Dave (my husband) is awesome. I know I’ve said this before, but it must be repeated.
He’s the one who bought me my first pasta machine for polymer clay, when I still thought I didn’t really need it. (How wrong I was)
He brings home cool tools and wire and interesting metal bits if he thinks I could use them. He’s even created tools for me – like a specially modified caulking gun which allows me to use the metal clay gun without breaking my hands.
And in September, (just before NaNoWriMo so I didn’t gotten much of a chance to play with it before hand) he got me a Smith Little Torch. It may be mini, but it’s powerful. Speaking from experience, you can melt things quite well if you try. Fortunately, I was actually trying that time… 
I’ve got it set up with the small disposable bottles of mapp gas and oxygen.
Mostly I’ve been playing around and practicing. Getting something soldered isn’t too hard. Getting the stupid little chips of solder to sit where you put them and flow into the seam where you want them instead of all over the outside of your piece– Well, that’s a little harder.
But that’s what they make files and sandpaper for, right? And I think I’m slowly getting better.
The first sculpture - Poetree
I loved this story about a mysterious artist who left ten marvellously intricate paper sculptures in support of Scotland’s libraries.
Even after all the publicity, the artist chose to remain anonymous.
I made it – 50,900 words of first draft last night for NaNoWriMo. And I got to the end of the story.
Of course, there are gaps and sections which don’t quite match later changes, and I have to strengthen my characters in the earlier scenes, and add some sections in different points of view, etc, etc. There’s also very little description anywhere – it’s like having the actors move around on a green screen ready for the CGI backgrounds.
It is a ROUGH draft – very rough – but it’s got the skeleton of a good story in it. And it has the fight scene with possessed camels stalking people. I’ll have to punch it up later, but after doing some research on camels, I really wouldn’t want to mess with one. They’re fast. And if they get hungry enough, they’ll eat pretty much anything, not just vegetation.
Time to breath. And uh… I guess I should probably clean the house. It really needs it. It looks rather like a herd of crazed camels stampeded through.
I’ve got 35,001 words of the 50,000 I need for the month for NaNoWriMo. I’m exactly on track right now to finish where I need to be.
I’m having the usual cyclical love-hate relationship with the book. It’s a first draft, and that’s what I try to keep reminding myself.
It’s ok if it’s complete dreck at this point, and the characters are talking heads without much personality in a few of the early scenes.
It’s ok if I stuck a Sphinx in there just because – I’m sure to figure out a way to tie it in later. Right?
And ok, maybe I don’t exactly know what’s going to happen next and my dirty dishes are calling me and they’re actually sounding better than sitting down at the laptop and trying to figure this story out…
But it’s a first draft and it’s NaNoWriMo, and I’m darn well going to finish one way or another. Even if I have to add a herd of rampaging fluffy kittens.
Which now that I think about it, could be quite fun. Maybe I should go back and work on that midgrade scifi I started, and they could be alien flesh-eating fluffy kittens, or maybe they’re robotic scouts– Which is just another instance of my brain trying to run away with any new shiny idea it comes across so it doesn’t have to face the difficult bits of the one I’m working on.
And then there are days, where I write a line or two that I think are great, and then I know that I will finish this thing, and I love my main character, and it all can be edited, and the final version will be much better than it is now.
And it’s all worth it. And that’s why this is the fourth year in a row that I’ve done NaNo.
Here’s another idea if you’re interested in using chalks on clay. Dana from Solafar had an interesting blog post on weathering with pastels. He applies powdered pastels to baked clay, then seals it for a very nice effect.
I’ve used the hard chalk pastels that you can scrape to make a powder, I’ve also used some softer Decorating Chalks (I think they were from the scrapbook section in Michael’s) that you could apply with a tiny sponge applicator. But in both cases, I’ve always applied it to raw clay.
I’m going to have to try this – it looks like it will give you a bit more control and subtlety.
Inch by Inch - one inch tiles
For the past couple years, our guild has done a one inch tile challenge, something like Artists Trading Cards. Each of us makes 2 one inch polymer clay tiles, using any technique we like. (We also tend to trade tiles with other artists at our clay retreat but that’s optional)
The tiles are used as mosaic tiles on two mirror or picture frames. Everyone who made a tile gets a chance to win one, and the other goes into the guilds traveling exhibit. The exhibit gets displayed in various places (mainly libraries) throughout Connecticut.
