Welcome Ethan

I finally recieved some highly anticipated photos today of my new nephew Ethan Lewis. He was born on April 21st and weighed 8 pounds 12 ounces and was 22 inches long. He is a great addition to my little nieces Bailey (6) and Clara (3).

Fun with Polymer Clay

This weekend all of the usual Silver Art Clay people took on a new challenge of creating with Polymer Clay. We went to Sophia's house, the one in the blue t-shirt, to learn the basics of making a circle box that you can wear as a pendant. It was a lot of fun, I never realized that Polymer Clay could be so beautiful. I must admit that I had kind of a play dough attitude towards it. She created a green and yellow pattern with a chocolate brown background (amazing!). The technique she used is called Mokumé Gané. Sophia also works with what she calls "mud clay". It was so much fun walking around her house and looking at all of her pieces which consisted of pottery, jewelry, etc. Even though the clay conditioning, running it through the pasta machine, was hard work I plan on doing it again sometime soon!

Kiss

I made this bracelet for my friend Katharine. I have been in a bracelet making frenzy . I actually decided to take a picture of it on her arm so that everyone could get some perspective of what it looks like on. Thanks Katharine for being kind enough to pose for the camera.

Dream

I just realized that I haven't posted in over a month. Opps! I recently made a bunch of silver art clay tags for the leather cuffs. This one is for my friend Stacey for her birthday. Hope she likes it, I'm giving it to her today at lunch!

Face Locket

I made a locket this weekend and learned several new techniques. The locket was made in two pieces with the front of the piece stamped with a face. I dried the piece on Rizzo's, the cat's, ping pong ball to get the curved look for the front piece. The hardest part of this piece was making the little pieces to hang the piece from. I tried and tried to get these looking right. When I took the piece home, I silver blacked it to get it an old look and add depth to the piece. You can't really tell in this picture because of the flash on my camera. I also added a mirror,that Colleen gave me (thanks, Colleen) to the inside of the piece. It turned out great and I love how the front piece is open for interpretation. I'm wearing it today and when people see it they all have their own idea of what it is supposed to be. Sun goddess, mother nature, Anne Klein lion, you name it!

Shrinky Dinks Day

Well, the altered book group met up this weekend and all of us were sitting there wondering what project to take on next. Much to our delight and suprise Lateka had brought with her sheets that you can draw your own Shrinky Dinks on. It was great fun for those of us who remembered our younger Shrinking and Dinking days and also a great time for those of us who never had these lovely days. For the first time Angela watched as her creation shrank in the oven before her very eyes. Oh what fun! We also got to see Diane's pictures from Africa and a few homemade videos. They were beautiful.

Grape Street Cafe

Last night I had the pleasure of going to dinner at Grape Street Cafe with Betty, Jerry and June. We have started a new tradition of going to dinner once a month on the first Tuesday of the month. The more the merrier so if you would ever like to join us please let one of us know. We are meeting at different restaurants across Las Vegas to eat, drink and be merry! We share crafty ideas and learn more about life and each other. It is so much fun, especially with Jerry telling her exciting "love" stories. You go girl! We all ordered different dishes but by far my favorite was Jerry's dish of Eggplant Parmesan which was out of this world. The first time I ever went to this cafe was for a my friend Stacey's wedding reception. It was great fun, but had to much yummy wine to really remember it well, opps. I would highly recommend this restaurant to anyone. It is so romantic and the food is great.