Tonight's crafting

Fairy Wand

One of the groups I belong to on Ravelry for people with chronic illness decided we should have a fairy wand swap. The idea was to make something fun and sort of whimsical to cheer each other up and maybe have to take to doctor's appointments and hit people with.

Every one who participated got assigned a random recipient and we had some basic information about likes, dislikes, allergies, etc.

My recipient is a fan of ribbon and feathers and pink, blue, and teal.

I started with a wooden dowel cut down to size and made a marbled polymer clay handle. The handle was sealed with Mod Podge and polyurethan sealant. I painted glitter Mod Podge onto the rest of the wand and sealed it as well.

I found the rose on top in the $1 section of Michael's crafts - it was supposed to be a sort of bath poof thing. I cut off the hanging loop and glued it to the end of the wand.

I drilled a hole near the end of the wand and ran some beaded cords and various types of ribbon through, along with the pink maribou feather boa thing.

Then I made the grip decoration. I dyed some white feathers with food coloring to get the blues and teals and made some bows with more ribbon. And I made a little polymer clay brooch sort of thing and stamped it with some meaningful initials.

Amazingly, I had this done well before the due date and managed to send it off.

The recipient seems to really like it. I had a blast making it. I definitely went for the nearly ridiculous level of silly fun with it.

Motivation - I needs some

Image via Wikipedia

I mentioned I felt like I was spinning my wheels health-wise a few days ago.  I feel like I'm spinning my wheels in general lately too.
Lots of plans and ideas, but no action on them.
I think this is partly a matter of fear - of failure, of wasted time and money experimenting (because my perfectionist self insists that "failed" experiments are wastes), of wearing myself out.
It's also an issue of TOO MUCH STUFF running around my brain.
I want to start selling crafts online. 
Do I go with Etsy or Artfire.  Or both?

I have ideas about branding and packaging and photography style and theme (an overall archaeological theme).  Do I do that stuff now or wait until I actually have an inventory of stuff to actually, you know, sell?  Also, I am intimidated by Inkscape and Scribus, etc.  I have a start on part of my planned logo, but I still have Inkscape-fear.

What about bookkeeping?  Will I go nuts with that?  I already have some excellent spreadsheet setups, but, but, numbers are the debil!

Oh, and what do I actually sell?  The overall theme here is archaeological/Egyptological inspired stuff (I'm being vague out of an additional fear that someone will steal my ideas!!!eleventy!)  :Looks around shiftily:
- Amigurumi patterns (that I need to actually make and write and layout and test and make look purty)
- Jewelry (that I need to actually make to be sure it isn't hideous because at the moment all the designs exist solely in my head and run around and mock me when I'm trying to sleep).  And do I stick with all polymer clay (with the exception of findings) or do mixed media pieces?  There's a learning curve here as well  - I haven't done much jewelry.  How much experimenting (and therefore time and money spent) am I going to need to do?
- Fascinators and hair bobbles (that won't necessarily fit with the rest of the theme, but are easy and fast and fun to make)
- Hand printed textiles?

Photography:
My hands shake.  I suck at photography.  The light is bad.  I hate fiddling with stuff.  I do have awesome ideas for settings and composition though.  And a tripod.  And a husband who is a photography hobbyist.

So, in general, I look at all of the above, get overwhelmed, twitch a little and then go back to aimlessly surfing the internet and reading about nuclear weapons or UFO accounts or mid-19th Century European royalty and politics instead of doing anything productive.  I read various blog posts from various awesome people in the crafty world talking about a lot of the stuff (the crafting, not the UFOs) above, but I still do *nothing.*
It's a little bit like the classic paper-writing conundrum of getting so caught up in research that you never actually write anything.  Or getting so caught up in collecting sources you don't so much read them as acquire them.

So - how do I kick myself in the ass/brain?  And how do I do it in a way that doesn't wear me out physically or mentally?

Today's experimentation

I've been playing with polymer clay some more for an already late birthday gift. Awesome.

Anyway, this lovely blurry photograph with the glare from my desk lamp shows some of the pieces prior to baking. I'll try for better photos post baking.

I really love the marbleing you can pull off with the clay. A whole lot. I need to get better at piercing round beads though. My clever plan to use bamboo skewers is not working as well as I'd like - I don't want holes that big/beads big enough to have holes that big in them.

Must re-plot.

