purpleluggage

I'm started a series on my Facebook page today. Hopefully the tips I can offer can help some of you guys. --and hopefully can keep this up :) If you have suggestions or questions, just leave me a comment below. 

Lately I've been feeling bored because all I've been making are flowers-- and I'm not even a girly-flower-wearing person. They're all made-to-order stuff made in different color schemes as my previous works and that just takes away the fun in making things. It's like running on auto-pilot, which is nice sometimes when you don't want to think about what you're doing, but I miss kinda miss the giddy feeling that makes my hands shake. Sure, these flowers brought attention to my page and what I do. I got some mileage from them especially when my lockets were featured in The polymer arts (right next to a piece by once of my all time favorite artists Kathleen Dustin. Color me STARSTRUCK!), and then I had several people asking me to make a tutorial about my flowers. I was a good ride, but you know what they say about good things. I even took a pottery class (a future post, maybe?)  thinking it might turn on a magic switch in my brain and make me create like crazy i

Seeing as I have't posted much of the things I've made lately here's a compilation of my favorite recent works. A personalized cake server and knife set and a couple of champagne flutes all in a pretty carnation pink palette. This photo is from Diane, a client who also asked for a  custom cake server and knife set for her beautiful wedding. A playful lock and key I made for our guild's  "Sweet Pairings" March challenge some new "experimental" flowers dainty pink flowers and a monogrammed heart for a wedding pretty and colorful custom hair combs and clip on earrings for a chorale black and white flowers.. so pretty! i loved the tulle and bead center  my sister made for them. a Stroppel jellyroll in the works. I just LOVE making these.  They're useful, versatile and I get to use all the "stale" canes I have in my cane drawer. Some new lockets HAPPY SUMMER!

hey, there! I made a short video about how I make my funky ladies. watch it below :) hope you guys like it!

An artist friend recently told me about a thread she read online which, in a nutshell, said that unlike other crafters, polymer clay artists are madamot  in sharing their techniques. There were some good points raised on that thread and I wish I was a member of that group so I could have participated in the discussion, but since I'm not I'm having my say here. Share your thoughts in the comments below.. i don't bite :) People who know me know that when I began working with polymer clay it was at a time when the Internet was still a magical place few men have gone. We had a computer but what it really was was an electronic typewriter (remember DOS?). Craft books, tools and supplies were hard to come by unless you had generous and thoughtful relatives abroad. Forget about e-books. What I had was a bag of clay samples, a little slip of paper with baking instructions, my hands, my imagination and my eagerness to learn. This makes me sound so old, but I did start roughly 20