inspirational sites of other clay artists. On her blog you can find links to her other blogs, like her flickr album - besides providing tons of links she is also an amazing artist.
• Lunes is the founder of The European PolymerClay People forum. I hope her work and energy she is putting into it will be rewarded soon - with clayers from around the Europe joining there in daily chats, exchanging of ideas and information and showing off their work. You can join too, it's free! Check her homepage to see her lovely work.
• Godelieve with her StampingMathilda blog - I'm sure she doesn't stop by at my blog but I want to give her this reward all the same. I check her blog almost daily and I am amazed every time to see what can be done with paper and stamps. Her work is really fantastic and she posts pics of her new work daily, so there is always a lot to see.

There are quite some blogs and sites I check quite regulary that makes me smile. So, in a way, this reward goes to all of them. Thanks again, Jessica!

International Bead Swap

Swap!!!! I love swaps!!!! Do you??? Wanna join our swap???


I am the host of the first bead swap on EuropeanPolymerclayPeople. If you are a clayer or a bead maker, you are most welcome to join our swap! You can read all the rules and register on the above mentioned forum under Challenge section. Just in brief - register by sending me an email with your nickname and name and postal address), then make 2 beads sets with 10 beads. When the registration time is over (at the end of the month), you will receive 2 postal addresses to which you will send your beads by the end of November. You will get 2 sets of beads in return, by post from 2 different participants. Easy, right? And it's not that hard to make beads! Why don't you try and join us? The more people play, more interesting it can get. So..... welcome!!

Ok, now this is really annoying. My last two posts dissapeared, with few pics of Nina and her friends at her birthday party last week. Also, as I can see, the pics of my ATCs dissapeared as well. What the heck is going on here? I'll post Nina's pics some other day again, I wanted to show you my second "magic" witch wand today. I made one some time ago for a swap and I promised to a friend who was ill at that time that I would make one for her in case she is not able to participate. I made this one some time ago and I am waiting to give it away (which will be this Friday, I think) and I haven't made any pics. Well, I did that today but I have a new cam and I haven't figured out everything yet, so pics are not really good. I think I will have to join a course to learn about photography.
















As usually, when I want to do something, Lin was in the way and was interrupting me all the time. But beside Nina he is obviously my greatest admirer and he likes my work. He also seems to be a good guardian, so this wand is safe beside him.

Just trying something new... I always have problems with loading pics to blogger and arranging them, so maybe this is a better solution.

Few More Things

This week was awful. I'm exhausted. So what am I doing up on Saturday morning at 7 am, when I don't have to go to work and I am home alone??? I have no idea, I just couldn't sleep any longer. This time of the year is just horrible - during the week I get up at 6.30 am and it's still dark. It's soooooo so hard to wake up! Luckily I have some extra hours at work so I can sleep few minutes longer every morning. We will change time at the end of the month and I hope it gets better then.

This week was full of different activities, and most of them didn't include any art creativity. Oh, I did make a clay picture for my dear fellow worker who retired last week. I don't like it, it's too gaudy but it was her wish to have a picture like that. It still needs some finishing and I am not showing it until next week when we have farewell treat for her.

My child will turn 10 next Friday. I just can't believe that, but I know it must be true because we are so busy with getting ready for the sleep over party. Invitations are sent already, 15 kids plus some moms will fill our apartment next week. I have to find some ideas for games or something to keep the kids occupied for some time, otherwise they will just run around and yell all the time.

Few more pics of my "summer" work.

Old Beads - New Necklaces

I have a box full of necklaces and braceletes right now, ready to be sold. I know at least 2 persons were hardly waiting for these pics, so here they are. :)

I made most of these during my summer vacation on Croatian seaside. I just had to use the beads I had and now I almost run out of them. It is time to start making new ones - I still have quite some canes left, but I can make a thing or two with the beads of the same kind and then I get tired of the color and pattern. Cane making is something I really enjoy, so it should not be a problem. Making beads is more time consuming, but that has to be done as well. I have head full of ideas what to make but there is only one problem - days are not long enough for everything I need and would like to do.

Comments are welcome, as always. Have a wonderful day!

More ATCs

Hello again,

I have been quite ill for past few days... well, almost a week. I had a virosis and this has been the most terrible version of virosis as far as I can remember. I haven't felt so bad in ages. I really should eat more vitamins and healthy food in general.

Before I got ill I finished few more ATCs. Here are the pics of the past and recent ones.

Here are my first 3 ATCs ever. Please don't laugh (although it makes me laugh every time I see them) :).














I saw pics of these girls on the internet. Again, I don't remember who the author was, I think they were drawn to fabric bags. I like them and copied them, drawing while watching the pics on the screen. The water color part for finish turned out prety well, I am rather pleased with the result. I guess I am not giving them away since the idea is stolen from someone else.









And few more, just the way I like them. At least most of them :). You can read about pics and stamps and such in previous post.