I THINK I LOST MY BUTTONS

I didn't really lose them, I mailed them away to a sweet little girl.  My sister's niece makes adorable knit and crocheted hats for babies and adults.  She also makes ear warmers and scarves.  She's going to be opening an Etsy shop in September as soon as she gets her inventory up.  She uses buttons for some of the hats and the scarves and I thought it would be nice if she had some hand made polymer clay buttons.  I wanted to get them to her as fast as possible so I worked furiously to get a couple batches done.

I made a few shank buttons but most of them are textured or molded with two holes.  If you want to make your own buttons and you aren't sure how to do it or how to finish them, Carolyn Good of 2 Good Claymates has a tutorial on Etsy on how to make buttons.   It's an excellent tutorial and she takes you step by step.HERE  I like Carolyn's tutorials because they are precise and clear.  I have been making buttons from polymer clay for 10 years but I bought her tutorial to find out how she finishes her beautiful buttons.

About 8 years ago our guild had a button exchange.  I went a little over board and I made about 200 buttons.

These are from our button exchange and I sold 50 to lady who's daughter made sewn purses.  She really liked the big ones.

The woman I sent the buttons to has a 3 year old baby that was born with a tumor on the back of her neck and has no use of her left arm.  She has to be on oxygen constantly.  My friend had to quit her job to take care of the baby because of all the specialized care the baby requires.  She is the cutest baby you have ever seen.  I hope her shop does really well and I will provide a link when it's up and running.  Here is a link to her facebook page so you can see all the cute things she makes. Yinky Winks.


Have a good Friendship Day, and make sure you remember your friends with a nice email.

SUPRISE SPOTLIGHT AND MY FURRY FRIENDS

I was really surprised this morning when I turned the computer on and there was a Cindy Lietz email with pictures of my buttons and one of my golf stroke counters.  She is spotlighting some of the work of the people who belong to her website and there were my glow in the dark buttons and antique looking buttons and my red, white and blue buttons and the golf stroke counter that I made from her flower cane tutorial.  That was really nice.  If you want to see the pictures and all the wonderful comments you can see it here at;
http://www.beadsandbeading.com/blog/ .  Here are pictures of the buttons up close and the bead stroke counter that I made with the flower cane that Cindy did the tutorial on.

This is the golf stroke counter made with the extruded flower cane.

SCOOTER, BEAU AND ANNIE

It's been a long time since I had some pictures of my friends Scooter, Beau and Annie posted on here.  I got to spend Sunday night with them.  Annie had a little red hat on and a cherry dress but I missed that picture.  But here are my buddies:

ANNIE

EXTRUDED FLOWER CANE BEADS

I needed to make some more beads for golf stroke counters and I really like Studio by Sculpey clay so I thought I would try it.  It wouldn't condition enough to go through the extruder correctly but I did get a nice outer pattern so I used that to make beads and then I added some pearl to the colors that I was using and it went through the extruder perfectly.  I haven't bake these yet because my sister is here and it's taking me two days to make beads :0).  I tried last night after we had our wine and we laughed so much I couldn't make beads but this is what I have so far:

Want to thank everyone on Cindy's blog for all the nice comments and support about the spotlight.

BUTTONS, BUTTONS, I THINK I'VE LOST MY BUTTONS

Next Saturday the Arizona Polymer Clay Guild will be having their button exchange.  We had to make 4 sets of buttons for 15 people, since I can multiply a little I know that's 60 buttons.  Who in their right mind needs 60 buttons.  Apparently I do because I signed up to do the button exchange.  I wasn't going to post pictures of my buttons until after the exchange but I'm so tired of working on buttons, I don't even care anymore.  Some of my buttons glow in the dark,

Some of my buttons are reversible, some look like old wood, some look like cookies and some are just butterflies.  I made a set of buttons from a cane that I made and I loved the cane but didn't like the buttons when they were done.  I've been doing these buttons so long, I'm getting too critical.  I need to finish putting them on cards and put them away until next Saturday.

This is a picture of one set of my friend Judy's buttons.  She was smarter than I was.  She made 15 sets of different buttons so there is no question about which buttons to put together.  My friend Evelyn did the same thing and so did Rose.

Wickenburg Gold Rush Days

I'm moving on to another subject. 

Today we went to Wickenburg, AZ to see the parade which was very good.  After the parade we went to the Arts and Crafts area.  The first booth was a lady doing wire wrapping.  She was wrapping some dichroic pendants that were ok but nothing special.  I asked her some questions about her wire wrapping and her dichroic.  I asked her if she had ever done polymer clay.  In a very loud voice she said "I would never do that crap it's for 6 year olds and it looks like crap and any 6 year old can do that".  I just happen to have been wearing this:

I also had some polymer clay earrings and a bracelet on.  When she got done being stupid and loud, I told her I taught polymer clay and did wire wrapping.  Then she started yelling that she didn't have time to get into other things that she was really busy BLAH BLAH BLAH.  At that time my husband grabbed me by the back of the collar and dragged me away.  She apparently didn't want to sell anything.  It didn't matter, there were 60 other jewelry vendors out there anyway.

This is the Pink Breast Cancer Fire Truck. 

A group of fire fighters from Glendale, Arizona have been driving this pink fire truck across the country to raise awareness for breast cancer.

In the last month they've visited 22 states and over 7,000 breast cancer survivors have signed the truck.
They say their goal is to show support for women everywhere.

"We as men on this truck are funding this ourselves, we have no sponsors, we aren't affiliated with any organizations," said Dave Graybill, a firefighter from Glendale. "We're asking all men out there whether you have been affected by cancer or not to take a stand and support the women in your communities."

The firefighters are asking local fire departments to wear pink on October 25th, 26th and 27th and organize their own local fundraisers to support breast cancer.
October is breast cancer awareness month.

This was so neat, I hope they get a lot of funding and support where ever they go.

This was one of my favorite parts of the parade today.  Her name is Annabelle and she is a miniature cow.  She was adorable.  It was a great parade, lots of horses, kids, old women doing splits in the street????? and a lot of people cleaning up horse poop.  Some days that sounds like a good job.

If I ever get these buttons done, I'm going to start working on the pieces I made in Tory Hughe's class last weekend.  Can't wait to get my studio back.  Now I remember what it was like when I use to work in a cubicle except I didn't have a cat bothering me all the time and I wasn't so close to the refrigerator.  LOL.