A Diva Designs Customer Gallery At Flickr!

I have wanted to do this for so long, and today, with the encouragement of my friend Kelly Feeney, I finally did!  I created a Flickr photo group for customers who have purchased my polymer clay tutorials.

I love seeing how you all take the lessons and put your own stamp on them, and so many of you have shared photos of your beautiful creations with me.  I'm a proud Mama and wanted to show you all off, so I hope you will join the group and post with me.  

The name of the photo group is Lynda Moseley/DivaDesigns Customer Gallery.  I've sent out a few invitations so far, and will be sending out more, but if you have purchased one of my tutorials and would like to join and show off your Diva creations, email me at Flickr, or though my Etsy shop; or leave a comment here on the blog with your Flickr username or a link to your Flickr photostream.  I will send you an invite or you can join right on Flickr when you pull up the group name.

Once you join, you may also open up a discussion thread on any clay-related topic you like.  It will also be a place I can give tips and share ideas, and I hope to also pick up some suggestions for future tutorials, so if you have a wish list, that's the place to post it!  

Thanks so much to all my wonderful customers!  I am so excited to get to showcase your marbled, faux and mica shift creations.  I look forward to seeing you in the new group!

Diva Designs Customer Gallery at Flickr

Lynda  

Art Bead Scene Challenge and an Update

I took a little time off after completing the Controlled Marbling tutorial to rest my tired brain and rev up the creative juices again.  My clay stock is very low, but the artwork which is the inspiration for the challenge this month at Art Bead Scene did its job, and I am totally inspired to create an entry this month.  

I was also very pleasantly surprised to find that Erin Prais-Hintz included one of my faux red jade focal beads in her Sakura Pagoda Etsy treasury, too!  Wow!   Thank you, Erin.  It is gorgeous collection sure to inspire.  It is already working wonders on my tired brain cells! 

I wish I could post a photo of the artwork chosen for this month's challenge, but it is copyrighted, so I hope you will visit ABS and check it out yourself.  This month's artwork is Heijinja by Toshi Yoshida, and features a color palette of orange-red, blush pink, soft gray and white.  Think cherry blossoms on a gentle Spring morning against the backdrop of a stunning scarlet red pagoda.  

And speaking of my Controlled Marbling Tutorial, the response has been tremendous since its debut last month.  Thank you to everyone who has purchased a copy.  Many of you have also sent me photos of your marbled creations, and I have received fantastic feedback letting me how much you are enjoying the technique.  I am thrilled to know you are having so much fun with it.  

I love creating these marbled pieces, too, and when Jan Montarsi asked me to contribute to an article he is writing on finishing polymer work for the February issue of The Polymer Arts, I couldn't resist creating a few marbled pieces to illustrate my finishing process, which, as most of you know, includes treating the back side of a piece with as much care as I treat the face side.

  

Jan, and Sage Bray, the publisher, decided to use a few of my photos in the article, and I hope you will get a copy and check out the article.  I believe the magazine comes out February 18th and the article will be "The Back Story."  I added a bunch of the finishing photos to my Flickr photostream, but here are a few "before and after" illustrating my finishing and sanding and buffing process.  I decided to create a pair of earrings and leave one of the pair completely unfinished.  The other one I finished as I normally do, so you can see the difference sanding and buffing make.  

Controlled Marbling Tutorial - It's Finally Here!

The new tutorial is finally here!  I just listed the Controlled Marbling Tutorial in my Etsy shop, and I am doing the happy dance!  

I could not have done it without my friends Ginger Davis Allman and her Gary, Laurel Steven and Jill Kollmann.   Thank you all so much.  You are the best! 

After all the problems with my stupid Word program, I have vowed never to use it again.  Thanks to Laurel and Ginger, I found OpenOffice, and with tips from Jill, I am now proficient at it.  My next tutorials will be a breeze to create.  No more angst! 

I hope you enjoy the new tutorial.  I hope you have a lot of fun with it.  Send me photos of your marbled creations and I'll post them here if you like.  This technique is addictive!  

Thanks again, everyone, for your support and encouragement, and your patience!  

