Up All Night

Had an anxiety attack, and when that happens it takes my body a VERY long time to get back to normal.  Therefore, I didn't sleep a wink.  But you know what that meant?  An all night clay-fest!!! 

I got some molds in the mail, but I wasn't altogether happy with them.  It was partly my fault.  I didn't look at my measuring tape to see exactly how big they were going to be.  I wanted BIG.  Sadly, 25mm isn't really all that big.  And one mold was so tiny I know I'll never use it.  But also, one that was big has a floral pattern in it and the pattern is very shallow so it doesn't give the best impression.  Bummer!  I decided to make my own molds.  I dug and searched and hunted for any cabs I had and larger beads with an interesting shape, got out my mud clay and made me some molds.  I don't know why I didn't think of that before I spent the $27, but it was because I didn't know to make a mold from the clay itself.  'doh!

I played around with some colors, some translucent, some mud, some glitter and some powder pigment.  How can you go wrong with all that???  Making cabs, I discovered, will take some time to learn the nuances of; but I think I came up with some interesting things.  After baking some I sanded and buffed and some I didn't.  I coated them all in Diamond Glaze.  The only problem with that is that it left some eeny weeny bubbles.  Bummer again!  Could be my cheap paint brush too though.  Ok.  Here's what I made in my all night party of moi...

These were made from my mud from my canes the other day.

This I used some kind of brownish color, gold and a hint of red.

This was made with slivers of my cane from the other day covering a base of clay.

For these I used translucent and raspberry and glitter and threw them in an ice bath after baking.

These were interesting.  I used a translucent light blue, a royal blue and some blue pigment powder.  When I mixed them there were large streaks throughout.  After baking it looked solid blue.  But after sanding and buffing, some little details came through that I think are kind of cool.  Love the color!!!

This was made with a lot of translucent white and a little blue.  I threw it in an ice bath after baking.

There you have it!  My party for the night.  I am pretty happy with what I created, and my mind is already working out what I'm going to make with these babies.  I'm thinking the pink ones will be first up!  Oh, I forgot to say...don't pay any attention to the edges.  I didn't quite get the hang of nice clean edges, but it won't really matter anyhow because they'll be covered up with beads.

BASEBALL HIGHLIGHT!

Watch Matthew's great at-bat from last night's game.  We won, btw, 13-3.  Go Bulls!