FIVE THINGS FRIDAY

1. Well I'm not quite ready for a Felting Friday yet. The needle felting is still taking a backseat to the polymer clay which is the primary medium that I create my items for ebay and custom orders with. But I have been collecting felting books and here are a couple new ones that contain cute and simple animals:

Little Felted Animals by Marie-Noelle Horvath



Wool Pets by Laurie Sharp



2. Still plugging away on the tutorial when I can find the time.

3. Just added a whole bunch of new polymer clay blog links. I really enjoy seeing what other clay artists are up to, so I enjoy having the blogs to check out. I'm sure you'll enjoy them too. I've also linked to some wonderful children's book illustrators' blogs. I haven't given up the dream of one day illustrating a children's book in clay. Thanks for exchanging links with me everyone!

4. I still have SO much to learn about promoting myself and my artwork, my blog, etc. I'm always on the look-out for new information on the best ways to do that. I really enjoy blogging because I enjoy writing and sharing, but I also want to promote my artwork and let people get to know me and what it is I do. I like to use my blog to share stuff about me and who I am, and what I create. I like to get to know the person behind the artwork so that's what I try to share about myself as well.

5. I said I was re-visiting the Diana Gabaldon "Outlander" series in my reading recently. Oh boy. What a controversial bunch of books those are. I was given "Outlander" to read by a well-known clay artist friend (who shall remain nameless LOL) while on the way to my first ever HIA (now CHA) show in Dallas over 10 years ago. What an eye-opener that book was! LOL Like every other woman I know who read this book, I fell head over heels in love with Scottish Jamie Fraser. But I have to say, honestly, I could have done without the whole Jack Randall thing in the first book. I don't want to give things away but, if you've read the book, you know what I'm talking about. But even so, I couldn't help feeling it was a rather bold direction to take this type of novel into, and I was amazed at the author's audacity and felt she handled it all pretty well. Well I did not read the second book in the series until over 10 yrs. after reading the first. I still enjoyed it. The whole series is kind of fantasy (time travel) mixed with romance, mixed with a historical novel, mixed with I don't know what. I thought Diana Gabaldon was a very good writer as far as her ability to create characters that were interesting, yet very human, flaws and all. She had quite a knack at drawing you in and making you care about these characters and making you feel the raw emotions they felt, etc. But I just finished reading the 3rd book, and boy did I find it disappointing! And there are now SEVEN books in this series??? WOW! I just felt the author really dropped the ball with the third book, and felt that she did not stay true to her characters in it, and just overall felt that the quality of the writing was nowhere near the first novel that drew so many of us in. My daughter and I are fans of the Harry Potter series and with seven books there, I feel that the quality of the books stayed high throughout the series. Just goes to show you that just because you CAN write seven books in a series doesn't mean you SHOULD! Just my opinion of course! I just found the whole thing interesting after revisiting the characters so many years later. It's interesting to me how books like these get kind of a cult-like following. I see the same thing with the whole "Twilight" series by Stephanie Meyer. Weird but interesting books those are too. OK, went off on a tangent there but I just was amazed to see the quality so low in the third book knowing four more books came out after it! I won't be reading any further in the series myself.

OK, that's all I'm up to on this fine Friday morning. Hope you all have a great weekend!