I do have to say, though, I am loving my new clay blade. The shape cutters I have are cool, but the blade is super extra awesome.

Once this project is done I have some archaeologically themed stuff in mind.

Oh, and Ravelympics starting Friday night. Tee hee.

In other news, I think Oreo frightened someone away today. I was in the back of the apartment and am fairly certain I heard someone open our screen door. Usually this is the mail arriving. This time it wasn't. Oreo barked most ferociously and for much longer than usual with the mail person. And it wasn't the mail because it arrived several hours later. Much praise for my ferocious protector.

Something finished!

One of my very best friends left for a 6-week season in Egypt today. I was feeling too badly to see her off, but Tom took her to the airport and presented her with this gift.

She's a fellow Egyptologist and her research interests include mudbrick, palaces, and the reign of Amenhotep III and the Amarna Period. Soooo, I thought I'd make her a pendant with a reproduction of a stamp frequently used on mudbricks from the reign of Amenhotep III.

Mud bricks were often stamped with the names of the people or institution responsible for the construction of which they were a part. In this instance, I chose a stamp with the prenomen of Amenhotep III (Neb-maat-re), which is on the right and his Great Royal Wife, Tiye (on the left). This particular stamp was used on mudbricks used to construct a portion of the royal palace of Amenhotep III near modern Luxor (Malqata).

I decided to do an imitation of faience instead of a miniature mud-brick. I thought it would be a bit more attractive as well as easier to pull off.

So, I carved a rubber block with the stamp. Then rolled out some

polymer clay, mixed it to the faience color I wanted, and stamped it.

The impression was not fantastic as you can see in the top photo.

Stamping into clay is far less forgiving than stamping with ink. The

three-dimensional nature of the impression catches all the edges that

I didn't carve cleanly, the variation in depth of carving, etc. But, I

think it still worked reasonably well.

After baking I cleaned some edges up with my lino carving tools and

some sanding.

I did a light wash of paint to catch some of the edges and give it more

of an faience appearance and then I used some satin-finish glaze, which

you can see in the last two photos.

I'm giving some thought to producing more pieces like this for sale.

Any thoughts? Requests?

I figure I may as well try to combine my training as an Egyptologist

with my fiddling around with clay and see what comes of it.

Shopping

We went out and did some shopping today for household stuff and groceries.  Aaaaand I had a 50% off coupon from Michael's so I scored a Polymer Clay Pasta Machine for rolling out sheets of clay and combining colors and all sorts of other fun things.
This should be helpful in some upcoming projects I have in mind.

We're settling in for a quiet New Year's.  Tom has some beer and we got some sparkling lemonade to toast with.  Oreo has been busily burying his tennis ball in the Xmas tree skirt and then digging for it and has succeeded in dragging the whole skirt off the tree and across the room.
I think movies are in order eventually.

Happy New Year, everyone!

Hard at Work

I've spent most of the day working on Xmas gifts.  I've been carving stamps to use on polymer clay to make pendants and such.  I have a sinking suspicion that most of our Xmas stuff is going to be a bit late this year.  Things are taking a bit longer than I had anticipated, plus I didn't adequately allow for sick-time in my long-range planning.
Anyway, I think I'm done for the day - I have one set of pendants stamped.  Still need to be baked and finished.  But my arms hurt and my hands hurt and my head hurts.  So, done.  So there.  Nah.

I have a busy week ahead too.  Therapy tomorrow.  Dinner Wednesday.  Rheumatology and cog testing follow-up on Thursday.  Dinner on Thursday.  I already want a nap just thinking about it.

Thanksgiving hang-over

So, the turkey Tom wound up making (because I slept all day) was fantabulous.  So was everything that went with it.
Oreo got his little share of turkey and mashed potatoes and cranberry jelly.  No gravy for him this year because it had garlic and shallots.  I wasn't sure about the stuffing so none of that either.  He seemed very pleased nonetheless.

I'm trying to reset my sleep schedule again.  Despite getting up at 9:30 AM on Wednesday, I couldn't sleep for more than an hour or two without being wide awake again until 5 AM Thursday.  Sigh.  If this doesn't settle by Tuesday, I may have to reschedule cognitive testing yet again, as I'm pretty sure the results will be skewed a bit if I'm about to pass out or throw up from sleep deprivation.  "Regular" tired = fine for testing.  Sleep deprivation = not so fine.  Trying really hard to stave off that "dementia" diagnosis as long as possible.  Or at least until we have several more small dogs and I acquire a wardrobe of muumuus so I can be the crazy dog lady.

