"On the Town" This pair of socialites are dressed for show. Perhaps to the opera, broadway show or... maybe they'll end up in my necklace collection. hee hee

  Inspired by taking Christie Friesen's class, please let me introduce you to Nel the sea turtle.

  Nel's first close up. Warning, it's a large pic so you can see better. Click here to see her bejewelled back.

  "FishNet Light"; sun lit.

This is an Ikea "Grono" (with double dots over the Os) table light. I must admit a grudging like for Ikea now because I see many of their offerings as plain, blank surfaces that I can decorate to my heart's desire.

Those Grono table lights are great examples. They're sold as a plain, colorless, frosted glass boxes, approx 8" tall, 4" wide. Pretty boring... until polymer clay gloms onto it. :)

   "FishNet Light"; bulb lit

Same table light but photoed with the internal light source, a 25 watt light bulb.

I've been wanting to "do" polyclay lights for a very long time. So after doing this one, I rushed back to Ikea and got a bunch more of their blank surface type lights. I'm gonna have some fun!

  A bit of mokume gane play.

  The slicer tool I used to make those ridgy slices on the mokume play piece to the left.

  Latest, albeit unfinished project. I wanted to do an egg project, and have always found the skate's egg sack to have a cool shape. I let my muse go for it! This piece measures about 6.5" long, 3.5" wide and about an inch thick at it's thickest point.

  Finished! And what an educational process it was. The one case you see (above) kinda broke. Well, I tweaked and twiddled it one time too many trying to make it swell. It split wide open.

After a good night's sleep, I figure out how to salvage it and even mustered the energy to make another one, using better techniques.

I do love playing with prototypes. It gives me the chance to stretch my brain cells trying to master the clay in new ways.

  This interpretative egg case pendant has a white, peach, copper and gold mokume gane pattern on the front and back. The cavity is the color of bright coral. The case front is threaded with glass beaded curled copper wire strands. Dimensions: 4 3/4" (12mm) long, 2 2/3" inches (6.4mm) wide, 7/8" (2mm) deep.

  To the right is a collapsable animal thingie toy. You know the kind of figure that collapses into a limp heap when you push up from the bottom of the base. This is one of the toys Pier showed the class how to make.

The one to the left is a rolling kinda kinetic toy. The "X" looking thing with a stick across it rolls end over over end back and forth along the dark grey rails.

  This is a rocker toy. It's about a foot long and about 7-8" tall. The rockers are curved copper wire, about 8-10 gauge. With a little encouragement, it can rock on its own for a few minutes.

  This a more of a mobile on a stand. The fun is in trying to balance the complexity of the various pieces. Using the polymer clay is great for testing before finalizing. A little blob here, a pinch there. Then the properly weighted pieces can be shaped into cool objects and baked.

movie of a slightly different balance toy