Featured Artist : Transient Tracy

Featuring Transient Tracy -Tracy has gone fishing up in the Northern Territory, but before she left she gave a great demonstration of her polymer clay sculpting techniques. Tracy loves to create "interesting" characters and as you can see works exaggerated facial features to create lovable and comical characters. Besides sculpting, Tracy does fabulous work with textiles - dyeing, embellishing and surface alteration see more of Tracy's work on her blog http://tracymcoz.blogspot.com/

It was also a fun day with great company and lots of good food for lunch and a Christmas in July gift swap.

I got out a couple of my "old" heads, and started another one with Tracy's guidance.
Now to finish their bodies - amongst all of the other works in progress!

And a very happy birthday to my beautiful daughter-in-law Kellie - enjoying birthday cake at our Friday night family dinner with her two little boys.

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"Temari Or Not Temari?" Tutorial

Background Information: Temari (literally translated “hand ball”) is a Japanese folk craft that is alleged to have originated in China and was introduced to Japan five or six hundred years ago. Traditionally, the balls were constructed from wrapped kimono fabric remnants and silk threads. They were made by mothers and grandmothers for children to play with. Nowadays, decorative embroidered temari represent a highly valued and cherished gift symbolizing friendship and loyalty. Recently I've wondered if your don't use traditional techniques whether you should call what you create "temari". That is an ongoing debate but today I share what I do to make a "non-traditional temari".... 1.I start with a polystrene ball ( traditionally the balls were wound silk scraps or other organic materials) and begin to wrap with approx 4 ply wool, turning the ball as I wrap. 2. I then wrap another layer of wool in a similar fashion , this time a 3 or 2 ...

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Empress Wu Designs with Wilma

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