Happy New Year!

Status Update On the New Tutorial

I had hoped to have the new Controlled Marbling Tutorial in the shop by midnight tonight, but I'm afraid it is not going to happen.  I have shot all the photos and edited them for size.

I got up at 4:30 this morning to start writing it in my Word program.  I meticulously saved it every few sentences on my laptop and on a flash drive.

When I was about five paragraphs into the text part of the tutorial, I tried to insert an image, and my Word program froze.  I watched that filmy screen and the little circle going round and round for an hour, hoping it would resolve itself; but I had to turn the computer off to get out of the program.  I turned the laptop back on and tried to open the file, but could not.  All I saw was one of those "file corrupt" error messages.  I plugged in the flash drive and the same thing happened.

I switched to my desktop and could not open there, either.  I started typing the tutorial from scratch again, only to have the Word program freeze on my desktop at the same point.  As soon as I tried to upload the photo, it froze up and I could not save it.  Now, these are different versions of Word, and the pc runs on windows 98 and the laptop on Windows 7.

I was so frustrated, I threw up my hands and walked away for a little while.  An hour later, I decided to go looking for my Word program disc.  Unfortunately, there isn't one.  My laptop came programmed with the free trial version, which I later converted to the full length program, complete with key number.  I tried everything I could think of, even called a computer-savvy friend, who said it should be compatible due to some program built into Windows 7 that makes all things previous versions of programs compatible.  Right, researched that and found out I don't have that program and it would cost $200 for one that would do that.

I decided to purchase another Word program, and $130 later, I got a new key code and thought that would fix the problem.  Halfway through installation, installation stopped and I received another error message, this one something about a conflict between 32 bit and 64 bit.  I have no idea what that means, and at this point, I don't know what to do.  I ordered a backup cd with the new Word program, but it will be 3-4 weeks until it arrives.  Is it going to work if the digital version didn't?  With my luck, it won't.  I can't wait that long on this tutorial anyway.  My customers are waiting patiently for it, and I want to get it finished and in the shop.

I have Word Perfect on the old desktop.  I think I'm going to try typing the tutorial again in it and then saving it to Word, but I'm not at all sure I can get it from WP to Word to CuteWriter, which is the PDF conversion program I use.  My brain is just too frazzled at this point to think about doing any more tonight.

I am open to suggestions if anyone has any they think will help.  To my loyal customer friends waiting for the new tutorial, I am so sorry for the delay.  Hopefully, someone can help me figure out something soon and it won't be too much longer.  

Eeny, Meeny, Miney, Monet

Reflections Earrings

These pieces are all from Round 3 of the controlled marbling technique tutorial, which resulted in these beauties (if I do say so myself.)

he color palette this time around was inspired by Monet's series of Water Lilies paintings:  Plum, violet, orchid, lavender, purple, iolite, aqua, teal, turquoise, cerulean blue, Prussian blue, sapphire blue and little swirls of silver running throughout.

I can't wait for you all to see how little clay it takes to produce all these pieces.  You will be amazed.  A dab'll do ya, for sure. 

Reflections II Earrings

My Momma also wanted to let everyone know that I wasn't picking on her when I posted about her recent Christmas sweater fetish.  In fact, she was standing over my shoulder laughing while I wrote the post.

I tease her relentlessly about the Red Hat Society she belongs to, and she promises that when my time comes for induction (never gonna happen) she intends to gag me, kidnap me, and take me by force to the meeting.  Don't worry, she'd never catch me, not with her spindly little legs.  Hee Hee  

Reflections I Pendant

Lily Pond Pendant

Skinner Blend from the Monet Scraps

One or two more color combinations and I think I'll be ready to start putting the written text together!  Yay!

Christmas Sweaters

Momma's Earrings

My mother takes full advantage of having a jewelry designer at her beck and call.  Today, she saw some of the pieces in the next phase of my controlled marbling tutorial, the black and red pieces, and asked me to make her some Christmas-y red and green stripedy (see, Jules, I get it honest!) earrings in the upside-down teardrop shape that I call the "hot air balloon" cut.  

