3/31/12

new soap supplies

I am going to make new soap this weekend. I finally received my orders in the mail this week. I bought Fench green clay from Portugal, and I also bought French pink clay, which is supposed to be the mildest clay.
The green clay I will use for the prickly pear soap, and the pink clay for the pomegranate shaving soap. I hope it will color the soap accordingly. That would look very nice. I am still debating if I should get the yellow clay for the dandelion root soap!?
I will have to make lots of soap before April 13th, so I have a lot in stock. I am going to have major surgery on my right arm, and will basically be out of commission for a few months. The doctor gave me a recovery time of 3-4 months, with NO use of my arm during that entire time. Not good!! That means no new jewelry, no mosaics, no painting. That is going to drive me crazy. What am I going to do with myself for that time period? I guess I will have to do a lot of thrifting, that is if I can drive myself. Looks like I better start making a list of activities I can do while laid up.
I am also trying to decide if I should close my Etsy shop for a while, but I think with the help of my family and friends, I can still run it and just have them package the orders for me. We shall see how that works out!
Oh, and I messed up one of the circuit board pendants shown in the previous post. As usual the resin ended up with a big air bubble in one of them, even though I followed directions to the t. I HAVE to find another resin besides the Magic-Glos. I tried to use the torch as suggested to get the bubble out, and all it did was mess up the pendant even further.
Well, nothing I can do about it now. On to making soap! Pictures will follow.

3/21/12

New jewelry


I made 4 new pendants out of circuit board. The green circuit board is from my old laptop, the purple board I found at a thrift store. I added Swarovski crystals and polymer clay to the circuit board to make the pendant less boring. The two square small pendants still need to be covered with UV resin, but it has not been sunny enough and too windy to finish them. The resin dome will enhance the single Swarovski crystal on it and make it sparkle even more. Once all the pendants are finished and I have had a chance to take pictures, they will be listed in my Etsy store

3/16/12

Past Artist in Residence Project





So I decided it is time to post someting other than soap stuff again.
A few years ago, when I was artist in residence at a local elementary school, I did some paintings on the walls in the media center. The paintings are in the shape of books. The books are curiculum based themes, as in "the rainforest, fractured fairy tales and the desert". To make them more interesting for the students, the books are "I Spy- books" with objects hidden in them for the students to find. I wrote a poem for each book which listed the things to find.
So how about it, can you find everything?

3/12/12

New Shampoo Bars

I made new shampoo bars today. This time, I made a bigger 4+ pound batch, because I spent yesterday morning building a mold out of leftover wood we had laying around the house. I adapted the recipe to fit the new mold perfectly.
The soap is a Pomegranate, Vanilla, Lavender shampoo bar and it smells so good.
It should be ready in about 3 to 4 weeks.
I am going to make Honey Mint soap tomorrow, as soon as I have unmolded this batch, so I can use the new mold again.