Amanda’s Musings

Yesterday from 8.45 - 2.00 I manned my little stall at the Melville Baptist Church Fair (Fete). The Fair went well overall with lots of sales of books, plants, bric a brac and food. I didn’t sell much but it was a good day anyway. I thought I’d share some photos of the setup of my stall there. It was a good practice run for two weeks time when I’m at the Hyde Park Hotel for the Made On The Left market. All funds from that market will got to the work of SIM and I am still thinking/praying through where to send the money.

So, here are the photos, there are none of me behind the stall but I’ll try to get one next time. I would probably change a few things and need to get some better signage (this was a rushed job) too.

Tomorrow I will be selling my items at the Melville Baptist Church fair. This is our church and Michael is an Associate Pastor there. All funds raised from everything everyone is selling will go to assist the local high school Chaplain. This afternoon I went down to the church to set up my table to discover that mine was the only one not set up! Its all ready to go and now my table is no longer the odd one out.

For those locals who may be interested here are the details:

Where: Melville Baptist Church 9 Sargeant Rd Melville
Time: 9am - 2pm

I hope to see some of you there, make yourself known and come over to my little Polyclarific table inside the main hall. Some of the items on sale include:

So here I am, sitting here in my black swivel chair next to the window that looks out at our strange little Budgie while typing this, yes, we are back in Perth again! Our lives have been all over the place for the last three weeks with Michael travelling to the USA, Tokyo and Sydney and myself, the girls and my Mum off to Adelaide for the wedding I wrote about earlier.

We did a lot in Adelaide and enjoyed looking around at both chocolate factories (Melba’s and Haighs), the giant rocking horse, Rundle Mall, Glenelg, Handorf, The Cheese factory and more. A highlight would have to be the giant rocking horse which had a small (free) wildlife sanctuary as well as a toy factory and picnic area. Keziah had a great time that day (and so did I) and managed pretty good considering she missed her afternoon sleep.

I also got to meet up with a few people while in Adelaide including Amy and Sal whom I’d met via the Christian Mum’s website. It was so nice to meet them in person. Amy’s baby Charlotte is one day younger than my Lucinda which is why we met in the first place.

So, here are some photos from our time in Adelaide, enjoy!

Me and Kez at the Silver Balls in Rundle Mall

Us sitting on the famous Rundle Mall pigs

Me and my girls with Amy and Charlotte

Sal and her boys

Scenes from the Giant Rocking Horse

Handorf

I’m glad to be home again and spent today sorting out all the bags and doing loads of washing. Our house is almost back to normal already so I’m glad. Now, where’s my to do list!

We are famous, well, in our own minds anyway! When we went to the Royal Show the other week we bought a $5 Ikea bag and in it was a voucher to have our photo put on the cover of the catalogue. No, not the one that goes out to everyone but a copy for us to take home. We thought it was a real novelty and we’ll never throw out that catalogue! Very clever advertising, we’ll never throw that out!

I’ve been very busy continuing to build up my stock for the upcoming Melville Baptist Fete and Made On The Left market. I have been trying to turn my focus to less jewellery items to give me a lot more range. I’ve added more tea light candle holders, bookmarks, brooches, hair accessories and magnets.

Before you take a peek at the new items can I ask if you would click on this link and do a little survey for me. It’s in regards to my pricing. Pricing is something I’m not particularly confident in so all feedback would be greatly appreciated. The link is:

Survey for Polyclarific

So, here are the new items, thanks for any feedback:

Yesterday we went to the show and it was a fun day out. Michael is about to take off overseas and interstate for three weeks so we wanted to have a great family day before he went. Keziah had a really great time. She got to ride a pony, go on the spinning teacups (with me who also thought that was a lot of fun), pat lots and lots of different animals, see the cars in the main arena at lunch time and more! Keziah even got to record herself singing Bananas in PJ’s in the ABC Kids caravan and we got it on CD for free. Its very cute watching her sing into the mike.

We didn’t buy many show bags, just the usual sample type ones and a Bertie Beetle one for Kezi. I’m not much of a show bag person, they always look good till you get them home and realise that everything in them are cheap and nasty and that the lollies all got eaten on the way home. We were even clever this time and brought our lunch and snacks with us. It was a lot of fun as you can see from the photos, great memories!

These three photos were taken by my Dad, love that car one, what a great shot! You beauty Dad!

The last week was quite busy and yet I have no idea what I actually did. I suppose the easiest way to figure it out is to look back over some of the photos I took. Of course I’m pretty sure that there was a lot more that I did besides what is shown below including shopping for a dress for my cousin’s wedding, watching Project Runway in the middle of the night (while feeding Lucinda) and losing my wallet sometime between yesterday and today!

