Amanda’s Musings

I have entered a couple of challenges for July and thought I’d show you what I’ve entered.

Firstly, I have entered the Polymer Clay Artists Guild of Etsy July Challenge where the theme is memories of summer. This is my entry:

As we have around 20 rose bushes out the front of our house, roses are the fragrance of summer for me. I was going to try something completely different to do with Christmas in Australia (I think all the other entries come from the USA) but it just wasn’t working. I’m glad this came together ok. You will be able to view all the entries for the challenge and vote at the pcagoe website (clicky there) from the 26th July. This is for sale in my etsy store here.

The second Challenge I’ve entered is for the Art Bead Scene blog with the theme of Mermaid’s Grotto. Now, to be honest, I’m REALLY not into mermaids so I’ve pretty much avoided them for this but I have focussed more on the ocean. So, here’s my entry:

This necklace was designed using the image of collecting things from the beach and stringing them. Of course I have used very different items than those found on the beach but the casual charm of the beachy lifestyle can be seen here alongside beautiful elegance. This is for sale in my etsy store here.

While in Sydney at the Etsy D.U.S.T get together I met Suki from Tamptation.etsy.com. She has a gorgeous store with beautiful items and we’ve been chatting via email ever since.

Last week Suki offered to turn one of my sketches of pattern from my moleskine into a stamp, what’s more, she did it as a gift. She has done a blog post where you can see the amazing job she did and the effectiveness of the pattern. You can read it here.

This is the doodle I did in my moleskine:

Please go over to Suki’s blog and take a look at the stamp she made for me, its worth the trip! As soon as I receive it in the post I’ll be sure to put a picture up on here too.

Thank you Suki, you’re amazing!

WW Link

We have a little rabbit out the back called Alphie. Actually he’s a big rabbit. Kez comes out to feed him with me and she has such a great time doing it. She loves to carry the food out (and has tried it herself! Yuck) and the other day she even offered Alphie an orange by shoving it towards him and saying ‘Yum, Yum, Yum’. I thought I’d share some photos of this which I downloaded off the camera today. So cute!

I was looking at our Baptist newspaper The Advocate online tonight when I saw that they had rerun our free ad for SIM. I had put this in several months ago so they must have kept on running it! This is the ad:

I have finally decided to bite the bullet and open a store at the new Aussie online handmade site called Mintd (pronounced Minted I think). I had a free account there for a while but could only list three items. Now that I’ve paid for an account I can list 10. So, in case you were wanting another place to purchase my polymer clay items from, the link to my shop is here:

Polyclarific on Mintd

The main advantage of this store is that like my Wahmania store, its in Aussie dollars. It also has a currency converter for those who aren’t familiar with our currency.

So, as a summary of where you can buy my items from:

1. Polyclarific on Etsy - currently has the largest range of 76 items and climing. I have no limit here for listing so this is where you can view most of the items. If you see something on there but would like the price in Aussie dollars, contact me on polyclarific@oddsocks.net

2. Polyclarific on wahmania - this range will slowly be more for children as the focus of wahmania is more for babies and kids. I do have some Adult jewellery on there too. Also in Aussie dollars, no currency converter though.

3. Polyclarific on Mintd - 10 items similar to those in the other two stores but in Aussie dollars with a converter.

You can also view a lot of my items, listed, sold and not for sale on my flickr if you’re looking for ideas. My flickr is here.

To finish this post, heres a couple of recently listed items and where you can find them for sale:

Saddle Em up Necklace - found in my Etsy store. I also have matching Saddle Em Up Earrings in my Etsy store - here.

Spanish Rose Earrings - found in my wahmania store and my Etsy store

Little People Bracelets - found in my Mintd store and my Etsy store.

There are quite a few other new items in each store so feel free to browse and ask my any questions. Thanks for looking!

Parenting can be so difficult at times. Our daughter Keziah is one of the happiest little people you’d meet, she smiles a lot, she laughs a lot. There are those times though where I just don’t know what she’s trying to tell me. She’s 21 months old so her vocabulary, while full of great words such as ‘teddy’, ‘door’, ’socks’, ’shoes’ and ‘flower’ (pronounced fffllaaaaaar), is quite limited if I need to know if she’s still hungry or thirsty or if she’s just being stubborn!

She can say some of the important basic words for communicating what she wants such as ‘more’, ‘water’, ‘juice’, ‘yes’, ‘noooooooooo’ and ‘dada/mummy’ (pronouced mammy) BUT still this isn’t enough.

Combined with her being sick (she got bronchialitis while we were interstate), us all being tired and us all still recovering from 3 weeks of travel there have been a few less sunshine moments and a few more of those cloudy ones over this past week. Today she was a little better but its taken her this entire week (we got back last Thursday) to get over the 2 hours time difference from the east and west coast of Australia!

After a few days of battle with her over things such as eating and her being stubborn or her waking up for cuddles at 3am every night (which is cute the first two times) a little verse (well two actually) came to mind.

God reminded me of a few attributes that I should be displaying and here they are:

“But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law.”

So, instead of counting to 10 when my patience has worn through I have been reciting ‘love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control’ over and over. It works.

Calmer Mummy (mammy), calmer Kezi. Everyone wins!

From today!

On Etsy there’s a section where you can put together a selection of items within a theme. These are other people’s items not your own and today I’ve been selected for one of these treasuries. I seem to get in them regularly and I might occasionally post a screenshot of them. The main reason for this one though is that I spent a little time last night changing around the titles of some of my items and going through each on to check prices, shipping etc…

Not long after this my teaspoons were placed in a treasury. I had simply changed thier name from ’stripey teaspoons’ to ’summer party teaspoons’ and there you go! My spoons are at the bottom left.

Here’s the screen shot:

One thing I enjoy doing whenever we’re interstate is visiting shops that we don’t have over here in Perth. I don’t mean shopping centres but the unique little shops that have unique items in them. Most of the time I can’t afford these finds but sometimes I come across things for a few dollars. Here’s a pic of the things I managed to pick up during our time in New South Wales (Laurieton and Sydney). Some are gifts and some are for me to keep!

Beads from Bijou Beads and Design - Penshurst NSW
Damask-like tea light holders, beaded jewellery holder, wood shaving scented flowers - from Simply Gorgeous - North Haven NSW
Bamboo mat, papers and chopsticks from Japan House - Hurstville NSW
Jug from Timbertown - Wauchope NSW
Spoons and bookmark from Santina’s - Penshurst NSW
Pewter gumnut card holder - from The Rocks Markets, Sydney NSW

Steve Knight over at Kingdom Journalism wrote this post about SIM (the mission we represent) and their presence on the internet.

Apart from having a SIM International website, various country websites (including Australia) and websites for different projects, SIM is starting to be seen in other social networking areas.

Some of the areas that I didn’t know about until reading Steve’s blog post incude:

Facebook - SIM International and HOPE for Aids

MySpace - SIM USA

YouTube - SIM International and SIM USA

I will be looking into ways to be involved in representing SIM around the world and specifically in our home state of Western Australia. We also have a website which we are trying to be more regular in improving which can be found here.