Sunday, March 27, 2011

Weekend Recap

Does anyone else feel like this weekend was on fast forward? Great chunks of time passed in the blink of an eye, and here it is Sunday night (and past my usual Sunday night bedtime) and I'm not sure how it got to be this time on this day.

We had rain all day yesterday. It was a steady rain with a comforting sound, which made for a day of general laziness, although I did not nap or spend the day reading. I made some earrings, finished making a few faux dicro beads, did a little bin organizing. And then it was bedtime. Huh? Seriously, it went that quickly.

Today was no slower. It didn't rain, but it was overcast and cool all day. The Chihuahua Brothers were content to snooze in their beds while I cleaned off my desk (again) and washed clothes. Which reminds me - my sheets are still in the washer. Guess I'm up for another hour until they finish drying. I started a sweater for my newest grandson, due in July. And I like the pattern so much that I started a second one before I was even halfway finished with the first. And I just might start a third. Yes, I like having project options. I have five socks finished for him. Unfortunately, none of them match. I have two more on the needles, and then I'll start over on the matching ones. My goal was a different pair for every day of the week. No soap this weekend - I think the soap supplies are permanently put away until early June when I can start selling some of what I'm making.

I did get quite a few bins emptied. I have a great stack of crafty stuff to give away, as well as several boxes of stuff that I'm just tossing. I'd say I'm about a third of a the way finished cleaning out my craft room. I've needed to do this for a very long time!

And there may or may not have been chocolate chip muffins baked ... I'd post photographic proof, but my camera batteries seemed to have died. You'll just have to take my word on the yumminess.

Thursday, March 24, 2011

Techniques should be for Tuesday ...

... the alliteration is just better. But I learned a new technique tonight, and it's Thursday!

I love staying up late on Thursday. I'm normally in bed by 9:00 and up by 5:00 or 5:30, but on Thursdays I give myself permission to stay up late and do whatever I want. I just don't care if I'm tired at work on Friday, because - hey - it's Friday! It's ok to be tired at work on Friday, right?

So tonight I followed the detailed instructions I just purchased on how to make faux dicroic glass beads (http://beadazzleme.blogspot.com/2011/03/tutorial-how-to-create-faux-glass-beads.html). Out of, guess what - no, not soap. Or glass, either, for that matter! Polymer clay, in case you're tired of guessing. It's all very mysterious and involves translucent polymer clay, foil leaf, pearl-ex powders and liquid polymer clay. Magic heat applied by a heat gun and everything melts and clears and comes together in a beautiful bead that looks like glass. To wit:

Yeah, sorry about the crappy, blurry photo (and my messy desk). I think I may have actually captured a better image on my cell phone, but for some reason it won't download from my e-mail, so we may never know.

But in real life, this bead is clear and beautiful and not blurry. I still need lots of practice to make better ones because I smeared one of the layers of Pearl-Ex and the liquid clay ran in drivels on one layer. And there's a big stinking air bubble, and I'm not totally in love with the gold foil - this is one time I think silver foil may have actually worked better but I don't have any so I'll use less gold next time. And I should have added a few more layers of liquid clay for a thicker layer of clear on top the colors, but we all know how patient I am so that didn't happen. But tonight is Technique Tuesday on Thursday and I learned something new and I'm still awake and the Chihuahua Brothers are asleep in their little beds and tomorrow is Friday and it's all very, very good!

Sunday, March 20, 2011

Soap photos!

Here are a some of the soaps I made yesterday. Good clean fun - right? LOL! I made more bars with crushed lavender buds, scented with anise and lavender and tinted a light blue (with a little bit of sparkle mica added), but I can't get a decent photograph of them because my camera just doesn't know what to focus on.

This is goats milk and aloe with ground oatmeal. The scent is wonderful - oatmeal, milk and honey. Soft and sweet, but not cloying. I made two bars with soap left from the loaf below.










Goats milk and clear glycerine with ground oatmeal added. I did a 2-color pour around the inclusions, and I love the way it turned out. I scented with oatmeal, milk and honey fragrance oil, but in hindsight I should have used an orange/vanilla scent to match the orange sherbet look.
These are foot-scrub soaps. The tan bar has raw sugar added, the white rectangular bar has white sugar added and the oval massage bar has sea salt. I'm having these bars "tested" for effectiveness, so I didn't include fragrances. But for foot bars, I'll probably scent with peppermint or eucalyptus or maybe tea tree or bamboo. Personally, I don't think the salt bar is going to work very well. I always wash my hands with any leftover bits, and this one doesn't lather very much. It's really for exfoliating, though, so we'll see what everyone thinks.

And lest anyone is worried about organizing being pushed aside for crafting, there's plenty of that going on this weekend, too. Bags of stuff to donate or throw away, craft supplies to share with friends and plenty to keep, although not as much of that as there was. I have found that I CAN get rid of yarn! LOL!

Saturday, March 19, 2011

Great crafting weekend!

And it's not over yet! I love that I still have one more weekend day for working play.

Today's crafts:
  • Soap (and lots of it) - ground oatmeal in goats milk base with a soft milk and honey scent; two types of sugar scrub bars; a salt scrub bar (that I think still needs work, but we'll see what my testers think)
  • Hand-dyed yarn - in candy stripe colors
  • Beaded earrings
  • More polymer clay swirl beads
Photos tomorrow. Now to get my Etsy store up and running ...

My daughter Jennie and I had dinner together today, sort of. We cooked the same dish (a family favorite with Brussels sprouts, tomatoes, onions and lots of basil, served over rotini pasta and topped with Swiss cheese - yum!), but we're 500 miles apart right now, so we didn't actually sit at the same table to eat. But it was fun, nonetheless!


Diego loves Brussels sprouts. Well, Diego loves any type of food (except Jello). He waited patiently for a bite.