Dragons

"Why aren't you making Dragons?" David asked me. Good question.....I had dragged him too the beach weeks earlier to help me find pieces of washed up coral as I had had an idea to use them as the sun backed rocks that little dragons would lie on. Since that time the coral had been sitting outside waiting to be used.

I pulled out the copper coloured clay to use as my base and started work. 

I wan't sure if the clay would fuse to the coral during the baking process, and as it turns out it does - sometimes. However, this little dragon did not. So, I asked David to glue him on. When I got home from work that day David showed me the piece - but he had added a couple of touches of his own. He has boxes full of trees, bushes, benches, people etc that game from an architectural model that he was given. The palm tree and bush were the perfect scale for the dragon and really finished the piece. 

The second dragon was already fused to the coral as his tail was wrapped around it. I tried adding a tree to his rock, but it didn't look right, then David showed me the little people that had in his box of goodies. Perfect!

                      

The third dragon was a challenge. I wanted to create one with mantled wings. The problem there was that the clay softens when it is baked and I ran the risk of them collapsing. I used tinfoil to hold them in place, put him in the convection oven and crossed my fingers. Luckily it all worked out quite well, good enough that I am going to make more like this.

More Horses. Sea and otherwise....

Boxes full of shiny stuff and colourful clay started arriving. - now I had to figure out what to do.As I had really enjoyed making the seahorses I decided to make some of those first.  I was happy to see that they showed an improvement in technique from my first attempts, although the heads still need work.

I  experimented with using molds to create the Flower Seahorse. The centre of the flowers are tiny Swarovski crystal rhinestones.

I made some simple canes for the first time. They worked out well and made lovely fins

This time I used molds to create the manes for the horse heads, and I think I like the look better as it is not so messy.

Then I just had to make a unicorn! 

My first clay attemps

David gave me some polymer clay for my birthday in October. From the minute I started messing around with it I was hooked!

The first thing I made was this dragon from Christi Friesens's book. It took me a couple of hours, but was so much fun I just had to keep going.

I made a couple more little dragons - then realized that as the fabric I had purchased to create little girls tutus for the Craft Fair was MIA on a boat somewhere in the Bahamas, clay ornaments would be another option.

So, I went to Christi Friesen's website and downloaded some of her lessons. One of which was a horses head. This is the first one I made. 

I have a box full of metallic threads which I though might look good in manes, so, after checking first that they would not melt in the oven I used them in the next horse.

Time to branch out to my own design ideas. Melinda suggested seahorses - I loved that idea so started working on them. This is the first one. He's a bit messy, but had a great head.

I also did a couple of birds. This was the first one.

In the end I had about a dozen pieces to take the the Craft Fair, and sold them all. A local gallery owner stopped by my table and told me that she wanted to sell my stuff, which was thrilling! Of course, that meant I just HAD to buy more clay, beads, rhinestones.......