After dinner last night we watched The Ghost and Mrs. Muir, which is one of my favorites and I played with polymer clay.  Tonight I think there may be some Doctor Who watching and knitting on my baby nephew's Xmas present.

My dislike of the acetazolamide is increasing.  I've mostly gotten used to the excessive peeing and the resultant need to consume large quantities of water.  Unfortunately, the headaches that come within a few hours are not so fun and don't seem to be going away as my body gets used to the med.  Neither is the intestinal disturbance.  And I don't think it's helping much on the involuntary movement front - at least not enough to make it worth it as far as I'm concerned.  Definitely not helping enough for me to up the dose to twice daily.
On top of that, I can't take my preferred headache/significant joint pain remedy, Excedrin (or the generic equivalent) because it has asprin (a salicylate) in it, which is contraindicated.
I also can't take Pepto for my stomach because it has salicylate because ALL salicylates are contraindicated.    This blows goats.  I'm trying acetaminophen (Tylenol) at the moment because ibuprofen will irritate my stomach and intestines even more.  It's working a bit better than it used to, but not nearly as well as it would mixed with caffeine and asprin.  Dammit.
So, my head hurts, I have to pee a lot, and poot a lot, and poop a lot, and the rest of me hurts too, BUT I have polymer clay, yarn, movies, and books, plus Tom and Oreo to keep me company, so I guess I'll survive and even be fairly happy.  Grumbly, but happy.

And I've missed a day again

Forgot to post yesterday.  Whoops.  I have a bunch of polymer clay to play with though, which is very exciting. I'm not sure if I want to share what I'm planning to do with it.  Partly I'm not sure if it will work.  Partly I'm hoping if it does work that I can start production for sale on Etsy.  And combined with that, I'm slightly worried that if I discuss or feature it broadly before I have the shop up and going someone will take my idea and run with it.  Not very generous of me, I know, but after the time I've spent in academia I'm ever so slightly paranoid.

I've started a gauge swatch for one of the Xmas gifts I'm making.
Oh, and I achieved all of last week's goals last week!

I've also managed to have technical difficulties with Blogger (I was trying to schedule my Thanksgiving post for, you know, Thanksgiving and it kept posting it right now.  Stupid.)

Today, however, I don't feel like doing much of anything but reading.  I'm on another Wikipedia marathon about the USSR, spies, human intelligence gathering, and numbers stations, among other things.  Numbers stations are essentially dedicated shortwave radio stations that broadcast Morse code, numbers sequences, and/or spoken alphabet strings (as in A=Alpha, B=Baker, etc).  Some of them have music at the beginning or end of broadcast sequences.  They are almost certainly a communication method for spies of various agencies, in many cases probably sending coded messages that can be decoded with a one-time pad.  They also give me a serious case of the creeps for some reason.  Just the idea and the recordings of some of them.  No idea why that is.  Maybe the disembodied voice(s) speaking random numbers and letters.  One of them features a child's voice as the recording as well, which is extra creepy to me.
Anyone who cares to have a listen can go to the dedicated page for The Conet Project on archive.org

Trek

Trek
Originally uploaded by downtownmonsters

These nifty little polymer clay Star Trek dudes are awesome. Gorn, Bones, Kirk, Spock, and Orion Slave Girl. Very fun. Downtownmonsters has them available for sale on etsy if you're interested.

"Tita De la Garza"

"Tita De la Garza"
Originally uploaded by du_buh_du_designs

I haven't featured a doll in some time, so I think this is a lovely one to revive interest with. Her features are lovely, as are the clothing and accessories. Even better, she's a character from a novel. I haven't read "Like Water for Chocolate" but I love it when people take inspiration from books.

Behold my mad polymer clay rolling skillz!

I made another set of crochet hook handles, as I wanted the H and I hooks for a project I started recently (I got the yarn courtesy of a ride to JoAnn's - thanks, G!).  Playing with the clay really is ridiculously fun.  Eventually I'm going to pick up some sandpaper to see how well I can smooth the handles up and get rid of fingerprints, etc.  The pale pink and white marbled handle just did not want to be photographed despite my husband's best efforts.

I really can't decide which I like the best.  I will be interested to see if the black and white handle picks up stains from my fingers...