Dutiful daughter that I am, I dropped everything and proceeded to make my Momma some red and green earrings.  

Now, other than her E-reader, which we forced on her (the one she would hurt you over now if you tried to take it from her,) there isn't much about my Momma that is "modern."  She is very old-fashioned, from her hair-do to her clothing to the furniture in her house.  Striped earrings, and in a funky shape?  Nuh-uh, I know her and I know better, or thought I did.  

North Pole Snowflake Earrings

The times, they are a-changing, though.  Apparently, she went out last week and bought herself a (gasp!) Christmas themed sweater!   Just the thought sends shudders through me.   She has never done the Christmas sweater thing!  Never!   What is happening here?  What's next, a turkey loaf for Christmas dinner?  It's that senior citizens group she plays cards with on Tuesdays.  They're a radical bunch, those women... drive themselves everywhere they want to go, wear red hats and purple clothes in public... you know the kind...

North Pole Snowflakes Teardrop

Well, there was nothing for it but to hunker down and create something to match the Christmas sweater.  Since I was marbling, and wanted to stay in the marbling frame of mind, I decided to blend some custom Christmas red and green and a snowy white.  

I don't like to use regular white clay because it is flat.  Instead, I add a few drops of white alcohol ink to Pardo Translucent.  It is much softer and has a sweet luminescence.  Marshmallows come to mind when I look at it. 

I blended the colors and marbled a batch, but the earrings looked too abstract and modern.  This is a pair I decided to leave that way.  I love these, but they aren't Momma and no matter what she says, she wouldn't wear them.

Ribbon Candy Earrings

Then the light bulb went off over my head and I decided to stamp the rest with a snowflake texture sheet and highlight the stamping with a whipped cream colored acrylic paint (custom blended using eggshell and white and the teeniest touch of yellow.)  

Yep, I did good.  She saw these and almost choked up.  She said "Those are EXACTLY what I wanted!"

They remind me of Scandinavian sweaters or the Fair Isle sweater patterns.   Maybe I'll let my fingers do the walking through the internet and see if I can find a Christmas red and green Fair Isle patterned sweater.  For her, of course, not for me... I don't do Christmas sweaters.  Nope, not me.  

Now it's back to the studio to work on the red and black, which frankly, aren't coming together as I had hoped.  I'm going to sort through my waxed paper wrapped stash of blended clay to get some inspiration for more color combinations.  

Working On A New Tutorial

If you have looked at my flickr photostream the past few days, you have probably guessed I'm working on a new tutorial because of all the similarly colored pieces.  I normally work in color batches that yield 2 or 3 pieces at most, but my studio is an explosion of aqua and burnt orange at the moment.

When I'm working on a tutorial, I work in much larger batches of the same colors so I have enough in case I screw up (often) and have to recreate steps.  I am terrible about forgetting to photograph a step until I've gone on to the next one.  I probably shouldn't admit that, but it means I have to go back and recreate the step again.  

I usually write my tutorials first, then follow the instructions to create pieces, but this time, the creation comes first, then the writing.  

For this new tutorial, which is about how to use my controlled marbling technique, recreating steps isn't possible, because each piece is unique.  If I forget to photograph, I have to scrap the photos of it and make another.  So, you can see why a lot of the same colored clay would be needed. 

Right now, I'm working primarily with aqua, burnt orange and snowy white.  I have some other color combinations planned, so next you'll either see a bunch of red, black, silver and white pieces; or a bunch of  plum, indigo blue and gold pieces.   

I have promised to have this new tutorial ready to publish before Christmas, so I'm working every day to be sure I can meet that deadline, but since I have all day, every day to work on it, I don't think that is really going to be a problem.  

Working non-stop like I am, though, means new posts on the blog might be sparse for a couple of weeks.  One of my lovely customers (hey, Donetta!) emailed me about the sewn paper bag tutorial she purchased recently, and her sweet email prompted me to drag myself on over here and write a little something new.  

Here is a sneak peak at some of the new pieces made using my controlled marbling technique (all of these won't make it into the how-to, or else the tutorial would be 50MB large) but I'm trying to get as many in as I can and maintain some variety.