Firstly we had a fair bit of ‘playing with the new (birthday) toys’ time:

I did a custom order:

Lots of Luci cuddling and playing:

A massive pile of washing:

We had some friends over:

Kezi did some painting:

and I created some tea light candle holders:

and finally, some mucking around:

I do wonder what this week will show when I look at my photos. I have a busy week including going out to tea, having friends over for lunch, enjoying the company of another Etsy seller and going to the Royal show!! Sounds very busy.

The other night I sat and made up 14 pairs of earrings, 7 button cards (as in buttons sewn to card to sell, not a greeting card) and one phone charm in one sitting. It sounds as if I really threw them together doesn’t it? I did in a way but mainly because I had made the beads with intention instead of experimentally like usual. Lately I’ve been considering my craft a lot more as I do it and while allowing myself to ‘play’ I’m still creating with the deliberate-ness that it takes to make a sellable item.

At the moment I am preparing for the next two markets I’m doing so I’ve been stocking up and stocking up, so far I think I have around 50 pairs of earrings made up that are not listed in my stores as well as many many necklaces, bookmarks, bracelets, beads and other items. At some point in the next week I think I’d better take an inventory so I know where I’m up to!

So, here’s some of the results of the other night’s creativity (you can see the rest over on my flickr page if you want to). As you can see these are from the same ‘canes’ or blocks of clay so have a similarity about them.

I have also been trying to play around with new cane designs and master the skill of caning. Here’s some of those results:

Buttons

Telephones

Cars

Sheep

And finally, a little experiment in the mokume gane technique:

Lately I’ve been thinking a fair bit about what it REALLY means to be called a Christian. This word seems to have so many contexts these days as well as quite a few generalisations attached to it. I am very aware that the way a person reacts when I say I’m a Christian will depend greatly on their personal experience with other Christians. In many ways its unfair to be associated with generalisations and stereotypes but there’s nothing I can do about it.

I suppose all I can say is what it means for me to be a Christian. Firstly, it has nothing to do with church and nothing to do with being good, perfect or judgemental. If I’m honest, those characteristics were three that I did try to emulate back in my school days and as a result I was pretty self-righteous and judgemental of those around me.

People in general (myself included) prefer others to be genuine, confident in the way they choose to live (in other words, not wishy washy) and non judgemental. I must admit, us Christians can look very arrogant and pushy at times and these are two characteristics I do not agree with.

The arrogance seems to stem from our view that we believe to have the truth and the only truth. We believe that everyone should follow Jesus and those who don’t are separated from God. That’s a pretty strong viewpoint to hold and yes, it seems arrogant…….or does it? Perhaps its more of a confident view than an arrogant one. While I’m being so honest I have to say that I do hold these views.

Another thing I want to make clear is my stance on Bible bashing. I don’t believe in it at all. I believe that you cannot force another person to share your point of view and that each person’s beliefs are personal and a place they have come to on their own. The thing that I wish people would do is take a serious look at Jesus for themselves. Not the Christmas Jesus and not the painted Jesus but the actual Jesus of the Bible. The Bible is a historical record and should not be thrown out lightly. Look at Jesus for yourself.

This finally brings me to the though of the word ‘testimony’ or ‘witness’ and what it means. I used to think that if you allowed others to see your mistakes, negative emotions or slip ups you would ruin your testimony. A testimony is simply showing other people the way that Jesus has made a difference in your life. As I’ve grown older I’ve come to see that if you guard the real you from other people then you are not allowing anyone to really know you and they cannot see how much Jesus has affected you. I have also come to understand that as a Christian I should be allowing Jesus’ teachings to penetrate my inner being. His words (and I believe Jesus is God) should so affect a person that it changes the way you do everything. This does NOT mean that a Christian is perfect, nor does it mean that everything I do will reflect Jesus (because I’m human!).

My conclusion is this. I am a Christ-follower. I believe in Jesus (Christ) and that he is God and that he died to save me. I believe that I must follow his words (as found in the Bible) and be completely confident and genuine about this. I believe that other people should see Jesus when they look at me (as in see his characteristics). I believe that it’s wrong to shove Jesus at people and its also wrong to befriend people with the sole purpose of doing this. I believe in respecting other people, regardless of whether I disagree with their choices or thinking.

That’s my conclusion and I’m completely confident in it. Serious post over.

Today I had a great time, I had the opportunity to teach a group of teenagers how to be creative with polymer clay at a birthday party. I’ve taught kids a lot in the past (Girl’s Brigade, Sahel Academy in Niger, private art classes) but it’s been a while and I’d forgotten the thrill of watching them as they discover what they’ve been able to do. It was so rewarding to see the looks on their faces as they cut the canes they’d made to find a flower pattern inside and it ALMOST makes me want to extend my degree to education like I have in the past (I have a BA Arts majoring in painting but never quite got to the Diploma of Education). We’ll see, it will be a few years before I can consider doing that.

Anyway, happy birthday Erin, I hope you had a good day. Enjoy your actual birthday on Monday!

Here’s some of the girls as they’re creating their canes

and the end result of some of their work

Good on you girls, you did such a great job, I hope you had fun because I did!