oh hey, it's thursday again

This week's EART blog ring topic is "wordless works in progress." So here it is - I'm working on holidays cards for 2010 so as not to be so far behind next year, and snark Valentines for thepaperwhisperer.

See what other EART bloggers have in the works. Continue with pnkgeeni.

penguins, what else is new...

I've started pulling penguin ideas out of a hat. Well, plastic bag, actually. Here are the first few: red hat penguin (oh, the irony of the red hat, but that's a post for another day...), stars and stripes penguin, and baseball penguin.


Here they are before baking.



And here they are after baking. It's like a penguin costume party.

Or a joke. "Three penguins waddle into an elevator..."

kaleidoscope canes

I made my first attempts at kaleidoscope canes the other day. Mostly I used lengths of canes, old and new, that were multiplying on my craft table. This one made of mostly blues was my first try.

Basically, a kaleidoscope cane is made by building a fairly intricate triangular cane and then using six matching pieces to make the pattern repeat.


This is my second attempt. This one is a bit of a cheat, because I used four triangular pieces and filled in the spaces in between with more matching canes - same basic effect.


And this third attempt is my favorite, because it's all hippie flowers and rainbows.

I must thank my friends Iris and Linda for the kaleidoscope cane inspiration! I have some projects made with slices from these canes in progress, so stay tuned. I'm not usually into sanding and buffing - I like matte finish - but I'm thinking these may need to be shiny. We'll see.

ornaments

These are not crab rangoons. But that's what they remind me of.



This is folded cardstock, which then gets covered with thin sheets of polymer clay and baked.



Voila! Fabulous, lightweight ornaments.

The Fool

I've started my tarot art. This is the fool - not finished yet (no, my tarot people are not going to be headless). I decided to start with the major arcana and go in order, because I tend to work better with an organized plan. I plan to make them all go together so they can eventually be printed as a deck.

• Traditional elements of the card
• Mixed media, predominantly polymer clay
• About 7 by 10 inches
• Name at the bottom in stamped letter tiles
• Number in top left corner
• Element (earth, water, fire, air) in top right corner
• Very colorful and whimsical

This is The Fool. It has the common elements of the card: a person at the edge of a cliff with dog, sunshine, and knapsack of belongings. The air symbol in the top right corner can't really be seen well yet, because it's mica shift and will need to be sanded and buffed to show up properly. The fool's body and the cliff are canework, the water is made with individual snakes of clay, and the background is marbled clay (about 7 colors) with some light texturing.

Still to be completed:

• The head (see photo below), which is hand-sculpted and glazed with fine gold embossing powder. I wasn't sure if the powder would get all melty and disastrous, so the head will not be going in oven. Fortunately, the rest can be put in the oven more than once, so pieces can be added, and the whole thing can go back in for baking.
• The knapsack, which is going to be a drawstring bag sewn out of fabric with actual stuff in it.
• The hat, which I think will be a jester-type hat. I haven't decided on the medium yet - fabric, clay or felt, or some combination of those.
• And probably hair. I got some wonderful, colorful fibers but am still pondering the hairdo. Bad hair can ruin a whole piece of art, ya know?