Polymer Clay #WotW

Posted on by Astrid

Hi all on this gloomy Saturday. I thought I’d join Word of the Week once again and my word for this week is “polymer clay”. After all, I’ve been working with this medium all week. Well, except for Thursday, when I had to get my mammogram and the whole day went chaotic as a result. And except for yesterday, when I was sick with some type of hopefully short-lived stomach bug.

Like I told you all already, I crafted a white polymer clay unicorn late last week. I don’t think I posted the picture to my blog so far yet, so here it is.

White Polymer Clay Unicorn

The creator whose YouTube tutorial I used, didn’t use a ball of tinfoil for the inside of the unicorn, so neither did I. This did mean I used up a lot of my white Fimo. Today, I wanted to make a snowman and didn’t have enough white clay even when using tinfoil for its insides.

Back to unicorns. I made another one on Monday, but threw it in the trash after baking because its horn drooped and it was cross-eyed. I did want to make another one though, so went back to the table on Tuesday to create one. This one, I did without even watching the YouTube video. This one’s made of Fimo in the colors Sunflower Yellow, Tangerine and Apple Green. I nicknamed it Sunnycorn even though its horn is green.

Sunnycorn

By late Tuesday, I was fully obsessed with creating polymer clay unicorns, but I had also thrown out most of my Fimo, because it was too crumbly to work with. The only colors suitable for a unicorn I had left, were Indian Red, Sunflower Yellow and Brilliant Blue. I don’t like the combination of red and blue, but red and yellow do look good together. I joked that they’re the colors of the nearest top league football club. Now it happens that one of my staff is a fan of that club and she had her birthday yesterday, so I decided to create a football unicorn in red and yellow for her.

Football Unicorn

For this one, I made use of some tips I’d gotten from people online and used a little wire to put in its horn to keep it from drooping. If you were to look at the unicorn from underneath it, you’d see that the wire stuck out a tiny bit. I guess I’ll have to figure out a way to prevent this, but for now, it’s okay.

On Wednesday, I finally gave in and ordered some new colors of Fimo Soft polymer clay. In fact, I ordered twelve (!) new colors, including four shades of blue. I already had Brilliant Blue and now I also have Pacific Blue, Blue Ice Quartz, Blue Agate and Pastel Aqua. I am tempted to create a completely blue unicorn now. Or a whale. I also ordered several shades of purple, Pastel Vanilla, Lime, Metallic Gold and Pastel Peach. My staff also went out to buy me some Fimo at the local craft store, where it’s more expensive but she saved on shipping. She bought me Emerald, Cherry Red and some new Tangerine, because I did know I’d almost used that one up. And now that I want to create a snowman, I realize I’m nearly out of white. Ugh.

I also ordered a mold for creating butterflies. This one is useful for both polymer clay and soap, though of course once I’ve used the mold for Fimo I can no longer use this exact one for soap.

Today, since I was out of white and couldn’t do a snowman, I decided to create a Christmas tree instead. I got cutters for St. Nicholas last week, so I cut out a Christmas tree out of Emerald Fimo and put little balls of Indian Red onto it. Then I had my staff put a hole into the top of the tree to put a ribbon through. Once it’s baked, I’m probably going to decorate the tree with gold Fimo Liquid.

This evening, I was originally going to try out the mold I’d ordered on Wednesday, but I got distressed over dinner and then didn’t want to do any more crafting. However, by 7PM, my distress had subsided and I did try a small butterfly in Brilliant Blue. I must say it turned out okay for my first attempt.

How was your week?

Word of the Week linky

House Inspection

Posted on by Astrid

One of Mama Kat’s writing prompts for this week is to tell us about a time someone showed up at your front door. Since I no longer live in regular housing since moving into the care facility, no-one ever shows up at my front door unexpectedly and, if they do, the staff will open it for me. When I still lived with my husband though, several times, people would show up at my front door unexpectedly. Not salespeople, thankfully. However, my experiences with the housing corporation were so bad that my husband actually asked me not to open the door. I always reflexively did anyway.

One time, the housing corporation, or I’m assuming some technical company sent by them, showed up when I did expect them. They were supposed to be repairing our gutter, but asked a ton of questions about where the problem was located and what kind of gutter we had. I had no idea and the people said they couldn’t just climb onto the roof and have a look. I called my husband to inquire, but he didn’t answer the phone, so they left without having done anything. This encounter led me to get into a mental crisis.

The first time the housing corporation showed up unannounced was in early August of 2017, just two weeks after the gutter repair guys had showed up. They came to ask us to weed the path behind our backyard. I had no idea there even grew plants there, but, under pressure, agreed to ask my husband to do it within a couple of weeks. Apparently, the back neighbors had been complaining, since I don’t expect the housing corporation to come out from the town to check on our tiny village house for no reason.

The other time was in September of 2019. My husband had scheduled the final inspection of our home for the 26th, when I’d be at the care facility and he’d be home alone. However, they showed up a week early when I was home alone. I was sleeping when I heard the doorbell and felt I had no time to dress into my day clothes, so quickly ran downstairs to open the door.

I told them they were a week early, but they insisted they take a look around “now that we’re here anyway”. After their inspection, they asked me to sign a document. I initially refused, but they insisted I am a renter too (I was). Then they asked: “Can you read?” I explained that I can, but not print, since I am blind. “There’s nothing to worry about in this document,” they told me. In my overwhelm, I signed and sent them on their way. My husband did complain about the way they’d treated me this time and it was my final reminder of why I want to never live in regular housing again.

Mama’s Losin’ It

#IWSG: Writing Stressors and Delights

Posted on by Astrid

IWSG

Hi everyone. Can you believe it’s December already? I in a way can’t, but in another sense am so grateful November is finally over! It’s the first Wednesday of the month and this means it’s time for the Insecure Writer’s Support Group (#IWSG) to meet. The past month was pretty good as far as writing goes. I published 21 posts again, which I considered “okay” in August but now am rather content with. I also actually did some creative writing, which I am really happy about. I am striving for 300 blog posts in 2021 and am pretty sure I can make this happen. After all, I’ll need to publish 20 posts for that this month and December is a longer month than November and a less stressful one at that (for me at least). Wish me luck!

Now on to this month’s optional question. This month, we are asked to write about what stresses us the most in our writing and what delights us. My main stressor is the pressure I put onto myself, for instance of having to write a certain number of posts (okay, okay, I know, I just did that!).

Another big and related stressor is the comparison trap. I mean, I compare myself to more successful writers and bloggers and see how much they get done and I get stressed out about it. For example, I’ve always wanted to write a book but cannot get myself to write this many words at all even during NaNoWriMo. It probably doesn’t help that NaNoWriMo is in November, but then again I couldn’t do it during any month. I probably won’t ever write a book.

Of course, there are a lot of less successful writers and bloggers out there too. Bloggers who barely post once a week, for example. And how do you define success, anyway? I mean, I’ve never wanted to earn money with my blog and I still delight in every comment I receive.

This brings me to the delights of writing. My main reason for writing is to express myself, but I definitely find huge joy when I feel I’ve touched someone else’s heart. I don’t write for my stats, regardless of my inner critic’s attempts to make me do so. Rather, if I find that I’ve genuinely been an inspiration to one person, that’s far more important than a dozen generic comments.