New home, new camera, new loves :o)

Got my new digital camera yesterday and I'm excited to get going finally on the tutorials I've been wanting to do forever! This new camera can also record up to an hour of video in HD, so that will be something fun to play with.

In the meantime, here is the little orphan kitten we've adopted. When we moved into this house, there was a mama cat with four adorable kittens camped out at this old building next door that had been converted into a 5 unit apartment building. They soon came over to charm us. We felt sorry for them and started feeding the 5 of them. After a week, we went outside to give them some food and all of a sudden a new and very vocal little guy came running up the stairs to join them. We had never seen this little one before and it was clear he was not one of mama cat's kittens. He was obviously a few weeks younger, and she despised him on sight! He couldn't have cared less and pushed right up to the dish to eat. Mama cat had no choice, but to tolerate him. LOL

He has a little stump of a tail that clearly wasn't that way at birth. :o( Lord knows what happened to him, but it's healed just fine. For a few weeks we were sure he was a HE, then when we decided he was the one who needed us most, and we would adopt him, we started thinking he must be a she because we couldn't see any little what-nots proving he was a boy. LOL We named "her" Mischa. But once we took "her" to the vet, the vet confirmed our first impressions had been correct and it was a little boy!!! So now Mischa is Mischa Man til we figure out his new name!

The mama cat had been brought here by a woman who lives two doors down, but she'd never done anything to take care of her once she brought her here. :oP We found out from her sister, our neighbor across the street, that this was the 3rd litter she'd allowed mama cat to have. :o( She finally called animal control and they came and caught two of the kittens, mama ran off, and two little guys remain. Animal control never came back for them, so we've been feeding them ever since.

So here are the boys - the grey tabby is our little guy, the grey and white my daughter named Jade, and the black she named Jasper. ;o) Very hard to get clear pics of these guys! They're in perpetual motion! Our little man though the smallest of the three is also the most fearless. He's a real pistol. :o) The vet believes he's 3 1/2 mos., so I'm guessing his adopted bros are 4 mos. or so.



(click to enlarge)



(click to enlarge)



(click to enlarge)



(click to enlarge)



Time to get back to sculpting! :o)

Edited to add: Mischa Man has become Milo. :o)

WORKTABLE WEDNESDAY

As I mentioned last week, I've been doing some refurbishing of some pieces lately. So that's what I'm still doing today, but I thought it might be fun to actually show you in a short video. My friend Michele and I have been talking lately about how great it would be to be able to offer tutorials in video format, rather than in pdf or something like that. How much better if we could actually show, step by step, how we create a piece? So knowing my digital camera also has video capabilities I decided to play around a bit today and I came up with this dorky little video showing how I go about refurbishing a pin.



I attach all the elements of my pieces very well, so they're not going to break during normal wear and tear, but as I say in the video, I have just learned over time how to carefully and gently pry pieces off and I can usually do so without damaging the original piece. I then use a little bit of liquid clay to attach the new elements I want to add and I have a new, and very sturdy piece.

Hope you enjoy the little video. I'm hoping to be able to do more in the future. Unfortunately my digital camera does not have a ton of space on the memory card so I can only do short little videos using it. My camcorder is as old as my youngest child which is now 16 1/2 yrs. old. So I'm not too sure about using it either. But doing videos is something I definitely want to play around with some more. :o)

PLAYING, EXPERIMENTING, LEARNING

Well I've been temporarily sidetracked by a new technique - new to me anyway, but something many polymer clayers have been doing in one variation or another for quite some time. I'm talking about faux cloisonné. I have always loved the look of enamels and cloisonné, and just recently I came across a wonderful tutorial by Eugena Topina and just had to try it. Eugena's work is absolutely sensational. There are lots of different ways you can achieve the look of cloisonné using polymer clay, but her's is one of the easiest and she has a tutorial available via her website or Etsy shop. I'm still learning so I'm trying to work the bugs out of my technique, but this is definitely something I want to do more of. Here's my attempt at a cloisonné flamingo pendant. Wish I had made the flamingo's neck longer, but hey it was my first attempt and I'm not at all used to working with wire. This technique uses wire, and mica powders encased in a clear dimensional glass-like finish to simulate cloisonné. I also added three Swarovski crystals that have a pink tone to them. Lots of fun, though working with tiny bits of wire can be frustrating!



SCULPTING DOGS TUTORIAL

I've received many emails over the years asking if I had any tutorials or a book available on how to sculpt dogs. I'm now working on a tutorial that will most likely be available in a pdf format and hope to have it ready soon. Of course there is no way I could cover how to sculpt all the many different breeds there are in any tutorial. So what I plan to focus on is the basics of sculpting just the heads of the dogs to use for pins or ornaments, etc. Watch this blog for updates.