I get these wild hairs sometimes, and have to work on something a little different!  You’ll have to wait a bit longer to see what they will turn out to be.  LOL

I’m so excited that my first seahorse went so quickly!  And I think he’s pretty cute, if I do say so myself.  LOL. Now, seahorse #2 is getting started!  Yay!!!
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This is what my work space looks like tonight. I’ve been busy making fun, whimsical paintings lately. I did 4 with snails, and today I started one with a sea horse! My oldest daughter put in a request for several different sea horse scenes, and I am excited to do them all!

The snails are done in acrylics, but I’m doing this one in watercolor pencils. This has a softer, lighter look than the acrylics did, although, I suppose I could get that look with acrylics, too, but I prefer the bold, bright colors that the acrylics have!

Tonight, I am using watercolor pencils, and some pearlescent watercolors. They are quite fun, because they add another dimension to your painting!

For the snail paintings, I used canvas paper with the acrylics, but tonight, I’m using watercolor paper.  I like the texture of both, but I can’t paint with watercolors on the canvas paper.  They don’t work right on it, so I’m using the paper specifically for watercolors.  You’ll be able to see the difference when I show you photos of both.  They are both nice, but they have their own special traits!

If you’d like to see the snails, I have put them in my shop on Zazzle, so you can go there to see them!  The ones below are my favorites!  You can click on either of them to go to the site, then you should see where to click to look at other designs.    Of course, if you wanna buy something while you’re there, it won’t hurt my feelings any! 

Snailopatra Greeting Card by wvclaylady
More Snail Cards

The One That Got Away Greeting Card by wvclaylady
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I just wanted to pop in and show you what I’m working on today!

What are you working on?  Leave your WIP link below!

My morels are now on Etsy!!!  Come on over to my shop and check out all my shrooms!

I’ve been working on some more mushrooms to put on Etsy.  Morels this time!  Gonna have them posted shortly!

I have been working all day on some Halloween items, and have had to stop several times to condition clay. I don’t know if it’s the white Premo, or if this block is old, but it is sooo hard. Even after I’ve worked it for quite a long time, it still seems to be somewhat brittle. So, I’m trying adding some Sculpey to it, because it’s much softer. It does seem to be helping. I don’t usually use Sculpey, because it’s too soft to hold the detail that I usually work in. A touch, though, in this really stiff clay, makes it just soft enough that it’s not cracking easily.

I’ve been getting in the “holiday spirit”, so to speak, by listening to Halloween radio (http://www.neverendingwonder.com/halloween.htm), while I work on some ghoulish ornaments for Halloween Trees, or just hanging around anywhere! I plan on painting them, so I’m just working with white clay. I’ll try to get some pictures of them posted soon! And when they’re done, I’ll post them on my Artfire shop! The link is to the right, but I’ll include it in the post when they’re ready.

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• MAKE’s Halloween contest (boingboing.net)

Silly me, forgot to post about my finished morel mushrooms.  LOL  Ah well, that’s par for the course for me.  I’d forget my head, if it weren’t attached.

So, yeah, I got them finished!!!  And, I even got them made into jewelry, can you believe it?  I posted them on my Artfire page, but I’ll show you the pics here, too!  Here is my Artfire link.

Hi!  Thanks for stopping in today!

My last post showed how I tried to use rock salt to add texture to my morels.  That experiment failed.  The salt just didn’t make the right shapes.  I know, I’m too particular.  LOL

I thought and thought, and couldn’t come up with any other solution other than just (very carefully) sculpting the holes one by one.  Let me tell you, it got a little bit tedious.  But, I think they turned out pretty good!

In case you don’t know what a morel mushroom looks like, here is an example.

Those dark areas are holes and crevices.  I was trying to create a fairly realistic representation.  Below are the pictures of the the two pendant sized, and two earring set sized sculpts.  I’m curious to know what you think.  I haven’t added the matte varnish yet.  Creative criticism is welcome!  Do I need to keep working?  Do they need a tweak?  Or, are they ready for prime time?

This is what they looked like before I baked them.

This is Set 1 after they’ve been baked and stained.

This is Set 2 after they’ve been baked and stained.

They look huge in these pictures, but they are about 1 inch for the small ones, and 2 inches for the big ones.

So, tell me what you think! Are they ready to make into jewelry (after varnishing)?

A while back, I decided I wanted to try sculpting small morel mushrooms.  I thought they would make really neat jewelry.  I did pretty well on one size, but when I tried a smaller version, it turned out much more difficult.  Here is a photo of the larger version.  (You can click the photos to get larger versions.)

Since I had such trouble with the small ones, I thought it would be a great idea to have some sort of texture sheet that I could press them in to get the holes.  The best thing I could think of was to use course salt.  Actually, someone gave me the idea.  And it seemed like a good one!  But, it just didn’t work out the way I had hoped.  It was not a lost venture, though, as it still turned out a good texture sheet.  Just not for what I had intended.

The first thing I learned is that “course salt” on the package does not always mean “course” salt.

Here, I took some scrap polymer clay, pressed salt into it, and then added some liquid clay, so the salt would stay put. The upper piece has the small pieces, and the lower has larger pieces that I picked out.

This is what they looked like after baking.

So, even though I’ll have to make my mushrooms the hard way, this experiment did turn out a pretty cool texture!