Interesting thing

I’m browsing my collection of non-English blogs for the first time in months.  Here’s something I found interesting.
Another way to make petals for a flower cane

I hate waiting

I ordered all kinds of goodies from polymerclayexpress on Monday.  Got notice that it shipped yesterday and it should arrive on Friday.  I hate this waiting period.  Why can’t they invent teleporting so that I can order and then “poof” it’s here.

What did I order?

PCE M-Extruder with 40-General Discs (bottom of page)

Small Barrel Accessory with 40-General Discs (bottom of page)

2.5mm Bead Corer PCE Extruder Accessory (3rd section from top)

2.5mm Coring Disk (3rd section from top)

Bracelet 3 Disk (2nd section from bottom)

All of the above are found on this page: Extruder and accessories

TheArtWay Workshop Video Mari O’Dell Boxes,Bangles,FocalBeads DVD

TheArtWay Workshop Video Cindy Beljan Extruding Canes DVD

These 2 DVDs are found on this page 2nd section from the top: Extruder and accessories

AbbaDabba DVD Arabesque Canes

This DVD is found at the bottom of this page: Abba Dabba Videos

So with all of this I will be able to extrude bits to make canes (hey, maybe I can get closer to precision caning), extrude tube beads, make tile bracelets and whatever the dvds teach me.

The Arabesque caning video will be fun.  I like Jana’s work and I’ve played around with it a bit but I’m really looking forward to learning more and trying more.

Unfortunately with it arriving on Friday, odds are that I won’t really get to do much with them til Monday.  Friday is payday so we have runs to make that evening.  I might get to watch a dvd, if I’m lucky.  And then the weekends are packed with house projects.  Hopefully we’ll get the big freezer put back together and the cabinet that goes between it and the stove in.  Then maybe I can finally unpack the last of the kitchen boxes.

Now I have to go do some laundry.  Have I mentioned that we have a laundry chute?  It might just be the most awesome thing about this house. No more carrying dirty clothes down 2 flights of stairs.  Yeah the clean clothes have to be carried up but I can usually get my DH to do it.

At last, I’ve returned

We’re in the new house and while there’s a lot more unpacking to do, it’s livable.  I’ve managed to unpack my clay table, though very little else of my studio.

Today, I got my hands on my clay for the first time in way too long.  I had picked up some wallpaper sample books.  Some are being taped to my walls for color and pattern inspiration.  Others are textured and I tested them with clay.  Most of them work very well.

I have an idea for making beads using only white, black and grey/silver.  I’m not sure I’ll get to them today but I’ll do it soon.

I was also intrigued by the article in PolymerCafe about making your own testure wheels.  I must try that.

I also need to string and photo more orphans for auction before Monday.  And I have a pile of clothing that no longer fits to photo and list.

Once I get my Paypal account re-verified, I’ll be buying both sizes of Polymer Clay Expresses extruder and tons of disks for both.  Can’t wait to play with those.

Still very busy but I’m going to try to get back in the habit of posting here often.

Moving

I’ve been too busy (and not creative) to write lately and it’s just going to get worse.

We’ve been preapproved for a house loan and the search is on.  5 houses seen and many more to go.  2 of those 5 are still in the running.

In the meantime, the lease on our rental runs out on the 19th.  This coming weekend we’ll be moving our bed and cat to my parents’ house (where we’ll be staying while we find a house).  My clay is over there already and my clay desk was dismantled last night.  Even though I haven’t clayed in weeks, I feel odd not having it there next to me.  I hadn’t realized what a comfort just the thought of claying is to me.

I won’t be claying until we find a house and get moved in.  I’m planning to list on Mondays as usual for as long as possible.  I’ve got plenty of orphans.

So this week is packing, with a few evenings devoted to seeing houses.  Next week will be cleaning and packing/moving whatever is left after this weekend.

I’ll probably not post again til we’re settled, hopefully no more than 2 months.

Skip if you just want polymer clay musings

cuz this isn’t at all about anything creative.

I admit, I’m really in panic mode.  It’s been a nightmare trying to get pre-approved for a house loan (who knew having no credit is almost worse than having bad credit).  The end of lease deadline is creeping up on me faster than I’d like (May 19).  While I do have plans set up for the different possible outcomes of all this, I really dislike the limbo I’m in.  I think the obsessive parts of my personality come out of hiding when I feel like this. 

