There's still time to shop for Christmas!

For the girly girl

For the Glee fan

For the Firefly fan

For the crafter

For the humbug :)

In the beginning...

It be EART Thursday blog ring time again, and the question is How did you get started doing your art/craft? Well, I'll tell you.

It all started with a friend named Miss Cathy. We saw some of those polymer clay cane work beads, the dolphins and smiles and things like that, knotted into hemp jewelry. We thought, hey, we could make those. Yeah, let's make those...

Then we got this book and started making those. Or, er, something not at all like those. It was harder than it looked. We made canes. We reduced them crooked, we left air bubbles in them, we sliced them with tools not quite sharp enough. We baked our beads anyway and knotted them all up in hemp like the wannabe hippies that we were. And we were proud. We mixed up a bunch of our messups and ended up with an awful lot of teal clay. We listened to a lot of Paul Simon while we worked on the diner-esque kitchen table with the perfect smooth and cool top for clay-rolling. The building shook every time the train went by. We continued to make clay beads in the middle of the night until we got pretty good at it. We even had some kids over from our day care center job to make beads with us. And we took the clay to school and made beads with the kids. All beads all the time.

And that's how it started.

To find out how some other EART team members got their art start, continue reading at PnkGeeni's blog.

Halloween destash sale

Cards, jewelry, penguins... All Halloween stuff is on sale at reduced prices to make room for holiday inventory!

Beads!!

You know it's bad when I use double exclamation marks. I'm not usually a fan of superfluous punctuation. But I finally made some beads!! I don't make beads much anymore, because I have, well, "a lot" doesn't really cover it.


These are a bunch of mixy-matchy round beads made with lots of leftover canes from my recent rainbow projects.

And speaking of beads, my PCAGOE friends have been turning out some pretty fabulous ones, too.


Behold the cuteness from polyclarific!


And get ready for St. Patty's with these by Roz Petalz Studios. How adorable are these?


Iris Mishly is a master beadmaker. Just look at the amazing detail of these.


I love the random, psychedelic nature of these beads by CreativeSpiritToo.

Thanks for the inspiration, ladies. I might need to go make more beads...

Girl scouts and beadmaking

Last week I taught beadmaking to a bunch of girl scouts in Mechanicsburg. I admit I was a little nervous - these days my large group classes tend to be adults, and my teaching of 13-year-olds tends to be one at a time and generally involves singing and no sharp implements. I was thrilled to find that this group of ladies was polite, energetic, smart and fun. What a joy to work with such a pleasant bunch!



To schedule your own polymer clay workshop for your girl scout troop, group of friends, youth group, etc., in the central PA area, email me. See some of the projects you could learn here.

bead swap

I participated in a bead swap with pcagoe members a few months ago, and I've been meaning to post these photos of the beads I received. Aren't they wonderful? Click the photos to visit their etsy shops. (Also, these are some of the nicest people you could ever meet!)