Goodbye Cody

A couple months ago I got an email from a woman on facebook telling me she is my cousins daughter.  I lost track of these cousins about 40 years ago.  Her father died last summer and she had been in touch with her uncle and found my name on facebook.  We have been communicating ever since and catching up on family stuff.  She had 4 big dogs and one of them was Cody.

 

She had him for 13 years and he was her best friend.  He got very sick and died about 3 weeks ago.  She asked me if I could make her a blue bracelet because he always wore a blue collar and she wanted something to remember him by.

 

 

The bracelet is Kumihimo and the heart is polymer clay.  I stamped Cody in the clay and then antiqued it.  I finished it buy putting Future on it and rebaking it.  Good thing she has 3 little kids to keep her busy.

 

BUSTER

 

Yesterday I was going to wash Buster's lamb that makes noise but every time I went to get it, this is what he did.

 

 

How cute is that?  He's had that since he was 3 months old and if I talk on the cell phone he throws Lambie on the floor.  I am well trained.

 

BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP

Last Tuesday my husband told me that one of our phones was off the hook because he heard beeping.  I checked them all and nothing was wrong.  6 hours later he said I should check the alarm clocks and my cell phone because he could hear the beeping again.  6 hours later he asked me to check the phones again.  By Tuesday night I was totally nuts because I never heard any beeping.  Wednesday morning I was in the shower and he came running in yelling that it was his pacemaker that was beeping.  I told him to call the doctor and they said be there in 20 minutes.  You've never seen anyone get dressed that fast.  They turned the beeper off, sent him to a heart surgeon and 2 days later he was in the hospital getting a new pacemaker.  He's doing really good but has a big lump on his chest and it's all black and blue.  He's not suppose to use an air hammer, jack hammer or stand in the doors at Wal-Mart.  Had a lot of people praying for him and I want to thank you all.

LOVE OF BEADS AND CLAY

For those of you who have the same disease I do, don't feel guilty about it.  After I retired and moved to Arizona I spent so much time cleaning house it was obsessive.  When I worked, I could only  clean on weekends.  Then I watched Carol Duval and decided I wanted to do polymer clay and beading.  Now I have to schedule the laundry, vacuuming and ironing.  LOL

Every time my husband comes in my craft room he looks around and says "boy, you have a lot of stuff".  Geez, I've been doing this for 10 years, didn't he see me come home with all this "stuff"?  I'm ranting.

I have about 200,000 megatamas and an order for lots of bracelets from a friend back in Illinois.

This is the bracelet I made for my sister, this is also Kumihimo.

 

When I get the other pictures done I'll post them.  Camera's and I don't get along very well lately.

 

 

Who Invented Earrings?

A few posts ago I told you all about a friend of mine who lives in Wisconsin in a nursing home.  She turned 98 last Saturday and still remembers the first purse she bought and who she worked for.

Being a classy lady, she liked having jewelry that matched what she was wearing.  She would tell me when she got a new top and I would make 2 or 3 pair of earrings to go with her top.  She always got compliments on her earrings so she asked me one day if I would make some earrings and send them to her to see if she could sell them.  That was 2 years ago.  So far she has sold 300 pair of earrings.  She worked in retail all her life so this is right up her alley.  I call it "Jane's Boutique".  In the past 3 days I've made 40 pairs of earrings.  I'm tired, my butts tired, my hands are tired, my brain is tired and I think the cat is even tired.  I didn't do any polymer or beaded earrings this time.

This is just a few of the many.  I think I'm going to go have a glass of wine.  You probably noticed the silver and gold pointed bead caps on most of the earrings.  My friends had a bead store and went out of business and I told them I would buy what ever they had left.  2000 of each was the last count, should last me a while.  They dress up the earring and the beads.  I love them.

I'm so glad these are done, now I can get back to clay and Kumihimo.

Clay Day Clay Class

I belong to a beading club and we have 160 members.  About 5 years ago I did a beginner's class in polymer clay and we now have about 20 people doing polymer.  Most of them know more than I do but we all do the same thing different if that makes any sense.

We usually get together the first Wednesday of the month to do clay and sometimes more often than that.  Some of the new girls are buying books and finding things in them that they want to try.  Yesterday they wanted to do the Chrysanthemum Cane from the Polymer Clay Art book.

 

That's the cane on the top and the heart on the left.

 

Everyone did their own version which was really neat.

  I wish I had more pictures but I kept getting caught up and set the camera down.  I love these ladies.  They are so generous and so much fun. 

 

This was my cane.  In the top picture the heart has not been baked yet.  I covered a ball of black scrap clay that had silver and some other colors in it.  I formed a heart out of it but didn't like the heart so I flattened it out and cut this heart out.  The bottom one has been sanded and buffed.  I really like it.

 

This is a Natasha bead made from the left over clay that I used for a couple canes and the Chrysanthemum cane.  I see an Indian with a head dress.  Tell me what you see.

 

This is the end of a cane that I made.  I think this is upside down.  Can you stand on your head to look at this?  It's been sanded and buffed also and it's really shiny but I didn't wait for the sun to come up to take the picture.  So now I probably have 200 Natasha bead pendants.

 

It's like chocolate, I just can't stop.

 

 

 

Marilyn Monroe

A few years ago my sister joined a group that put on a show every two years.  They dance and sing and lip sync and they call themselves "The Greasers".  All the money goes to charity and they have a really good time rehearsing and doing the show.

My sister is very small and does a Marilyn Monroe character that is unbelievable.  Her friends have had her come to birthday parties and do her Marilyn Monroe song that she did for the president when it was his birthday.  She's really great.  She even has a Marilyn wig and gown and long gloves.  Anyway, when I see something Marilyn, I try to get it for my sister.  On one of the hundred bead store emails that I get every day they had Marilyn Monroe toggles for bracelets so I made a bracelet for Susie and put it in the mail today.

 

Hope she likes it.

 

 

 

This went out in the mail today too.  I lost track of one of my favorite cousins a long time ago.  Thanks to facebook, his brother found me and so did my cousins daughter. Unfortunately, my cousin died not too long ago and he was only a year older than I was.  I'm really happy about having his daughter in my life though. We have been emailing and catching up on family.  She lives in Virginia and has 3 small babies and always likes the stuff I make that I put on facebook so I made her a bracelet.  It's Kumihimo, size 6 beads.  I need to find more of those little hearts, I really like them on the bracelets.

 

Time to get back to polymer but I've got the BEADING thing biting me.  Might be the time of year.

 

Now I have to get back to getting the taxes done.  Wish me luck.