I’m obsessed with packing.  Granted, it’s a great deal to do in a short time but still.  I think of packing nearly constantly, planning what to pack next and how to pack certain things.  I feel an almost overwhelming need to get up and pack something at random moments.  Saturday night I’d filled all the boxes we had and I still wanted/needed to pack more.  Got more boxes on Sunday and had the hardest time keeping myself from packing them all that day, despite being sore from carrying 2 loads of boxes down to the truck, over to my parent’s house and up to the spare room we’re using for storage.  I used over half the boxes just today.  I made my DH promise to find me more boxes at work tomorrow.  I have Dad looking at his work too.

At least I’m finally starting to see evidence of all this packing.  At first I didn’t cuz I was packing my craft closet.  Close the door and I don’t see that it’s pretty empty.  But now most of my shelving units are empty and alot of my puter desk and some of the top shelf of my work desk.  And the DVD racks are empty (or would be if I wasn’t using one to organize my puter game cases and discs.  Maybe seeing empty spaces will calm my anxiety.

Continuing last night’s post about painting, I talked to DH today and we seem to have settled quite a bit of the color choices.  Bathroom will be black and white with pewter fiuxtures.  Color will be in the rugs, towels and shower curtains and I’ll get sets of those in varying colors so I can change them out as the mood strikes.  Kitchen will be black and grey with color in the accessories, probably red.  Living room will be red and as luxurious as I can make it, with rich, plush, comfy fabrics and textures.  That one will be a long term project as I save up for the quality I want.  Bedroom will be Indian.  Not sure of the colors yet, depends what I can find in saris when I get to that point.  I’ll use saris to make the curtains and bedspread and pillow cases.  Studio - I don’t know.  I need to think on that more.

Dreaming

I spent my weekend packing and my body is telling me to rest now (my back and shoulders ache).  I got to thinking about having a house of my own, a house I own.  In that house, no one (cept my DH and he said I can do anything I want) can tell me what colors I can or cannot paint a room.  I’ve never had that before.  So I’ve been thinking about what colors I’d like to paint various rooms.  I’m sharing those thoughts with you.

I love purple, rich, deep royal purple (Premo purple, actually), but that’s a really hard color to paint a wall and live with it afterwards.  I’m not so fond of lighter versions of that color.  I also love red, both bold blood red and maroon.  Gryffindor red, if you’re a Harry Potter fan.  Another hard color to paint a wall, tho easier than purple.  I like both colors with gold accents.  I’ve always wanted a purple bedroom but I’m not so sure of that now.  I like a red living room.  I painted my parents’ living room red with gold sponged over it and I love it.  Not so sure I want to do that again tho, it was a lot of work.

I’ve seen on the decorating shows solid color walls that have a subtle striping effect, like a dull stripe and a shiny stripe of the same color.  Mica shift is what it reminds me of.  I like that, does anyone know how to do it?

I’ll have a studio in the new house.  I’ve always gone with white before so the colored walls wouldn’t reflect color onto my work.  But I’m not so sure I want that anymore or that it’s all that important.  I think I want something fun and funky.  But I have no idea what.

Share with me your ideas, suggestions, and/or examples of how you’ve painted your workspace.  Or pictures you’ve seen that might inspire me on what to do with mine.  Or tell/show me what you’d love to do to your space if you could.

Week 9 and the chaos that is my life

Yes I’m still doing The Artist’s Way.

I’ve not been writing about it cuz it’s not been helpful for the last few weeks.  I’ve already accomplished what it’s saying I should do.  I still do my morning pages (tho as bedtime pages).  I’ve been missing sat nights lately (DH being around distracts me) but I do them  the rest of the week.  I’ve had to shorten them more often than not lately, cuz they’ve not been useful but just make me more anxious.

DH and I have been in the process of getting a loan to buy a house since January.  We have no credit (literally) so we’ve had to manually collect and then submit reports from our creditors.  Our loan person took her sweet time getting these reports sent out and of course the companies took their sweet time returning them.  Last week, we got the news that our landlady wants to put the house up for sale as soon as our lease is up.  That’s in 2 months.  We’d been thinking we had some leeway in when we had to move out (we’re friends with our landlady and she’s always willing to work things out with us).  Now, there is no leeway, she needs us out so she can get the house ready for sale.  This sent me into a huge panic last week.  So my morning pages were just endless worrying about all we have to do and it just made me more anxious about the whole thing rather than making me feel better.  We’ve taken some steps to resolve some of the issues and I’m feeling better about it now.

