I entered the Bead Dreams competition for the first time this year. Bead Dreams is a national juried show sponsored by Bead and Button magazine. Both of my entries (“Down the Garden Path” and “Salinity”) were juried into the contest as finalists. “Down the Garden Path” took third in the Polymer Clay category. It is a one piece collar necklace with a garden theme – covered in a textural collage of flowers, leaves, vines, dragonflies and butterflies.

Thanks Libby and Jen for passing on the news before the official notification! I was psyched. 🙂 Congratulations, Libby on placing second!

Just found out I was a finalist in the 2004-2005 Fire Mountain Gems Beading Contest in the wood beads category. I think I’m happiest about actually making the piece though 🙂 I might not have gotten around to it if it wasn’t for the contest. This is an unusual necklace for me – only the owl is polymer clay. Everything else is wood.

I’ve been coming up with a design for my beads for the guild bead strand. You can see part of a previous year’s strand on the SCPCG traveling exhibit page. I’ve known about it all year, I just couldn’t decide what I wanted to make – can you tell I’m a procrastinator? 🙂

I’ve decided to make a faux ivory moon with an owl on one side and a wolf on the other.. Ivory is one of my favorite effects – it works so wonderfully to bring out the details in one of my mini sculpts. Jade is nice too and you can do a nice faux bronze with a mix of black and gold clay, antiqued with turquoise acrylic paint. Check out the glassattic for more faux recipes.

This little manatee is an example. Do you have any ideas for other effects that I should try with these little guys? Just use the contact page or add a comment to the blog below.