Amanda’s Musings

There are just three days left of April which means that in three days time I will be switching to sending my shop profits to a new SIM project. I am investigating an option for the months of May and June and will announce where the money will go as soon as I know more information.

At this point the total amount that will head over to Camp La Joya in Peru is $185. This will be enough to send 5 kids to camp. Like I said, there are still three days left so I might be able to sell a few more things before the end of the month. I would love to be able to send 10 kids to camp so if you are thinking of buying from one of my shops (maybe for Mother’s day), here are the links to my stores once again:

Etsy
MadeIt
Wahmania

I recently started a Polyclarific page on facebook which links to all my stores. A good friend (and fellow SIM worker) Julie Bazal (scroll down to half way on that link) designed this great postcard for me which I am currently having printed. Didn’t she do a great job!!!

Just thought I’d put up some pics of my little scone in action. This is our display at Keswick over the weekend. I’m not actually sure that it drew much of the crowd in the end but that’s ok. I did have a few think it was real. Here it is:

I have just created a survey about a new range of products I would like to test. Could you please click the link below and take the survey (if you want to). There are only 5 questions.

Thank you in advance.

Amanda’s Survey Click Here!

I was recently described as a frustrated visionary. That sounds a bit on the pedestal for me but it is how I feel at times. I tend to come up with big ideas and end up having to reduce them down to about an eighth of the size. I always feel that much of this has to do with limitations - location, current stage in life, contacts etc… but then I meet amazing people who have these limitations and more but still manage to put their ideas into action. Maybe its got more to do with my lack of knowing where to start than my limitations. Maybe that lack of knowledge is the ultimate limitation. Anyway, recently I’ve been feeling more and more like putting my love of art and design out there much more.

Before I discovered polymer clay (as an adult anyway in 2005) I used to paint, draw, sketch etc.. in almost any medium. Whether it was oils, acrylics, pastels, watercolour, goache, ink, pencil or a combination of these, I would be doing that all the time. I have a whole studio worth of supplies in this area but they rarely see the light of day at the moment. I even did an art degree and graduated in March 2005 at ECU (BA Arts (painting).

Here’s a mosaic of some of my artwork from before and during uni, you can see pastel, pencil, oil, acrylic and etching there. You can see more of my artwork here at my flickr set.

After uni I think I had that painted out feeling. I’d just spent three years painting, drawing, coming up with ideas and presenting them and maybe my brain needed a change. Not long after uni (Sept 2005) Keziah was born and out went all my interest in painting. Its not that I lost interest in creating, just in painting. These days my hands do get that painting itch as soon as I see or smell oil paint or visit a gallery so I know its all still there, hibernating.

I have a LOT of paintings and drawings from my uni days just sitting here in storage and my newest aim is to get some of these printed into posters and sell them. I know that they would sell, I know they are quality enough for that but I think my current ‘limitation’ is simply not knowing where to start (again). Questions such as ‘what’s a good price for printing?’, ‘what quality would they need to be?’, ‘how many should I reasonably get printed at a time?’, ‘how would I post them?’ etc.. all run through my head. Having baby brain at the moment is not helping when it comes to working this out logically.

I did manage to put some of my illustrations to work when Suki over at Tamptation created some stamps for me using my designs. As some of you might already know, I stamped these onto felt and have been selling them as pincushions. I have been very busy hand stitching (embroidery of sorts I suppose!) onto these stamped designs lately, getting a bit more intricate with each one. My newest dilemma is what to do with these other than create pincushions? Appliqué? Stitch them to t-shirts myself? What? I’m really after some suggestions in that department so PLEASE if you look at the images below and think ‘I would use that for….’ could you let me know. My poor ol’ baby brain really needs a bit of help! Thank you in advance. : )

This many still to stitch!!

So, as anyone who reads this regularly will know, we are expecting our second bubby in July. This week I went to my first midwife and specialist appointments since first finding out we were expecting. I have been focussing a lot on packing up for the new house so going to these appointments made it all seem a bit more real.

