Empress Wu Designs with Wilma

While our holidays have provided me with many blog posts yet to come, this week's "arty place" is at home, literally. Yesterday, once again our family room was transformed into a workshop area  for a Precious Metal Clay workshop for beginners . The photo shows some of the work, beautiful pendants - really fantastic, I think for beginners! Recently most of the workshops here have been art dolls and this year many creations have been born here, during Wise Women workshops ....  and Message Stick art doll workshops ...  Even at family gatherings, there is always time for a workshop or two at Empress Wu Designs . Today we made polymer clay power rings and learnt to make swirl beads with scraps of polymer clay.  If you are interested in any of these workshops please check the workshop page or contact me directly. 

With the October long weekend holiday and daylight saving adjustment, I have been working in a mind "fog" today, and kept wondering what I would write about in this blog this week... it was so obvious. Last Friday I had the great privilege of attending a workshop conducted by visiting US master artist in Precious Metal Clay, Hadar Jacobson. Please see why I have been so excited about attending this workshop - please check out   Hadar's website . The workshop covered many new techniques for me and challenged the way I have previously thought about approaching, executing and finishing a silver project. I learnt new finishing techniques using a handheld rotary tool  and yesterday bought some new attachments for my dremel . My husband, Jim was really surprised when I got up early yesterday excited about going shopping at the local hardware store!  I made a small pair of hollow form earrings. In retrospect, I chose rather uninspiring shapes, ...