MERRY CHRISTMAS AND MICA SHIFT

Tomorrow is ANOTHER Christmas luncheon.  Our golf league is going to an "assisted living" place for our golf lunch.  Now that may sound peculiar and last year when I went I was anticipating a really bad lunch in a crummy place with a bunch of elderly people.  Well let me tell you what a surprise I had.  It was like walking into a "Winter Wonderland".  The place was decorated like the Ritz Carlton and we had the restaurant all to ourselves.  I was trying to find a picture of the place that I took without people in it but I didn't have one.  I'll take some tomorrow and post them.  Anyway, the food was incredible.  It was like eating in a 5 star restaurant.  The chef came out to make sure our meals were ok and to see if we needed anything.  I've never been to a luncheon where the food and service was that great.  I'm looking forward to lunch tomorrow.

I offered to make something as a door prize.  I had a pendant that I decided to make a necklace for and after I got the necklace made, I decided I didn't like the pendant so I hustled and made another pendant.

The necklace is done in Herringbone with silver size 11 seed beads.  Every inch I added some auora borealis Czech beads and some size 11 red seed beads.  The original pendant had a little red in it.  This pendant was done in silver metalic and has 2 layers of UV resin on.  In person you can see the mica shift in it but it didn't show up as well in the picture.  I'm sure who ever wins it will love it, I'm having a hard time parting with it.

NEW POLYMER CLAY BOOK

I received a new book from Amazon yesterday.  It's called "Making Jewlery from Polymer Clay" by Sophie Arzalier.  I saw it on the International Polymer Clay Guild's letter and it looked interesting when I checked it out at Amazon.  I'm really impressed.  The photograhs and directions are really great.  She covers basic techniques, effects using textures, canes, Mokume Gane, etc.  I would definitely recommend this book to new clayers and advanced clayers.  I collect books, especially polymer clay and beading books.  Since I started teaching polymer clay, I spend at least 2 hours a day reading and researching information about polymer clay (actually I'm just obsessed).  Sometimes it's more than 2 hours.  I thought I had seen or read about almost all techniques and different ways of doing clay.  This book has a few things I haven't seen before.  I think I'm going to order a few more copies and give them as gifts.

This is her website: http://cristalline.blogspot.com/

PARTY, PARTY, PARTY

This Friday is our BFF party here.  We are going to do clay and have a nice lunch and exchange handmade gifts.  Booboo loves it when the girls come over.  They pay a lot of attention to him and he gets petted a lot.

Who wouldn't love this adorable little yarn holder? LOL



CHOCOLATE WHAT CHOCOLATE

I AM A CHOCOHOLIC AND ALL MY FRIENDS KNOW IT.

My friend Evelyn bought me this shirt the other day and said "It's Perfect".  Yes it is.  I have a cat who loves to eat and I love chocolate and here's the perfect shirt.

SPEAKING OF CAT

I got my new camera last week and I absolutely love it.  When I was trying to learn how to use it I told Booboo he needed to pose for me so I could take his picture.  He walked over, looked up and smiled until I snapped the picture but at least he still sat there.

Now you know why I get all these cat gifts.

Did you notice the writing on the pictures?  My friend Lupe told me about Picasa which is a free download from google that you can use to fix your pictures.  You can crop, add light, write on them, put a watermark on them and do all kinds of fun stuff.  I love it.  Thank's Lupe.  Now I can quit moaning about my camera and pictures.

NDEBELE (HERRINGBONE) STITCH

I love doing Ndebele ropes to go with my polymer clay focal beads.  I normally do a 4 bead rope which goes pretty fast.  I've done them with Delica beads and size 11 seed beads.  My favorite herringbone is the twisted herringbone.  I found a swirly lentil bead that I had done with some left over clay and wasn't sure what I wanted to do with it.  Last night I finished it and today put the toggle on it.  I love these toggles.  If they accidentally slide to the front, it doesn't matter because they are so decorative.  I'm thinking about giving this away on my blog but haven't decided yet.  Let me know if you would like this.

I showed it to my husband and he said I should have put some copper or brown beads in it too so it would match the pendant.  He's the guy who can't match shirt and pants most days.  Guess I better check with him next time to make sure the colors are good.  LOL.

That's it for today folks.  I'm off to beading club and then coming home to do clay.  Next week my clay guild is going up to Prescott, AZ for 4 days to do clay.  We are staying at a camp that is suppose to have wonderful food and CHOCOLATE.  Sounds like another 5 pounds to me but at least I'll learn a lot of new things, get to laugh for 4 days and spend time with a lot of wonderfully talented people.

Ok, here we go again. A friend gave me a box with some rods in them and I brought the box home and put it on the floor and before I had a chance to get the rest of the stuff out of the car, he was in the box and started sneezing non-stop. My girl friend has 4 cats that were playing with the box before she brought it over. Ok, enough Booboo, back to creating.