Did I lose a week?

I feel very honoured this week to be featured in the Coffs Coast Polyclayers Newsletter Winter 2010 edition, the brainchild of creative friend, Hector Vera of Vera Designs.  Hector makes fabulous jewellery and teaches interesting and innovative workshops in his Bellingen studio. I met Hector when we completed the Contemporary Clay Instructors Program and we often meet at workshops in Sydney. Hector is far more productive and creative than I am with polymer clay and precious metal clay. I recommend visiting Hector’s blog and I am sure you will agree with me.

I am not sure where the last week disappeared… perhaps days of grandchildren-sitting, Rotary volunteering, organising farewells to our exchange student and ambassadorial scholar who are going back to Canada and Japan respectively in the next few days. At least, we have been doing “out of the ordinary” things like packaging up a didgeridoo to be posted, ensuring it met the under 105cm limit. (At least, that was better than paying the $225 quoted to take it as part of our exchange student’s luggage).

However, I did manage to do a few little creative “jobs” which were on my “to do” list. The head belongs to a doll in a round robin for one of my groups.  I hope the head I made is regal enough?  It is a cloth covered clay head, with a mauve astrakan fleece and gold braid hairpiece. I am a member of a doll makers’ group which is hosting a “body in a bag” with the theme “Queen”. We started off by making a body, and then it travels around from person to person each month, when arms, legs, head and hair, clothing and accessories are added. I now have another  doll in a bag ready for clothing this month.

I also signed up for a handmade gift swap for the DUST team (Down Under Street Team) which is a group of Australian artists, craftspeople and artisans who support Etsy and wish to promote independent handcrafted goods in Australia and worldwide. For my swap friend, I have made this little felted bowl – a dragonfly bowl - in dusky blue/grey/purple tones. I made a small polymer clay dragonfly and embroidered leaves on the body of the vessel in stem and fly stitch to create another bowl in my “nature bowl” series. I hope she likes it.
I also made my grandson, a towelling cover up for him to wear after swimming lessons. The requested ‘monster truck” motif presented quite a challenge, but I managed to find the perfect fabric for an appliqué and a matching swimming gear bag. Always worth the trouble when so gratefully received by a special person – my oldest grandson, Brandon.

PS Hope you like the new blog template for the winter months.