Our deck and yard (ok and our house) features a lot of tikis.  Why not, we live at the beach right?

This is one of our largest and you might have seen him in the background of some of my Sculpey videos. I'm thinking that my project this summer will be to make him some Sculpey eyes. If I want to be accurate for this neighborhood, some blood-shot eyes too!

Take the picture!

Soooo, what do you say to the former in-laws when you've painted the hand-made Japanese dining table they gave you?

 So this comb tool (bottom right) in the new Sculpey Technique  DesignTools set is great for creating bargello.  All you need is a sheet of striped clay and drag the tool perpendicular THROUGH the stripes.  Easy right?  Except how do you get a striped sheet of clay?

Well, I'm still unpacking from the trip to the Oklahoma Twister Retreat but I wanted to share some photos with you.

I'm home from the Oklahoma Twister Retreat and I already miss all my new clay friends.  I thought I would make a quick post here before I started the tedious process of unpacking all my clay stuff in the studio.  It always seems that when I'm packing to go I keep saying to myself, "Oh, I HAVE to take this!" And then when I get home I keep saying to myself, "Why did I think I needed ALL THIS?"

We are having a blast here in Oklahoma Twister retreat!  I was prepared to teach 2 4 hour classes and a photo demo.WhenI got here Penni Jo Couch, who heads this retreat says "great! and what are you going to do for your 2 make-it-nd-take-its?" Well, Im sure my face registered complete shock. apparently we had talked about it last October at my home retreat in San Diego. Seriously, I don't remember last week, let alone last October!  Fortunately, Sculpey has such a variety of clays and tools, we had the two worked out in 5 minutes. First one was a blast!

You know how we will often buy a blouse or dress and when we are at the checkout, we are designing the Sculpey jewelry to go with it?  YEAH, you've done that before and so have I.  I've also bought a piece of clothing because I wanted to design the jewelry to go with it - "I could do that pattern in clay.  That's a Skinner Blend!"

So, we are still traveling around my living room here.  When you have bold colors (like the big red chair and the walls) regular items just seem to disappear. (But apparently, seasonal decorations DON'T disappear - I believe both Halloween and Christmas are represented here...and it's May.)  You can see the black vase on the left of the chair from my previous blog. So obviously any brightly colored clay item can feel at home in this room!

Ok, so I was sooo excited, I started my blog LAST month, when I was supposed to start THIS month.. and it's a blog series based on my wacky living room, so I need to repost the first to get us rolling.  But first, I have to share that I was just in the kitchen making my dinner and I heard the first campers of the season at Camp Surf around the block from us!  Spring is here in SoCal!