There is a little discrepancy with my dates and I’m a lot bigger than I ’should’ be for where I’m meant to be (26 weeks) so the midwife sent me to a specialist (also because I had a C Section last time). The specialist thinks there’s a chance the dates are a week out but he can’t be certain as the bub is sitting very high. This would explain my shortness of breath (diaphragm has no room!). He thinks there’s a possibility that I might have another breech baby so I’m going for another scan in a months time.

So, who knows what will happen, even if this one isn’t breech there are a few things he said would need to happen for it to be a natural birth. I’m not one of these women who ‘must experience birth’ etc… so if its another C Section that’s fine with me!

As long as I have a healthy little baby boy or girl I don’t mind. Kezi gets to be a big sister either way!

I have great in-laws. Almost every Saturday they take Keziah for us so we can have a day to get things done. They have a great time with her and spoil her and she loves going to their house. Every time she comes home with Poppa she brings me a bunch of flowers which she insists on picking before getting in the car. When she arrives home she runs up the path and says ‘flowers Mummy, water!’ and won’t sit down until I’ve put them in a vase.

At the moment all my vases are packed away ready for the big move (which is still at least 6 weeks away!) so in this picture my vase is an aluminium cup! What a sweetie!

Coming up on the 17th May is our annual SIM WA Get Together. This weekend we have the Keswick Convention where we will be putting up our display for SIM and I want to emphasise the coming SIM event in May. I was trying to think how we could attract people to our display and came up with a way to combine my love of polymer clay and missions. I decided to attempt to make a fake scone with jam and cream for the display which I will put there with a little cup and saucer. Here are the results. First of all, making the scone:

Mixing the fake Jam - chunks of red, burgundy and black polymer clay with translucent liquid clay.

Adding the ‘jam’ to the scone by putting the layer of liquid and chunks over a base of similar colour.

Moulding the fake cream for the scone using off white polymer clay.

Adding the liquid ‘cream’ over the more solid layer (mix of translucent liquid clay and normal polymer clay).

The completed scone before baking (colours are a little off as it was night time under a fluorescent light).

The completed scone after baking!

And a closeup.

I had a little of the jam mix left so I made a miniature cheesecake which I might keep for Keziah’s dolls house instead of selling this time. I’m starting to gather a little collection of mini’s for her for when she’s old enough to play with them.

I didn’t look up any tutorials to do this so I’m not sure whether this is the way these things are usually done. I tend to enjoy just working out how to do it myself. I love making fake food, its a great challenge, something I should do more of to sell. Ah one day!

I have just added the following items to my Wahmania shop. Soon I’ll add them to my Etsy shop too and a few more!!

and here’s what’s on its way:

The most fun thing about watching Kezi grow into a toddler is watching her play. Gradually she’s taking on the pretend play that most kids do with her teddies and dolls but she’s also starting to sit for longer and play with things like crayons or playdough. This morning she was very busy for about three hours playing with these foam shapes I bought yesterday which are sticky on the back. She had a great time taking off the backing and sticking them everywhere (including all over Dora’s face!). Here are some pics of her recent play adventures:

I have recently been trying out some new techniques including rose caning (see my previous post) and ‘proper’ mokume gane. The results were quite nice and today I finished off the pendants I’d made last week.

The steps involved are quite lengthy. For anything involving a cane the steps include

Skinner blending
Creating the cane
Slicing the and creating the pendant/beads
Baking the clay
Sanding (with 4 grades of sandpaper)
Buffing off the white film
Dipping in Polish and allowing to dry
Rebaking to set the polish

The Mokume Gane is similar except that I created a flat layer of mokume gane first before shaping into beads.

Here are some of the results followed by the sanded beads/pendants after dipping and before rebaking. They are sitting on my homemade drying rack:

All of these will be for sale very soon in my stores. ALL PROFITS from ALL SALES still go to the work of SIM at Camp La Joya in Peru.