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

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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Please join me in Follow Friday blog hop!

And, if you’re over 40, please join me on this Follow Friday, also!

I would like to share a new blog that I recently discovered.  Well, it’s not new, but it’s new to me!  LOL  It’s called Paisley Passions (click the button above), and it’s chock full of crafts, home decorating ideas, mommy stuff, fellowship with other bloggers, and more!  I think you’d be hard pressed not to find something that interests you.

I just love that she hosts weekly Linky Parties and Blog Hops!  If you don’t know what these are, the best I can say is they are a fun way for bloggers to have fellowship.  Sometimes they are themed, and sometimes not.  But one person hosts it, and others leave a link to their own blog post.  Then that person can copy some code to their own post and Voila! they have the growing list on their post, too!  If you’ve never seen one, it may sound a little confusing, but it’s quite simple, and lots of fun!

Now, Paisley Passions has their own idea of what each one is.  That didn’t sound right.  LOL  It’s not that she has some crazy idea of what they mean, it’s just that she is very clear about which is which, and how they are separate.  :-)  The Linky Parties are craft and creation related, and the Blog Hops seem to be about everything else.  Or rather, anything that’s not craft/creation themed.  She has a page dedicated to each one, so you can visit them, and get a better idea!  So, go pay her a visit, and have fun perusing!

I sometimes do Linkies or Blog Hops here on my site, too, so if that interests you, check back from time to time or watch on Facebook or Twitter for updates!

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.

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!

Hi there!  Thank you so much for stopping by!  This is a brand new site for me, so it’s pretty empty, but I will be filling it up as time goes by.

I’m a wife, mom, and artist, just to name a few things.  LOL  I will be sharing news on projects I’m working on, links where you can buy them, and tidbits about what’s going on at home.  I’ll also be talking about online friends, sites I like, and things I find interesting.  I hope you’ll find all this interesting, as well!

As for my art, I make things with polymer clay.  Usually it’s Art Dolls, but sometimes I make jewelry or small sculptures.  I really LOVE Art Dolls!  Not just my own, but lots of others made by some really wonderful artists!  I follow lots of blogs by doll artists, other artists, not to mention moms and other great folks.  What can I say, I love reading blogs!

As you might have guessed, I live in West Virginia.  I was born here, and I figure I’ll die here.  To me, it’s a beautiful place and the people are known to be some of the friendliest around!  Wild, Wonderful West Virginia is our motto, and it really describes this state very well.  It seems like Country Roads by John Denver is our unofficial state song, because most of our inhabitants feel the same as the lyrics.  “Country roads take me home to the place I belong, West Virginia, mountain mama, take me home country roads.”

And now that you have that song stuck in your head, I’ll leave you, and talk to you again soon!

Shannon

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