ANNIE AND BEAU - TINA CREATED A MONSTER

Want to thank you all for your prayers for Annie.  She's doing good and started eating and drinking and taking her medicine.  She will have surgery as soon as the infection is gone and she's a little stronger.  I have some great pictures that her dad sent over.

Nothing cuter than a sleeping puppy except a sleeping cat.  Just kidding Rex.

This is Annie and her big brother Beau out getting some vitamin D in the beautiful Arizona sun.  He's quite a guy.  He looks after her and brings her treats and toys.  When Beau sees me in my golf cart he jumps in and wraps himself around me.  He's a great dog.  I told my husband I wanted a dog and he said we would have to build a casita.  I told him I hoped he liked it out there.  Ha ha ha.

Here's my other buddy Scooter.  He's standing by a cactus in his back yard that had 72 blooms on it.  Is that beautfiul or what.  This time of year in Arizona the cacti bloom and the flowers only last one day which is sad because they are so beautiful.  Scooter is a snowbird and will be going back to Illinois sometime this week.  I'll really miss him.  He smiles when he sees me.  He's a good dog.

TINA CREATED A MONSTER

OK, Tina Holden created a MONSTER.

About a week or two ago I bought Tina Holden's http://beadcomber.blogspot.com/p/batik-tutorial.html tutorial called Batik and Shimmer and that's all I've done for 5 days.  I tweak a few things each time I do it to see what I come up with and every time I do it I love it more and more and I have all these beautiful pieces and I don't think I'm going to be able to part with them.

I sent Tina an email last night and asked if there was a meeting like AA where I could go so I could stop doing this.  I need a 12 step program for sure.  The only thing I can tell you is that it uses Magic-Glos so I get a lot of exercise running out to the patio to put my pieces in the sun.  I have one of those little UV lights but I don't like it.

This is my latest batch and now I have another one in the oven.  I'm going to need a 10 gallon drum of Magic-Glos which means I'll have to get a job to pay for the Magic-Glos which means I won't have time to do clay.  What a dilema.

Anyway, I think you all should buy Tina's tutorial because that will mean there will be meetings everywhere for those of us who can't stop doing this.  Even my husband said they were awesome and he was glad to see I was finally getting some exercise.  LOL

Goodnight Annie, Goodnight Beau, Goodnight Scooter, Goodnight Booboo, Goodnight Grandma

CLAY DAY IN ARIZONA

Today was a very special day for me.  My friends Judy, Rose and Evelyn came over for 6 hours and we played with clay.  We did take time for lunch but not much.  Evelyn made a shrimp salad, Judy brought the bread, Rose brought donuts and my husband made a buttermilk chess pie for us for desert.  I will probably have to borrow my husbands pants tomorrow after eating all that today.

Anyway,  I am lucky to have a big enough studio/office that four of us can fit into and do clay.  We like to share new techniques with each other.  Things that we've read about or seen on youtube.  We also share other things, like today, Rose ordered hollow acrylic rollers for all of us, Judy bought some brass stencil plates for us to use and Evelyn gave us all a package of texture sheets.  We usually meet at least once a month and everyone has an idea of what they would like to try.  Today, I showed them how to do what we call a Lynne cane.  They all came out different.  We also did another technique from a tutorial that I purchased from Rivervalley at http://www.claylessons.com/rivervalley.  It's really fun. 

This is the piece that Judy made.

This was the raw clay it was made from.

This is the piece Evelyn made.

This is the raw clay it was made from.

This is the raw clay that Rose made and I forgot to take a picture of her finished piece.

These are my finished pieces that I did yesterday and again tryng to use the stamp pads to give things color.  Won't do that on baked clay again as you can see by the piece with the blue on it.

GIRLFRIENDS

They told me today that I could post their pictures so here they are.

This is Judy, she just started doing clay about 8 months ago and she's hooked.  YIPEE.  As you can see from the photos above, Judy is quite talented.

This is Rose, she's sweet and cute and makes us laugh and she does great clay.

Last but not least is Evelyn.  She's our green and brown and gold girl.  She's also our cook and baker and people are in awe when they see her pendants.  Someone asked me yesterday what kind of stone she used when making a necklace and I told them it was "Polymer".  They were stunned.

OK, this has been a long blog, sorry, I'm still wound up and the funny thing is Booboo spent the whole day in the studio with us and he slept right through it.