I almost always sculpt something but this time I decided to make it a two parter. One of the people I work with is always quoting the kids book “Inch by Inch” when we’re behind and it seemed applicable to the theme. So on one tile, I sculpted a little inchworm, and on the other, I used letter stamps to press in the words.
I used a two part silicone molding putty to mold the designs so I can make multiples in an ivory colored clay. (Premo white, translucent and ecru mixed)
The two on the left were colored with Prisma markers after they were baked.
The rest were colored with Decorating Chalks using little Micro brushes while the clay was raw. It’s not the most precise of techniques but it gave me the soft quality I was looking for.
The chalks will come off without being coated in some way, so I used a barely damp brush coated in TLS to seal them in. That smeared the chalks a little more. Once they were baked, I used burnt umber acrylic paint to bring out the detail and give it the browner cast you see.
I’m actually working on the third book in what isn’t quite a trilogy. Each one is a stand-alone story about one of three sisters. And they’re princesses – of course. (YA fantasy) But not vampires.
Although if you combined the two… Anyone know if there’s a vampire Barbie yet? I’m sure she’d have a very stylish pink cape.
Actually, at the beginning of the second book, the oldest princess is very like Barbie. But that gets beaten out of her by the end. And there are pigs, but I don’t think they’re pink ones.
But back to my story.
I wanted this one to be my quest book. My heroine is the youngest daughter Chrysanthemum – the one who’d rather be out catching dragons than gazing soulfully into pools. The one who challenges all the princes to fight instead of swooning over them. And the one her father is trying to marry off and make into a model heir to the throne – very much against her wishes.
There will be desert caravans, and giant mythical creatures, and other creatures that don’t have myths yet because I completely made them up, and sword fighting, and possibly an un-dead* army of mind-controlled camels.
And an evil magician and a prisoner and a fabled jewel and a bunch of other stuff I’m still working on.
I’ve decided I was holding back too much on a couple of the other ones. What’s the point of having realistic fantasy? I’m going to have some fun with this one. 
*As in alive, not zombies with bits falling off all over. Unless they’re other people’s bits – because have you seen how big their teeth are? And they’re fast. I’d watch out for the zombie camel army if I was you. You’re not gonna take them out with a shovel.
Giant evil millipede with venomous fangs!!!
So far I’m keeping up on my word count for NaNo. I had just under 4K words last night.
The first night and a half of writing is just a mishmash as I was trying to get thoughts down – there’s backstory and repetitive interior monologue, and I really should have written the sword fight out instead of summarizing it… It’s a mess. But it’s a beautiful mess and things are starting to flow now
And I can always come back and fix it after NaNo. Just like any art or craft, sometimes you have to make that first junky version before the creativity starts flowing and the inspiration starts sparking. And even if that first draft gets completely rewritten that practice, and that learning process is important. (And there are at least three sentences in there that I really, really love so it won’t be COMPLETELY rewritten.)
It’s amazing the way things just come to you when you’re working. I actually sat down and outlined my idea for this story ahead of time, but there were some vague areas (like bad guy does something but I’m not quite sure why or how yet) and some pieces that hadn’t quite clicked yet. It didn’t matter how much I shook it around in my head, it wasn’t there.
But after two days of writing, as I was driving home yesterday, I figured out how the major problem in the book works. AND it lets me add a cool creature that I hadn’t figured out how to get in there before.
And just before we turned out the lights last night, I noticed something that looked like a gravity defying worm on the ceiling. It was actually a millipede, but in my book, it’s gonna be a lot bigger, a lot nastier, and the first evidence of the evil dark lord. And with acid spewing fangs. *Insert evil laughter here*
Can you tell I’m having fun?
These are the pieces from Kathleen Dustin’s class. Click on the image to see the full view.
The carving at the bottom left is on the back of the second piece. I wanted to play around with it and the plain black background seemed to need something. If I can make my pieces reversible, it’s a plus point.
I was going to antique it with white or red acrylic paint to highlight the carving, but the first paint tube I picked out of the drawer was an irridescent bronze. I really like how it contrasts with the black.
The amazing piece in the bottom right was one I bought from Kathleen. The photo really doesn’t do it justice. You can see the slight difference between her carving and mine, can’t you?
I need a lot more practice. But I enjoyed it enough I bought a set of Dockyard 1.5 mm mini carvers. I haven’t had a chance to use them yet, but I’ll probably try them on the back of the teal piece.
