I'M SO EXCITED, I JUST CAN'T HIDE IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

This Wednesday 25 people from the Arizona Clay Guild are going to Prescott, AZ for a 4 day retreat.

This is the building we will be spending 12 hours a day in doing polymer clay.  This is my 5th year of attending camp and it gets better every year.  We have demos, exchange gifts, share techniques, the food is wonderful and we have lots of snacks.  I packed 100 packages of clay today.  I plan to make as many different kinds of canes as I can.  I'll post them when I get back.

Every person going to camp is donating an item to what we call "Goody Bags".  I guess I can show you what I made now since it's only one day away.

These are polymer clay magnet sticks.  There is a heavy duty magnet on each end.  I use mine all the time for picking up my clay blades (I drop them a lot and they are hard to pick up from the floor) or to hold the blade while you are working.  These can also be used to hold metal pieces when you are making jewelry.  It will stick to your pasta machine and the blade can be held there.  My husband actually designed this.  He has one in the garage for picking up screws and little things that he drops.

If you want to see some great gifts check out my friend Lupe's blog  http://gesmpccorner.blogspot.com/.  Her spice jars are gorgeous and she's saving one for me with a cat on it.

Hope all my stuff fits in the car.  Every year I say I'm not going to bring as much and I still do.

This was last year.

I have 3 less bags this year.  I'M SO EXCITED.

FLOWER CANES ON CLAY DAY

My friends have been after me to show them how to make flower canes.  We get together in my studio at least once a month for about 7 hours and do clay.  We do break for lunch.  Today was our clay day so we did flower canes all day.  I have my own way of packing a flower cane and I might write up a tutorial for it but I haven't decided yet.  They were so happy because thier canes turned out great and they loved the new packing method.  I've done some with translucent clay but found that if you don't cover what ever color is on the outside (especially black) it leaches into the translucent.  Today we covered the outer edge with white before we did translucent but I did my canes in black.  I used Premo and my clay was kind of soft.  I should have leached it between paper before using it but didn't take the time.  Here are the pictures from today's clay day.

This is my finished cane with the black packing.



This is a Natasha bead that I made with the scraps of everyone's flower cane.  Not baked, sanded or buffed yet.



Love this cane, Evelyn has a knack with colors even though her eyesight is so bad.  She has macular degeneration and is having a really bad time with it.

We try to help her as much as we can but she gets very frustrated.  I don't know what I would do if that happened to me.............................