Weekly Bird in the hand

It's Saturday - so time for my weekly bird in the hand - the things I am grateful for:

Photo by PinkStock Photos!

 

• The metal clay community.  We visited Mexico city this week and while there, I managed to meet up with a metal clay friend - Rosa Martha!  How amazing that I can be miles from home and still manage to feel part of the metal clay community. Rosa Martha and I did our certification program together a few years ago, and then met up again a couple of years ago at the PMC conference.  Maybe we will meet again this year in July.....  Great to see you Rosa Martha.  How wonderful to have such a group of friends with a common interest all over the world.
• Mexico bus service - we took a First class bus from Mexico City back to Queretaro last night. It was wonderful! So comfortable, showed movies (albeit in Spanish), and efficient too.  I think we might be using the buses again while we are here!
• My parents.  Had to say goodbye to my parents  yesterday as they flew back from Mexico city to England. We had such a good time with them  and they were real troupers - giving everything a try! Poor dad even tried food poisoning on his last night here!  An experience he could have done without. Hope you are feeling better dad. Miss you both already xx.
• My friend Sharon.  Unfortunately I heard this week that my friend Sharon from Sonoma died.  I got to know her while on the board of the Sonoma Newcomers.  She was lovely vibrant person with so much style and joy!  I will miss you Sharon - as will so many other Newcomers.
• Guacomole.  I just love it! Could eat it every day!
• The opportunity to try so many new things in such a short time - from encaustics, to clay sculpture, to acupuncture (receiving not giving!!! :=D), to........

Hope your life is as rich as mine is!

Mondays with Marly - Taxes and Beginnings

By NEW guest blogger Marly

Marly and Angie own Studio 28 in Waterloo, Ontario Canada.

I’m sitting at the table amidst piles of last year’s receipts coaxing my shy and often timid left brain to step up and make sense of the numbers, tables, percentages, and schedules that make up my income tax return. As I look over a receipt from one of myToronto suppliers, my right brain merrily skips into my head and says, “Remember on that particular trip to Toronto you also went to Massey Hall to hear the Canadian Songwriters Tribute to Neil Young.”  “Oh yes!” I enthusiastically respond, “What a great
concert!” Which inspires me to go over to my computer and click on iTunes...a bit of music in the background to help me get through this tax thing would be perfect! Oh and while I’m here at the computer, I might as well check my email. Ah yes, an email from my dear friend Ruth inviting me to be a guest writer on her blog. What a great opportunity! How exciting!  But wait, now I need to write something!  How does one begin? Looking back at the pile of receipts on the table, I decide that, indeed, this is the perfect time to think about my first guest blog entry.

So let’s go back to spring of 2008. Angie, my good friend and business partner, and I have dabbled in metal clay for a few years, but its when we spend three days with Celie Fago in her lovely Vermont studio, learning about the tear away technique, doming and keum boo, that our excitement about this incredible medium really takes off! 

Lentils Made at Celie’s in Vermont

During our time with her, we are introduced to bronze clay which Celie has been testing for Bill Struve and Rio.  We also learn that she will be teaching the first introductorycourse in bronze clay at the PMC conference that summer. Mmmm.....another exciting opportunity presents itself. Angie is lucky enough to make it in Celie’s bronze clay course which fills up within days of its posting. It is in this course that Angie has the very very good fortune of sitting beside a lovely British woman named Ruth Baillie.  Both of us continue to enjoy her company during the course of the conference, discussing seminars and people we have met each evening over a glass of Ruth’s very own Birdland Merlot. And the rest, as they say, is history.

Ruth, Angie, and Marly at PMC Conference 2008  

First bronze projects by Angie

First bronze project by Ruth

Little do we know that when we say our sad goodbyes at the end of the conference, that we will all be together again in a few months. Wait...what’s that? Oh dear...the left side of my brain is wringing her hands, glancing over to the pile of now neglected receipts, and telling me in a very forced whisper that there are tax deadlines to meet.  I guess, the next chapter of our adventures with Ruth have to wait. But, at least now I know what I’ll be writing about in my second entry. I really wish I had invested in that nifty “receipt reader” thing that Ruth talks about earlier in her blog. I might be a little less reluctant to go back over to the table. Maybe, I should go online and learn more about those receipt
readers, or perhaps go for a walk on this beautiful, sunny day to clear my head a bit before I get back to the numbers...isn’t there some dirty laundry that needs attention?...and so it goes.

Silver conference

I'm on my way to a "silver" conference in West Lafayette, Indiana! I'll tell more when I get there. Looking forward to it - especially as it is the launch of a new bronze clay that I will get to play with for a couple of days...plus lots of other interesting sounding presentations......and I'll get to meet some other silver clay artists.

Charm swap - Wine time

I've been busy making charms for a charm swap. I'm going to a conference and workshop on the 14th of this month, all about metal clay. Part of the social time of the conference is that, if you choose, you can bring a number of charms, all the same design and then on one evening, there is a social gathering and people exchange charms . I haven't been to one of the conferences before so not really sure how it will all work -but it sounds like fun. Some people have reportedly made 50 charms to swap!!!!! Wow - a bit beyond this first timer's goal I think. Especially as I'm not really a charm bracelet sort of person in the first place. In fact, I think I'm going to put the ones I swap onto a silver bangle instead of bracelet........See how it looks. I've made 20 charms - will be interesting to see what I get in return.

The tricky part was coming up with a design. Simple and quick were two words that came to mind if I was contemplating making 20 of something!!!! But I also wanted it to say something about me so when people see them, then could connect it back to me. I read on the yahoo group that some did charms in the shape of their state, or as a shell if they live by the ocean or.......

After a bit of umming and ahhing - I decided on a wine bottle. We have a small vineyard and grow merlot grapes - selling most of the grapes to a winery, but keeping some for our own wine. I plan on taking a couple of bottles of our wine to share during the conference - so therefore thought maybe the wine bottle would be a reminder for those who get the charm, to connect it to me. I put the B initial on the wine label - as our vineyard is called Birdland Vineyards and also my surname begins with a B......

Hope people like the charms. The photo of them all makes me think of the children's counting song "Ten green bottles"! I'll post some photos of the ones I get in return when I get back from the conference.