But this also puts a monkey wrench into any creative plans I may have had.  I need to pack and clean as well as finalize loan related things and find a house to buy.  My work desk will be one of the last things I pack and I will take a few hours here and there to create if inspiration strikes but overall, I’ll be doing very little on the creative side.  I may even close my Ebay store for a week or 2 at the height of all this.

All of this doesn’t leave much time for The Artist’s Way.  I’ll continue with it and in all likelihood I’ll keep coming up on the fact that I’ve already accomplished most of it but even if I havn’t accomplished it, I won’t have much time to devote to trying to do it.  The one thing I won’t stop is the morning pages.  They are helpful, most of the time, and will certainly help me work thru the stress this whole situation will certainly cause me.

On one hand, I’m happy to finally be buying a house and have a place where I can do anything I want (including paint the walls purple with pink polka dots if I want to).  But the responsibilities of it scare the crap out of me.  I also despise packing and moving.  Thankfully my parents are letting us use one of their spare rooms as storage, otherwise I’d be in real trouble.  This is a one bedroom apartment, I simply don’t have room for all the boxes I’ll be packing.  Heck, there’s not even room for all the stuff we own.  So by taking the boxes over to their house once a week, I’ll have room to continue packing and eventually, this place will stop looking like a storage shed and more like a place to live.  (we’ve got to do something about our packrat tendancies lol)

So that’s what’s going on with me.  I expect posting here will become rare as well for the next few months as well.

Discontinued?

So I’m browsing Polymer Clay Central’s Forums for the first time in eons and I see posts about some colors being discontinued. 

Is this a new thing?  Are these colors (and which colors?) being discontinued all together.  Or is this just the announcement from back in 2006 being found again (the one where a bunch of colors were discontinued in the pound size but were still available in the 2oz size)?

If anyone has some info, leave me a comment.

Happy Birthday to me

I turn 33 today.  DH turns 37.  Yes, we have the same birthday.  He’ll never forget my birthday lol.

A string of bad luck

I don’t know what’s causing it but I seem to be having a string of bad luck. 

On Friday, all the fans on my computer including the one in the power supply decided to act funny or just plain quit working (ok so one fan’s been acting up for months, but the rest joined it).  Had to replace them all, including a new power supply and even added another fan since I had space for it.

First thing Saturday morning, I fell partway down the stairs and sprained my ankle.  And I do mean first thing.  I woke up, got up, and got dressed.  We smoke but not in the house and we live in an upper.  So I put on my jacket and head down the stairs just like I do every morning.  I must have stepped out too far on the first step cuz the next thing I know I’m sitting on my butt 4 steps down wondering what the heck just happened.  I sat there a moment before getting up and carefully going the rest of the way down.  Back when I was a teenager I severely (as in I’m lucky I didn’t break it) sprained my right ankle and for several years afterwards that ankle was prone to mild sprains so I’m very familar with how a sprained ankle feels.  So I’m sitting at the bottom of the stairs, smoking, and wondering if my ankle (it’s my right one again) is going to swell up like a balloon.  Previous experience tells me that I won’t know for 20 minutes or more (I don’t know if it’s normal but I have delayed reactions to injuries like that).  So I carefully make my way back upstairs and to my computer.  45 minutes later, only slight swelling and mild pain tells me it’s a mild sprain (thankfully).  No need to go to the doctor in that case, they’ll just tell me to wrap it, ice it, elevate it and stay off it.  I’m managing the stay off it part, mostly.  I did wrap it when we made a Walmart run (and unwrapped it as soon as I got home).  Elevated it by laying in the recliner today while playing the Wii.  To sum it up, I’m sitting as much as possible and limping when I do walk around.  And the tendancy to walk with the right foot turned out (about 45 degrees) is back with a vengeance.  I developed that tendancy after the first sprain when I was off the crutches (probably too early, I hated those things) and it was still slightly painful to walk.  With a lot of effort I learned to correct it tho it came back a bit whenever that ankle hurt (weather related aches, etc).  I’ll have to keep an eye on that.

Wow, I really got sidetracked there.  Anyway, I’m now kinda afraid to do much, for fear of the next piece of bad luck.  Both events so far were personal as in what broke or was injured was mine and really only affected me (OK so DH had to run me to the store for the fans and help me install them and he’s worried about me cuz I’m injured but he’s not really been affected like I have).  The only thing I can think of that could break that would only affect me is my pasta machine.  And that’s a very scary thought.  I do have a brand new machine and motor in storage but I’m rather attached to my old ones.  They’ve been with me and worked well for me for a long time.

Wish me luck please.